6 The earth has given her increase; and God, even our God, will give us his blessing.
Then I will give you rain at the right time, and the land will give her increase and the trees of the field will give their fruit;
But this is the agreement which I will make with the people of Israel after those days, says the Lord; I will put my law in their inner parts, writing it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.
And God went on to say to Moses, Say to the children of Israel, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has sent me to you: this is my name for ever, and this is my sign to all generations.
Because this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide.
Truly, his salvation is near to his worshippers; so that glory may be in our land. Mercy and faith have come together; righteousness and peace have given one another a kiss. Faith comes up from the earth like a plant; righteousness is looking down from heaven. The Lord will give what is good; and our land will give its increase.
If you will give ear to my word and do it, the good things of the land will be yours;
And he will give rain for your seed, so that you may put it in the earth; and you will have bread from the produce of the earth, good and more than enough for your needs: in that day the cattle will get their food in wide grass-lands. And the oxen and the young asses which are used for ploughing, will have salted grain which has been made free from the waste with fork and basket.
And I will give the rain at the right time, and I will make the shower come down at the right time; there will be showers of blessing. And the tree of the field will give its fruit and the earth will give its increase, and they will be safe in their land; and they will be certain that I am the Lord, when I have had their yoke broken and have given them salvation from the hands of those who made them servants.
And it will be, in that day, says the Lord, that I will give an answer to the heavens, and the heavens to the earth; And the earth will give its answer to the grain and the wine and the oil, and they will give an answer to Jezreel;
I did the planting, Apollos did the watering, but God gave the increase. So then the planter is nothing, and the waterer is nothing; but God who gives the increase. Now the planter and the waterer are working for the same end: but they will have their separate rewards in the measure of their work. For we are workers with God: you are God's planting, God's building.
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.