Psalm 65 is a community thanksgiving.
Introduction
I present Psalm 65 as a community thanksgiving centered on God’s abundant grace, forgiveness, providential care, and creation’s joyful response. The strongest interpretive theme is the contrast between scarcity and abundance: the psalm’s imagery of rain, harvest, overflowing pastures, and divine provision becomes the basis for a theological reflection on trust, stewardship, generosity, and resistance to fear-driven scarcity thinking.
The occasion of the psalm may have been a drought or famine, with God answering the prayers of the country. Delight in the blessings of earthly life leads to a focus upon God. The psalm may have been sung during Sukkot the Feast of Tabernacles, which marks the end of the summer harvest and the beginning of the rainy season. Some scholars will say that the psalm is a composite of two originally independent hymns with possible interwoven glosses.[1] Yet, the canonical version succeeds on literary as well as theological grounds. The Psalm is part of what scholars call the Elohistic psalter, which extends from psalms 42—83. The psalm leads me to reflect upon the danger of believing in scarcity and the trust involved in believing in abundance.
Verse-by-verse study
The superscription is To the leader. A Psalm of David. A Song.
Psalm 65: 1-4 focus our attention on the gifts of grace centered in the house of God. The faith expressed here in both natural and revealed religion has its epicenter in Jerusalem. It celebrates God and the Temple, the place where one pays one’s vows. The psalmist introduces the theme of the Psalm immediately: 1 Praise is due to you, O God (elohim), for answering prayer, for forgiveness, and for deliverance, in Zion. We might think of Zion as the Vatican of Israelite religion. Zion receives mention in II Samuel 5:6-10=I Chronicles 11:4-9. It refers to the fortified crest of the hill between Tyropoeon and Kidron valleys. The Old Testament also referred to it as “the City of David.” Thus, I Kings 8:1 refers to the City of David, and then explains, “which is Zion.” The ark of the covenant, Israel's most sacred object, was brought up by David to the city of Zion and was later transferred to the temple built by David's son, Solomon, a relocation that accounts for the name Zion being extended to the entire temple precinct, which lay outside the original Zion. We find this usage of the term Zion especially in the psalms (e.g., 2:6; 48:2; 74:2; 84:7; 132:13, etc.). In time and in some writings, the name Zion referred to Jerusalem itself. And to you shall vows be performed.[2] The phrase is unique in the Old Testament. He is thankful he can pay his vow made possible by the bounteous harvest God has provided. The vow may have been to bring a special offering for a good harvest. We can see the strong theocentric focus. The use of this name for God tends to broaden the theological outlook beyond Israel. Some scholars think such an influence arises from the wisdom tradition.[3]What the people of God owe to God is praise. The psalmist addresses God: 2 O you who answer prayer! Here is the first reason we owe praise to God. To you all flesh shall come. The notion that all flesh shall come to Zion to worship reflects the universal outlook of wisdom circles, who saw in Israel's God attributes that applied not only to the covenant people but to all people (e.g., God's providential care). We find this idea elsewhere in the psalms. Even Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia know the Lord (87:4). Further, “all flesh” is an important reference within the psalter. The Lord gives food to all flesh because the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever (136:25). All flesh will bless the holy name of the Lord forever (145:21). We also find references to “all flesh” outside the psalter. All flesh is like the temporary quality of grass and flowers (Isaiah 40:6). All flesh will know the Lord, who is the Savior and Redeemer of Israel, when the Lord judges their oppressors (Isaiah 49:26). All flesh shall come to worship the Lord (Isaiah 66:23). The Lord is the God of all flesh (Jeremiah 32:27). All flesh shall see the judgment upon the Negeb by fire (Ezekiel 20:48). All flesh shall see the judgment of the Lord by sword (Ezekiel 21:5) the survivors of all nations will make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem on sukkot (Zechariah 14:17). 3 When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions. Here is the second reason we owe praise to God. Thought of God’s goodness leads to the recognition of the sinfulness of humanity. Divine forgiveness of sin is the precondition for winter rains and an abundant harvest. Thus, if they obey the commands and serve the Lord with all their heart, they will receive rain at the proper time and abundant harvest, but if they do not, then the Lord will shut up the heavens (Deuteronomy 11:13-17). People are incapable of getting rid of their sin through their own effort. The point here is that our past does not determine the choices we make today. Our past does not determine our destiny. Forgiveness of sin is prerequisite for a relationship with God. Even in our personal lives, a relationship cannot move toward something good if the aggrieved party does not extend forgiveness. Further, if the one asking for forgiveness has no intention of repentance, has the person even asked for forgiveness? If the person has no intention of change, asking for forgiveness becomes a cover for living life with no consequences or worse to have an abusive relationship. It takes faith, hope, and love to extend forgiveness. Suppose a nation has at its founding a birth defect. Let us call it slavery and racism. The aggrieved party, in this case, those of African descent, cannot have a rewarding and fulfilling experience of the nation without extending forgiveness. In the same way, of course, the nation needs to repent of its sin and correct the birth defect. One cannot truly repent without faith, hope, and love. As America keeps mending its flaws in this regard, it can become a Promised Land, a bright and shining city on a hill, for all people. The combination of repentance by the wrongdoer and forgiveness from the aggrieved party is essential for the relationship to move forward. The Psalm then pronounces beatitude. 4 Happy are those whom you choose and bring near to live in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple. Time spent in the temple has created inward awareness of the communion with God and the assurance of forgiveness. Such blessings may refer to general prosperity or the rain God will send. It may also refer to the sacrificial meal at the Temple.
