Psalms 81King James Version
Sing aloud unto God our strength. Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. Oh that my people had hearkened unto me.
A festival psalm that becomes a divine lament. It opens in celebration: sing aloud, blow the trumpet at the feast. Then God speaks for more than half the psalm: I removed your shoulder from the burden; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; open your mouth wide and I will fill it. But my people did not hearken; so I gave them over to their hearts' lust. Oh that my people had walked in my ways. The psalm ends in conditional promise unrealized.
The festival worship that God commanded was meant to hold open a relationship that Israel closed by refusing to hear, and the divine lament over that refusal is the psalm's emotional core.
verse: "Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!" God's conditional grief is the most direct expression of divine longing in the Asaph collection.
Superscription: 'To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm of Asaph.' Gittith may indicate a Gittite instrument or festival tune. The feast of v3 is most likely Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) or Tabernacles. The Meribah reference (v7) connects to Moses's water-from-rock crisis in the wilderness.
The congregational celebration of the feast; God speaking in the second half of the psalm; Joseph and Israel as the ones who refused; the unnamed enemy who would have been subdued.
Psalm 81 is a prophetic cult psalm, combining liturgical celebration with oracular divine speech in the pattern of covenant renewal ceremonies. Its structure resembles the Deuteronomic covenant form. The divine lament ('Oh that my people') became a key text for understanding God's non-coercive relationship with human beings, foundational for theologies of divine vulnerability.
For when you sense that something could have been different if choices had been made differently. The divine lament in this psalm takes that feeling seriously without sentimentality.
1[To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm of Asaph.] Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob.
2Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery.
3Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.
4For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob.
5This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of Egypt: where I heard a language that I understood not.
6I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots.
7Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah.
8Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;
9There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god.
10I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.
11But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me.
12So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.
13Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!
14I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.
15The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever.
16He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.