6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before Jehovah our Maker:
Know ye that Jehovah, he is God: It is he that hath made us, and we are his; We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem) and he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.
(for Solomon had made a brazen scaffold, five cubits long, and five cubits broad, and three cubits high, and had set it in the midst of the court; and upon it he stood, and kneeled down upon his knees before all the assembly of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven;)
that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of `things' in heaven and `things' on earth and `things' under the earth,
Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them, for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me,
Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.
Oh come, let us sing unto Jehovah; Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely.
And I John am he that heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel that showed me these things.
for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body.
And when it came to pass that we had accomplished the days, we departed and went on our journey; and they all, with wives and children, brought us on our way till we were out of the city: and kneeling down on the beach, we prayed, and bade each other farewell;
And it was so, that, when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication unto Jehovah, he arose from before the altar of Jehovah, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread forth toward heaven.
And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
And he was parted from them about a stone's cast; and he kneeled down and prayed,
And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him.
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he afterward hungered.
For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and builded palaces; and Judah hath multiplied fortified cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour the castles thereof.
For thy Maker is thy husband; Jehovah of hosts is his name: and the Holy One of Israel is thy Redeemer; the God of the whole earth shall he be called.
In that day shall men look unto their Maker, and their eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; And his enemies shall lick the dust.
But none saith, Where is God my Maker, Who giveth songs in the night,
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 95
Commentary on Psalms 95 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Jahve is called the Rock of our salvation (as in Psalms 89:27, cf. Psalms 94:22) as being its firm and sure ground. Visiting the house of God, one comes before God's face; קדּם פּני , praeoccupare faciem , is equivalent to visere ( visitare ). תּודה is not confessio peccati , but laudis . The Beth before תודה is the Beth of accompaniment, as in Micah 6:6; that before זמרות (according to 2 Samuel 23:1 a name for psalms, whilst מזמר can only be used as a technical expression) is the Beth of the medium.
The adorableness of God receives a threefold confirmation: He is exalted above all gods as King, above all things as Creator, and above His people as Shepherd and Leader. אלהים (gods) here, as in Psalms 96:4., Psalms 97:7, Psalms 97:9, and frequently, are the powers of the natural world and of the world of men, which the Gentiles deify and call kings (as Moloch Molech, the deified fire), which, however, all stand under the lordship of Jahve, who is infinitely exalted above everything that is otherwise called god (Psalms 96:4; Psalms 97:9). The supposition that תּועפות הרים denotes the pit-works ( μέταλλα ) of the mountains (Böttcher), is at once improbable, because to all appearance it is intended to be the antithesis to מחקרי־ארץ , the shafts of the earth. The derivation from ועף ( יעף ), κάμνειν, κοπιᾶν , also does not suit תועפות in Numbers 23:22; Numbers 24:8, for “fatigues” and “indefatigableness” are notions that lie very wide apart. The כּסף תּועפות of Job 22:25 might more readily be explained according to this “silver of fatigues,” i.e., silver that the fatiguing labour of mining brings to light, and תועפות הרים in the passage before us, with Gussetius, Geier, and Hengstenberg: cacumina montium quia defatigantur qui eo ascendunt , prop. ascendings = summits of the mountains, after which כסף תועפות , Job 22:25, might also signify “silver of the mountain-heights.” But the lxx, which renders δόξα in the passages in Numbers and τὰ ὕψη τῶν ὀρέων in the passage before us, leads one to a more correct track. The verb יעף ( ועף ), transposed from יפע ( ופע ), goes back to the root יף , וף , to stand forth, tower above, to be high, according to which תועפות = תופעות signifies eminentiae , i.e., towerings = summits, or prominences = high (the highest) perfection (vid., on Job 22:25). In the passage before us it is a synonym of the Arabic mı̂fan , mı̂fâtun , pars terrae eminens (from Arab. wfâ = יפע , prop. instrumentally: a means of rising above, viz., by climbing), and of the names of eminences derived from Arab. yf' (after which Hitzig renders: the teeth of the mountains). By reason of the fact that Jahve is the Owner (cf. 1 Samuel 2:8), because the Creator of all things, the call to worship, which concerns no one so nearly as it does Israel, the people, which before other peoples is Jahve's creation, viz., the creation of His miraculously mighty grace, is repeated. In the call or invitation, השׁתּחוה signifies to stretch one's self out full length upon the ground, the proper attitude of adoration; כּרע , to curtsey, to totter; and בּרך , Arabic baraka , starting from the radical signification flectere , to kneel down, in genua ( πρόχνυ , pronum = procnum ) procumbere , 2 Chronicles 6:13 (cf. Hölemann, Bibelstudien , i. 135f.). Beside עם מרעיתו , people of His pasture, צאן ידו is not the flock formed by His creating hand (Augustine: ipse gratiâ suâ nos oves fecit ), but, after Genesis 30:35, the flock under His protection, the flock led and defended by His skilful, powerful hand. Böttcher renders: flock of His charge; but יד in this sense (Jeremiah 6:3) signifies only a place, and “flock of His place” would be poetry and prose in one figure.
