4 Oh let the nations be glad and sing for joy; For thou wilt judge the peoples with equity, And govern the nations upon earth. Selah
Before Jehovah; for he cometh to judge the earth: He will judge the world with righteousness, And the peoples with equity.
but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;
Sing unto Jehovah a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth; ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein, the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up `their voice', the villages that Kedar doth inhabit; let the inhabitants of Sela sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto Jehovah, and declare his praise in the islands.
And the seventh angel sounded; and there followed great voices in heaven, and they said, The kingdom of the world is become `the kingdom' of our Lord, and of his Christ: and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, who sit before God on their thrones, fell upon their faces and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who art and who wast; because thou hast taken thy great power, and didst reign.
And again he saith, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people. And again, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; And let all the peoples praise him.
Behold, I have given him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples.
That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous should be as the wicked; that be far from thee: shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
These shall lift up their voice, they shall shout; for the majesty of Jehovah they cry aloud from the sea. Wherefore glorify ye Jehovah in the east, even the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel, in the isles of the sea. From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs: Glory to the righteous. But I said, I pine away, I pine away, woe is me! the treacherous have dealt treacherously; yea, the treacherous have dealt very treacherously.
I said, Ye are gods, And all of you sons of the Most High.
And he will judge the world in righteousness, He will minister judgment to the peoples in uprightness.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 67
Commentary on Psalms 67 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Harvest Thanksgiving Song
Like Psalms 65:1-13, this Psalm, inscribed To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments, a song-Psalm ( מזמור שׁיר ), also celebrates the blessing upon the cultivation of the ground. As Psalms 65:1-13 contemplated the corn and fruits as still standing in the fields, so this Psalm contemplates, as it seems, the harvest as already gathered in, in the light of the redemptive history. Each plentiful harvest is to Israel a fulfilment of the promise given in Leviticus 26:4, and a pledge that God is with His people, and that its mission to the whole world (of peoples) shall not remain unaccomplished. This mission-tone referring to the end of God's work here below is unfortunately lost in the church's closing strain, “God be gracious and merciful unto us,” but it sounds all the more distinctly and sweetly in Luther's hymn, “ Es woll uns Gott genädig sein ,” throughout.
There are seven stanzas: twice three two-line stanzas, having one of three lines in the middle, which forms the clasp or spangle of the septiad, a circumstance which is strikingly appropriate to the fact that this Psalm is called “the Old Testament Paternoster” in some of the old expositors.
(Note: Vid., Sonntag's Tituli Psalmorum (1687), where it is on this account laid out as the Rogate Psalm.)
The second half after the three-line stanza beings in Psalms 67:6 exactly as the first closed in Psalms 67:4. יברכנוּ is repeated three times, in order that the whole may bear the impress of the blessing of the priest, which is threefold.
The Psalm begins (Psalms 67:1) with words of the priest's benediction in Numbers 6:24-26. By אתּנוּ the church desires for itself the unveiled presence of the light-diffusing loving countenance of its God. Here, after the echo of the holiest and most glorious benediction, the music strikes in. With Psalms 67:2 the Beracha passes over into a Tephilla . לדעת is conceived with the most general subject: that one may know, that may be known Thy way, etc. The more graciously God attests Himself to the church, the more widely and successfully does the knowledge of this God spread itself forth from the church over the whole earth. They then know His דּרך , i.e., the progressive realization of His counsel, and His ישׁוּעה , the salvation at which this counsel aims, the salvation not of Israel merely, but of all mankind.
Now follows the prospect of the entrance of all peoples into the kingdom of God, who will then praise Him in common with Israel as their God also. His judging ( שׁפט ) in this instance is not meant as a judicial punishment, but as a righteous and mild government, just as in the christological parallels Psalms 72:12., Isaiah 11:3. מישׁר in an ethical sense for מישׁרים , as in Psalms 45:7; Isaiah 11:4; Malachi 2:6. הנחה as in Psalms 31:4 of gracious guidance (otherwise than in Job 12:23).
The joyous prospect of the conversion of heathen, expressed in the same words as in Psalms 67:5, here receives as its foundation a joyous event of the present time: the earth has just yielded its fruit (cf. Psalms 85:13), the fruit that had been sown and hoped for. This increase of corn and fruits is a blessing and an earnest of further blessing, by virtue of which (Jeremiah 33:9; Isaiah 60:3; cf. on the contrary Joel 2:17) it shall come to pass that all peoples unto the uttermost bounds of the earth shall reverence the God of Israel. For it is the way of God, that all the good that He manifests towards Israel shall be for the well-being of mankind.