Psalm 65: 5-8 are a hymn to the God of the world and divine salvation in creation and history. It expresses gratitude for the providential care of God for Israel and for all creation. The hymn of the congregation praises God for the saving history reflected in the history of Israel. The hope for adequate rainfall is couched in descriptions of God as the supreme power of the world, especially over the cosmic water. 5 By awesome deeds at creation and achieving victory over the forces of primeval chaos, you answer us (Israel) with deliverance, O God of our salvation; you are the hope (mivtach, a word that occurs in exilic and post-exilic writings) of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas. Here is the third reason to offer praise to God. Here is another unique phrase in the Old Testament. It reflects the cosmopolitan religious outlook of the wisdom tradition. Immediately after expressing the chosen quality of Israel in verse 4, the psalm extends the mercy of God to all the earth. The basis for such trust is both the fear and the love of God. In verses 6-7, this focus helps the poet see that creation is a work of God. 6 By your strength you established the mountains; you are girded with might. Here is the fourth reason to offer God praise. God receives praise for the power shown over the sources of water and benevolence in providing water for irrigation. 7 You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples. 8 Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs; you make the gateways of the morning, the conduit that brings rain to the earth, as in Job 38:25, and associated with the Temple with its food and drink from the refreshing stream (Psalm 36:8), and the evening shout for joy, because of the appearance of God. Everywhere the author turns he sees signs of the work of God. The point here is the joyful response of nonhuman creation to the appearing of God. We find the idea elsewhere. The floods clap their hands, and the hills sing for joy (Psalm 98:8). Wilderness and dry land shall be glad, desert shall rejoice upon seeing the glory and majesty of the Lord our God (Isaiah 35:1-2, 6). The mountains and hills shall sing, and trees shall clap their hands (Isaiah 55:12).
Psalm 65: 9-13 concern the blessing of fertility with which God crowns the year. The potentially destructive cosmic water forces are tamed by God and become the gentle rain and run-off that irrigates the earth, providing vegetation and flocks with their nourishment. All creatures who receive this nourishment join humanity in the praise of the benevolent God. Heaven and earth, as well as the seas all that is in them will offer praise to the Lord (Psalm 69:34), let heaven and earth, seas, fields, and forest, and all that is in them offer praise (Psalm 96:11-12), and let the sea, world, floods, and hills express joy (Psalm 98:7-8). In verses 9-11, we now see the reason for the congregational gathering for thanksgiving. The parched land has now become rich in fruit because the rain has come. Images of rain-fed agriculture close the psalm. It closes with some unique rural images that carry with them a certain charm. We might think of a harvest festival. The psalm closes with joyful gratitude for such rich abundance. It closes with the fifth reason to offer God praise, that of the providential care of God. Some scholars think this shift suggests that this section was originally a separate psalm. In its present context, it suggests thanksgiving for answered prayer. 9 You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water. Part of the Ugaritic Baal epic (1300s BC) says that abode of El is at the source of the two rivers, amid the fountains of the deep. The mountain of El was the source of this essential water source.[4]Psalm 46:4 refers to the streams that make glad the city of God. It may refer to a mythological source of blessing inspired by the existence of the Gihon spring, the principal source of water for Jerusalem. It refers to one of the four branches of the primordial river in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:13). Revelation 22:1 refers to the river of the water of life that flows from the abode of God. We can see a shared constellation of images about a divinely appointed, life-giving water source upon which the earth and its inhabitants depend. Israelite farmers relied upon seasonal rains and violent storms that came from the Mediterranean Sea. You provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. 10 You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. 11 You crown the year with your bounty;your wagon tracks overflow with richness. In verses 12-13, the poet sees the tracks of God in nature, as all around comes to life. We need to spend more time meditating upon the fashion show God presents. 12 The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, 13 the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, and as in verse 8, they shout and sing together for joy. Such a picture of the harvest becomes eschatological. Thus, the time is surely coming when the one who plows will overtake the one who reaps, the treader of grapes will overtake the one who sows, mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills will be full of it (Amos 9:13). Further, in that day, mountains shall drip sweet wine, the hills will flow with milk and the stream beds of Judah shall flow with water, and a fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord (Joel 3:18).
