Psalm 95:1-7a is a hymn celebrating the kingship of Yahweh. Just as human kings were responsible for major building projects, the Lord as king has created the world and Israel. Verses 1-3 are a call to worship. The call to energy and enthusiasm in worship and extravagant celebration is only fitting for the Lord as king. 1 O come, let us sing to the Lord, the Mosaic covenant name for the God of Israel. The construction of the verb here suggests a slight intensification or focusing of the effect of the main verb, to sing.[1] The Hebrew verb translated "sing" means "to give a ringing cry," commonly of exultation, but also of distress (Lamentations 2:19). Let us make a joyful noise, or shout, modeled after the acclaim for the new king at his enthronement, the making of any loud sound vocally or with an instrument, used elsewhere for the call to battle (Joshua 6:10,16,20; Judges 7:21; I Samuel 17:52; etc.). Our own colloquial “give a shout out to” means to acknowledge someone with respect or to thank someone publicly. Some praise-filled Christian worshipful responses to God have historically included shouting (evidenced by such expressions as “shouting Methodists”). Some translations of verses 1b and 2b convey such nuanced meanings. Self-deprecating so-so singers continue to enjoy the humor of talking about their own “making a joyful noise.” See also Psalms 66:1, 98:4-6 and 100:1. This joyful loud singing and shouting is in acclaim to the Lord as we come into his presence with thanksgiving and songs of praise. For New Testament examples of singing, see Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26; Acts 16:25; Ephesians 5:18-20; Colossians 3:15-17; Revelation 5:11-14. They are to make a joyful noise to the rock (Psalm 94:22) of our salvation! This title for the Lord is from the most ancient period in its life, Israel referred to its God as a "rock" (as in the very ancient poem of Genesis 49:24) and we find the image of Yahweh as the rock of the salvation of Israel extensively in the poem in Deuteronomy 32: 4,15,18,30,31,37, but see also II Samuel 22:47; Psalm 89:26). The association of Yahweh with mountainous and rocky features in the salvation history of Israel is close. The revelation of the name Yahweh was on Mt. Horeb, Exodus 3; the appearance of life-giving water was at the rock of Massah and Meribah, Exodus 17; the giving of the Ten Commandments was on Mt. Sinai, Exodus 20; the revelation to Elijah was on Mt. Horeb, I Kings 19; and many other examples. Further, the image of strength is an obvious attribute of a protective deity. 2 Let us come, literally “Let us meet [or go before] his face” (see Numbers 6:25’s “The Lord make his face to shine upon you”), into the presence of the Lord with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to the Lord with songs of praise! The exhortation to exuberant worship reflects both a desideratum in the worship experience of Israel and highly likely a reality as well. Numerous psalms encourage a lively worship of the Lord, Yahweh, celebrations of both human voice and instrumentation (Psalm 7:17, 9:2,11, 13:6, 18:49, 33:3, 71:22, 98:5,6, etc.). "Sing" is one of the most common verbs in the Psalter, giving rise to its enduring use as a source of religious song for both Jews and Christians. Movement, also, was an important part of the worship of Yahweh, including dance (Psalm 150:4), an element of liturgy that appears to have been an issue of contention from earliest times, as the moving celebration of David before the ark of the covenant indicates (II Samuel 6:16-23). 3 For the Lord is a great God (‘el) and a great King above all gods (‘elohim, divine beings). Here is a reason to offer such worship. The Lord is incomparable, the existence of other, less powerful deities is acknowledged, only showing the superiority of the Lord over other divine beings. Verses 4-5 offer further reasons to offer praise. They focus upon the Lord as creator of the world. 