The second decastich begins in the midst of the Masoretic Psalms 95:7. Up to this point the church stirs itself up to a worshipping appearing before its God; now the voice of God (Hebrews 4:7), earnestly admonishing, meets it, resounding from out of the sanctuary. Since שׁמע בּ signifies not merely to hear, but to hear obediently, Psalms 95:7 cannot be a conditioning protasis to what follows. Hengstenberg wishes to supply the apodosis: “then will He bless you, His people;” but אם in other instances too (Psalms 81:9; Psalms 139:19; Proverbs 24:11), like לוּ , has an optative signification, which it certainly has gained by a suppression of a promissory apodosis, but yet without the genius of the language having any such in mind in every instance. The word היּום placed first gives prominence to the present, in which this call to obedience goes forth, as a decisive turning-point. The divine voice warningly calls to mind the self-hardening of Israel, which came to light at Merîbah, on the day of Massah. What is referred to, as also in Psalms 81:8, is the tempting of God in the second year of the Exodus on account of the failing of water in the neighbourhood of Horeb, at the place which is for this reason called Massah u - Merı̂bah (Exodus 17:1-7); from which is to be distinguished the tempting of God in the fortieth year of the Exodus at Merı̂bah , viz., at the waters of contention near Kadesh (written fully Mê - Merı̂bah Kadesh , or more briefly Mê - Merı̂bah ), Numbers 20:2-13 (cf. on Psalms 78:20). Strictly כמריבה signifies nothing but instar Meribae , as in Psalms 83:10 instar Midianitarum ; but according to the sense, כּ is equivalent to כּעל . Psalms 106:32, just as כּיום is equivalent to כּביום . On אשׁר , quum , cf. Deuteronomy 11:6. The meaning of גּם־ראוּ פעלי is not they also ( גם as in Psalms 52:7) saw His work; for the reference to the giving of water out of the rock would give a thought that is devoid of purpose here, and the assertion is too indefinite for it to be understood of the judgment upon those who tempted God (Hupfeld and Hitzig). It is therefore rather to be rendered: notwithstanding (ho'moos, Ew. §354, a ) they had (= although they had, cf. גם in Isaiah 49:15) seen His work (His wondrous guiding and governing), and might therefore be sure that He would not suffer them to be destroyed. The verb קוּט coincides with κοτέω, κότος . בּדּור .ען , for which the lxx has τῇ γενεᾷ ἐκείνη , is anarthrous in order that the notion may be conceived of more qualitatively than relatively: with a (whole) generation. With ואמר Jahve calls to mind the repeated declarations of His vexation concerning their heart, which was always inclined towards error which leads to destruction - declarations, however, which bore no fruit. Just this ineffectiveness of His indignation had as its result that ( אשׁר , not ὅτι but ὥστε , as in Genesis 13:16; Deuteronomy 28:27, Deuteronomy 28:51; 2 Kings 9:37, and frequently) He sware, etc. ( אם = verily not, Gesen. §155, 2, f , with the emphatic future form in ûn which follows). It is the oath in Numbers 14:27. that is meant. The older generation died in the desert, and therefore lost the entering into the rest of God, by reason of their disobedience. If now, many centuries after Moses, they are invited in the Davidic Psalter to submissive adoration of Jahve, with the significant call: “To-day if ye will hearken to His voice!” and with a reference to the warning example of the fathers, the obedience of faith, now as formerly, has therefore to look forward to the gracious reward of entering into God's rest, which the disobedient at that time lost; and the taking possession of Canaan was, therefore, not as yet the final מנוּחה (Deuteronomy 12:9). This is the connection of the wider train of thought which to the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews Hebrews 3:1, Hebrews 4:1, follows from this text of the Psalm.