8 Hear, O My people, and I testify to thee, O Israel, if thou dost hearken to me:
Hear, O My people, and I speak, O Israel, and I testify against thee, God, thy God `am' I.
and He saith, `If thou dost really hearken to the voice of Jehovah thy God, and dost that which is right in His eyes, and hast hearkened to His commands, and kept all His statutes: none of the sickness which I laid on the Egyptians do I lay on thee, for I, Jehovah, am healing thee.
and saith unto them, `Set your heart to all the words which I am testifying against you to-day, that ye command your sons to observe to do all the words of this law,
O that My people were hearkening to Me, Israel in My ways would walk.
Incline your ear, and come unto me, Hear, and your soul doth live, And I make for you a covenant age-during, The kind acts of David -- that are stedfast. Lo, a witness to peoples I have given him, A leader and commander to peoples.
`Verily, verily, I say to thee -- What we have known we speak, and what we have seen we testify, and our testimony ye do not receive;
testifying fully both to Jews and Greeks, toward God reformation, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 81
Commentary on Psalms 81 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 81
This psalm was penned, as is supposed, not upon occasion of any particular providence, but for the solemnity of a particular ordinance, either that of the new-moon in general or that of the feast of trumpets on the new moon of the seventh month, Lev. 23:24; Num. 29:1. When David, by the Spirit, introduced the singing of psalms into the temple-service this psalm was intended for that day, to excite and assist the proper devotions of it. All the psalms are profitable; but, if one psalm be more suitable than another to the day and observances of it, we should choose that. The two great intentions of our religious assemblies, and which we ought to have in our eye in our attendance on them, are answered in this psalm, which are, to give glory to God and to receive instruction from God, to "behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in his temple;' accordingly by this psalm we are assisted on our solemn feast days,
This, though spoken primarily of Israel of old, is written for our learning, and is therefore to be sung with application.
To the chief musician upon Gittith. A psalm of Asaph.
Psa 81:1-7
When the people of God were gathered together in the solemn day, the day of the feast of the Lord, they must be told that they had business to do, for we do not go to church to sleep nor to be idle; no, there is that which the duty of every day requires, work of the day, which is to be done in its day. And here,
Psa 81:8-16
God, by the psalmist, here speaks to Israel, and in them to us, on whom the ends of the world are come.