4 In the hand of the Lord are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains belong to the Lord also, using a merism or contrasting parallel terms to refer to the entirety of that which God has created. All are within Lord’s hand. 5 The sea belongs to the Lord, for the Lord made (same root as “formed”) it, and the dry land, which the hands of the Lord have formed, like a potter shapes material for beneficial use. We might see the author engaging in some polemic in verses 3-5. Their neighbors thought Molech ruled the depths, Baal ruled the heights, and Tiamat ruled the sea. This author affirms the Lord created and rules it all.[2] Verses 6-7 focus on the Lord as the creator of Israel. 6 O come, literally “Let us enter” (God’s temple) to worship, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker (same root as formed)! In the context of the psalms and Hebrew worship in general, the people of this psalm and many others were in procession to God’s temple in Jerusalem for one of the three main annual festivals. Further, note the close synonyms in Hebrew that describe our bodily posture as we worship. God’s people come before the Lord with respectful body-positions and reverential, deferential (“I Surrender All”) attitudes. Such submission joins celebration when we recognize that the creator is also the shepherd. 7 For the Lord is our God, and we are the people of the pasture of the Lord, and the sheep of the hand of the Lord. Shepherd imagery is part of royal imagery as well. The summons to praise has its basis in the mighty works Yahweh has already done on behalf of Israel, both in creation (vv. 4-5) and in the history of Israel (vv. 6-7). The direction of movement is important: the praise by Israel is in response to the prior activity of the Lord, not in anticipation of future benefits. Although there are references in the Hebrew Bible for divine action contingent upon human initiative (Job 42:8), the preponderant ethos of the Israelite cult was one of thanksgiving in response to the gifts the Lord gives to Israel specifically and to the world in general. This is one of the most important points of continuity between the religion of the Hebrew Bible and the religion of the New Testament, as well as their subsequent religious traditions.
Coming to a house of worship to offer thanks is wise. So much of life is gift. Yet, it does seem as if modern life leads us to come to a house of worship for many other reasons. Instead of seeking out opportunities to express gratitude, many are looking for comfort, inspiration, stimulation, and community. Now these are not terrible things in and of themselves, but they line up more with self-improvement than with thanksgiving. I think it fair to observe that overall, we have developed a blindness to our blessings. We have come to see the good things of life as an entitlement, rather than a gift, and we have lost the sense of wonder and surprise that gives birth to true thankfulness. When we recognize that we are being given a gift, we feel joy, and gratitude is the experience that flows from this joy."[3] Many in the modern world have come to expect a life of ease and comfort. We have lost the sense that each day on this earth is a wonderful gift. Given the prosperity of modern life, many of us have the sense that wealth and well-being are a right. This starts with young children, whose parents often shower them with presents, so that they do not recognize the gifts they receive at holidays, but they view them instead as their due. Of course, children are not the only ones caught in this trap. Working teenagers and young adults increasingly use their earnings to load up on the latest TVs, computers, clothing, and cars in a race toward a level of prosperity that previous generations took years and years to achieve. Living at home for longer periods, often free of any responsibility for room and board, they end up with an illusory sense of material well-being, a phenomenon social scientists call "premature affluence." Once out in the world on their own, they are more likely to feel disappointment than gratitude as they adjust to a lower standard of living. We have come a long way since the Mayflower Pilgrims felt gratitude for simple survival. Let us give thanks for the presence of God in everyday life, in the moments that we discover healing and wholeness.