Application
While times of scarcity may come, this psalm affirms abundance. When we worry about the scarcity of the earth, we descend into the darkness of self-centered and fearful people. We become like the scientist in Inferno by Dan Brown, who plots to save humanity by killing off millions of people to reduce the population. Such an idea is dangerous, of course. Malthus predicted in 1798 that the world be out of food by 1890 due to population growth. He recommended killing off the have-nots in the world to ensure there was enough for the rich. His ideas underpinned the theories of eugenics in the early 1900s. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, still revered by many, accepted the theory. Of course, the Nazis infamously did so as well. Where such theory prevailed, marriage restriction, segregation, compulsory sterilization, forced abortion, and genocide tended to follow.[5] Belief in scarcity can lead fearful people to do horrendous things. As economist Thomas Sowell wisely advised, while the first lesson of economics is that there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it, the first lesson of politics is to disregard it. Our human nature regards scarcity as the law of life. We believe that something we need is in short supply. We hoard, we struggle for power, we become jealous, because we believe in scarcity and believe life will shortchange us of what we need. The tragic irony is that the assumption of scarcity will create the scarcity we have feared.[6] Trusting that the earth provides resources for life on this planet is basic to a life of faith, hope, and love. It opens us up to new possibilities of where we may discover such resources. It challenges us to be good stewards of the earth. Such trust is at least hint of our reliance upon God, who made us and made the world. Of course, we continue to protect the resources the earth provides and develop a spirit of generosity, confident the earth provides the resources we will all need. In fact, the Bible begins with a song of praise for God's generosity in the very first chapter of Genesis, which tells us of how well God has ordered the world, repeatedly declaring the goodness of what God has made. God blesses vegetation, animals, and humanity, meaning that God endows living things with vitality. Genesis offers us a beautiful vision of abundant life, but so often we miss it. Instead, we look around us and see scarcity. We become anxious. Out of our anxiety we become fearful people. We fail to see the overflowing goodness of the creator.[7] Psalm 65 does not lose sight of this, seeing the wagon tracks overflowing with richness and the pastures overflowing the wilderness (verses 11-12). The earth overflows with richness in a way that challenges us to protect and to share.
[1] (see C. A. Briggs, The Book of Psalms [The International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1907], v. 2, p. 80)
[2] The Hebrew of the second word, as pointed, is nonsensical, saying, literally, "To you is silence," with the feminine singular noun dumiayyah meaning "silence" or "resignation." The Septuagint reads prepei, "befits," which requires reading the Hebrew as domeh, "resembling," as the editors of BHS suggest (and as JPS renders).
[3] While Israel and its Yahwistic religion remain central even in the Elohistic psalter, a slight shift in emphasis coaxes the hearer's attention toward seeing that faith in the broader context of the geopolitical and religious world of which Israel was a part. This shift in emphasis is usually attributed by scholars to the influence of the wisdom tradition in ancient Israel, which was more cosmopolitan in its religious outlook than classical Yahwism tended to be (as found, for example, in the book of Deuteronomy and in much prophetic literature). This wisdom tradition, while ancient in itself, appears to have left its deepest and most lasting impact on biblical literature toward the latter stages of the canonical process. Psalm 65, therefore, in its current form, is likely to have come from a later stage of the Psalter's development.
[4] (see Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973], 36-37).
[5] Laurence O'Bryan, "The dangerous lie in Dan Brown's Inferno," Laurence O'Bryan Website, February 21, 2014, lpobryan.com.
[6] Parker Palmer, "There Is a Season," in Paul Loeb, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times (Basic Books, 2014), 157.
[7] Brueggemann, Walter. "The liturgy of abundance, the myth of scarcity." Christian Century, March 24-31, l999, christiancentury.org.
