Psalm 81

<To the leader: according to The Gittith. Of Asaph.>
¹ Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
² Raise a song, sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp.
³ Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our festal day.
⁴ For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
⁵ He made it a decree in Joseph, when he went out over the land of Egypt. I hear a voice I had not known:
⁶ “I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket.
 ⁷ In distress you called, and I rescued you; I answered you in the secret place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah
 ⁸ Hear, O my people, while I admonish you; O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
 ⁹ There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
 ¹⁰ I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
 ¹¹ “But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me.
 ¹² So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels.
 ¹³ O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!
 ¹⁴ Then I would quickly subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes.
 ¹⁵ Those who hate the LORD would cringe before him, and their doom would last forever.
¹⁶ I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

The central commandment for Israel is for the people to hear:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Now within the event of a festal gathering and worship of the LORD the voice of God comes to the assembly asking them to hear the LORD’s appeal to them and to turn away from the foreign gods they have allowed to influence their life. The God who delivered their ancestors from Egypt is again ready to quickly subdue their enemies if they will listen and return faithfully to their God. This brief bit of poetry opens a window into the pained cry of a God whose people have chosen other gods or tried to combine the way of the LORD with the ways of other peoples and nations.

Psalm 80 implored the God of hosts to restore Israel in the midst of their trouble. Israel’s hope depended on God’s hearing the cry of the people and turning God’s face towards them. Now in Psalm 81 the gathered people are told to hear and turn their face once again toward God, and when they hear and listen and walk in the ways of God their enemies will be subdued and the storehouses of God’s abundant provisions will be opened. Israel’s future depends on God’s grace, but their God also desires their faithfulness. Grace and obedience are not mutually exclusive. Israel remains God’s people, yet God will not shield them as their stubborn hearts choose paths which lead away from the LORD.

This psalm begins within the context of a festival. It could be any of the major festivals in the year and scholars have argued for the Day of Atonement, Passover, Tabernacles, or the New Year. Regardless of the festival that the psalm occurs within it is a time of worship and song, a time where the people have gathered together to praise and probably sacrifice to the LORD. In this time of turning towards their God, God responds. Within the context of worship, perhaps through a priest or worship leader, God’s appeal to the people is heard and God’s broken heart is revealed.

The divine voice narrates that long-ago God heard the voice of the people in Egypt and how God responded by removing the burden from their shoulders. In liberating the people from slavery and leading them into the wilderness they were created as a new people. Instead of the people testing God at Meribah, the psalm indicates this as a time where God tested the people. Yet, the divine voice recalls the central memory of the people: the memory of God saving them from Egypt and providing for them in the wilderness in their sojourn to the promised land. In the context of this festival worship, they are called again to hear from the God who delivered them from Egypt, spoke to them at Sinai, and tested them at Meribah.

Israel is again called to hear! The shema[1] (Deuteronomy 6:4 referenced above) and the first commandment (Exodus 20:2, Deuteronomy 5: 6-7) form the background of this divine appeal. The people of God are not to worship the LORD alongside other gods, nor are they to give their allegiance to these foreign gods or their ways. The LORD has provided for their needs in the path and will continue to provide in the present if they will hear and remain faithful. The LORD’s plea comes because the people have not listened, nor have they remained faithful. The language of verse eleven is not merely that Israel did not submit to God, but they did not want[2] the LORD. The LORD speaks out of the pain of the rejection by Israel as they either wandered between the LORD and other gods or abandoned their God completely. God has cared passionately for the people and even after their rejection God still desires for the return of God’s people. Within this space of worship there is a divine invitation for those people to hear and return.

If the people hear and walk in the LORD’s ways then their God is waiting to subdue their enemies and provide the nourishment they need. Their wandering has consequences. God has passively allowed their stubborn hearts to lead them into their current crisis, but God is actively waiting and hoping for the return of the people of God. Those hating the LORD would realize their mistakes too late as the LORD becomes both the fearsome protector of Israel as well as the generous host providing the finest wheat and honey. God’s cry goes out to the people and their LORD desires for them to hear and return to the way of their God.

Eighteen years ago, the professor of preaching Richard Lischer stated:

The average American is subjected to approximately six thousand messages per day. Why should one of them called “gospel” stand out? What is one little message among so many? (Lischer, 2005, p. 13)

The number of messages that a contemporary person hears only seems to increase and the challenge of people hearing God’s message of grace and hope was not unique to the people of Israel. Yet in the sea of words and images that most people continue to be deluged by, the faithful are called to hear and attend to the divine words which call God’s people to return generation after generation. It is a call which sharply contradicts the consumeristic calls to create our own happiness and salvation. It opposes the radical independence that rests in our stubborn hearts and the numerous things that continually call for our allegiance and trust. Yet within the space of worship the people of God strain to hear the voice of God speak to them in the midst of the prayers and songs. Perhaps this time where the community of the faithful gathers is the last remaining space where the cacophony of the numerous other competing claims is silenced so that the God, so often rejected, may be heard by God’s people and their lives may be reoriented. Those with ears to hear will understand that God is both fearsome protector and generous host providing a world that is both safe and abundant and that the other forces which promise protection and prosperity are merely the idols we have created.

 

[1] Shema is the Hebrew word for “Hear” or “Listen” which begins Deuteronomy 6:4 (hence the passage is commonly known as the shema) and is behind the frequent occurrences of “hear” and ‘listen” throughout Psalm 81.

[2] The Hebrew verb ‘bh “has more of a meaning of “be willing to” or “want to” (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 637)