America having a day of thanksgiving was a controversial act. George Washington proclaimed a National Day of Thanksgiving in 1789, although some expressed opposition to it. There was discord among the colonies, many feeling the hardships of a few Pilgrims did not warrant a national holiday. And later, President Thomas Jefferson scoffed at the idea of having a day of thanksgiving. It was Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor, whose efforts eventually led to what we recognize as Thanksgiving. Hale wrote many editorials championing her cause in her Boston Ladies' Magazine, and later, in Godey's Lady's Book. Finally, after Hale's 40-year campaign of writing editorials and letters to governors and presidents, her obsession became a reality when, in 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a national day of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was proclaimed by every president after Lincoln. The date was changed a couple of times, most recently by Franklin Roosevelt, who set it up one week to the next-to-last Thursday to create a longer Christmas shopping season. Public uproar against this decision caused the president to move Thanksgiving back to its original date two years later. And in 1941, Congress finally sanctioned Thanksgiving as a legal holiday, as the fourth Thursday in November.[4]
Psalm 95:7b-11 is a prophetic oracle warning the congregation of disobedience to the laws of God. It concludes with a rebuke. A priest or prophet speaks verse 7b. Both the tone and the content of the psalm shift in the second half of verse 7 (which appears, in its imagery, to be confused; cf. Psalms 79:13 and 100:3). From an exhortation to praise and thanksgiving in the first-person plural, the psalm turns abruptly to a plural second-person imperative. The priest addresses the congregation (or worshipers seeking admission to the temple if this is an entrance liturgy) with a second exhortation. Speaking on behalf of Yahweh, the priest couches the exhortation to obedience in the form of a negative example, the rebellion at Meribah/Massah. 7bO that today you would listen (shama, see Deuteronomy 6:4-9) to the voice of the Lord! Verses 8-11 is a rare case where divine speech, spoken through a religious official, is quoted in psalms. It stands in stark contrast with other traditions that see the wilderness as ideal. 8Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness. The perspective on the wilderness generation is quite different in this psalm from, say, material influenced by the Deuteronomistic theologians or prophets. For them, the wilderness experience was a time of purification and (although problematic) closeness between the Israelites and Yahweh. The Mishnah saw it as a New Year psalm, a view from ancient tradition. It reveals Yahweh as creator and king who renews the divine covenant with the people. One might note the relationship with Psalm 81. This incident, one of several in which the Israelites contended with Yahweh during the period of the exodus/wilderness wandering, is in Exodus 17:1-7 and referred to several times thereafter as an example of Israelite stiff-neckedness (Numbers 20:13, 24; Deuteronomy 6:16, 9:22, 33:8; Psalm 81:7, 106:32). The incident itself, a miraculous flow of water from a rock in response to widespread complaints of thirst, was brief and innocuous compared to other wilderness rebellions. We might recall the rebellion of Korah in Numbers 16, or the apostasy of the Israelites at Baal-Peor in Numbers 25). However, the incident became (along with the Baal-Peor incident) emblematic of the worst of the collective character traits of Israel: stubbornness, obtuseness, ingratitude, fractiousness. Its prominence in the subsequent tradition is probably because the names Massah and Meribah both mean "testing" or "trial" in Hebrew. 9 When your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. What compounded the burden of the guilt of Israel at Meribah/Massah was that the Israelite ancestors rebelled despite having already seen the works of Yahweh on their behalf. Thus, it has theological significance that Jesus refused to test God in his wilderness temptation (Matthew 4:7), directly contrasting the faithfulness of Jesus with the faithlessness of the people of God in the wilderness. They let their doubts about God rule their hearts rather than putting their trust in him. 10 For forty years I loathed, a unique reference to this generation in the Old Testament and part of the priestly tradition and Ezekiel, that generation. For our ears today, the news that God did the loathing is astonishing news. We do not sing, “Our God is a loathing God …” The Lord loathed the whole generation in the wilderness. They were always complaining, even though God had given them evidence of loving concern and steadfast faithfulness. We are so accustomed to hearing that the Lord loves us unconditionally, that for Scripture to blurt out that God "loathed" an entire generation of people, just does not compute. Really? Could it be that the Lord loathes me? Could the Lord find me disgusting? Could the Lord be so irritated with me that the Lord would throw up holy hands in despair? Further, the Lord said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, a technical term, occurring especially in materials drawn from priestly sources, to describe religious apostasy. Only scoundrels would lead inhabitants of a town astray to worship other gods (Deuteronomy 13:13). Jehoram led the people of Judah astray by building altars in the high places (II Chronicles 21:11). Happiness comes to those who do not go astray after false gods (Psalm 40:4). The Lord spurns all those who go astray from the statutes (Psalm 119:118). The Lord will punish in order that the people will no longer go astray from the Lord (Ezekiel 14:11). Will they defile themselves and go astray like their ancestors did (Ezekiel 20:30)? The descendants of Zadok kept the charge of the Lord and did not go astray as did the Levites (Ezekiel 48:11). It can mean simply moral straying. Thus, the wicked go astray from birth (Psalm 58:3). While on the Holy Way, the people of God shall not go astray (Isaiah 35:8). Yet, the orientation of the usual connotation of the phrase is more specifically to departure from the Israelite cult, the source, in the biblical writings, of Israel's morals. In joining morals to cult, Psalm 95 presents, in the form of a temple entrance liturgy, a comprehensive theological statement of the belief Israel had about itself, its world, and Yahweh. Further, they do not regard my ways.” 11 Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest,” which refers to the Promised Land and the Temple. Its abrupt ending, the psalm stopping partially through the recitation of the magnalia Dei, suggests the process of transmission has lost the original conclusion.
Human beings may well have eliminated famine, outside of war zones of course. Some governments are so beastly in character that they conduct a constant war on their people that leads to starvation. Yet, most human beings can consume the suggested daily calories needed to support a moderately active life. The opportunity is present to create the conditions for a reasonably happy human life for most of the population of the earth.[5] To place a sharper point on it, famine today has its cause in human behavior rather than in nature. We seem to lack the good sense or judgment required to arrive at a morally better place. One may be brilliant in a chosen field of expertise but allow the simple instructions on a parking meter to cause defeat. We know certain foods are healthy, exercise prolongs life, and what makes for respectful and caring relationships. Yet, we lack the good judgment to live in such ways. We find it difficult to learn from our mistakes. Sometimes, we never do so. If humanity progressed morally … but it has not. Good and evil is not a matter of what nation in which one lives, one’s economic class, or one’s political commitments, but right through every human heart. If so, then we need to acknowledge that evil persons retain some good and within the best of human beings is a corner of evil.[6]“The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse — who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Every generation thinks it can do better than the previous one, and it likely will in some areas. However, the moral struggle continues. Sometimes, when we look at things morally, progress is acknowledging that we have taken a wrong turn, turning back to the place we have erred, and taking a different course.[7]
My temptation is to end as abruptly as does the psalm. Yet maybe we need to end this reflection by returning to the beginning of the psalm. It sings joyfully and loudly of the Lord as the rock of our salvation. It refers to the Lord as the one who created all that is and the Lord who has acted in the course of the history of the people of God. For Christians, that history includes the patriarchs, the people liberated through Moses, the people as guided by kings and challenged by prophets, and the revelation of grace, love, reconciliation, and redemption in Jesus Christ. God seems to simultaneously loath and love, but it seems as if love wins in the sense that God abandons neither humanity nor anything else God has created. God remains faithful and committed to the redemption of all that God has created – including me and you.
[1] This construction, a verb of motion functioning as an auxiliary (or simple interjection) plus the main-action verb, is found only here as the opening words of a psalm. (Psalm 134's "Come, bless the Lord," uses the demonstrative adjective/interjection hinneh instead of the imperative of the verb halak.) The construction is not unusual in prose sections of the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Genesis 11:3,4,7; 19:32, 21:18; 35:3, etc.), but it is less frequent in poetry than in prose; its usual effect, as here, is a slight intensification or focusing of the effect of the main verb. (See further on the varieties of this from Bruce K. Waltke and Michael O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990], 34.5.1.a, 574.)
[2] McCaw and Motyer point out in “Psalms,” in The New Bible Commentary: Revised, p. 512.
[3] John Sandel, a pastoral psychotherapist in Milford, Connecticut
[4] -Jerry Wilson, "The Thanksgiving story," Thanksgiving Traditions & History, wilstar.com/holidays.
[5] Tupy, Marian L. “How humanity won the war on famine.” HumanProgress, August 16, 2019, humanprogress.org. Retrieved August 30, 2019.
[6] Inspired by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Hegel.
[7] —C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 1, Chapter 5, in The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (Zondervan, 2007), 33.
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