A Psalm for Sunday, Psalm 81, verses 1 to 7, remember the deliverance of God

 

Psalm 81:1 ¶  «To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm of Asaph.» Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. 2  Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery. 3  Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day. 4  For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob. 5  This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of Egypt: where I heard a language that I understood not. 6  I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots. 7  Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah.

 

John Gill wrote that Gittith, a musical instrument taken from the town of Gath. This Psalm, it is said, was written as a commemoration of Exodus in particular to be sung at solemn occasions.

 

God was the strength of Israel, as He is the Christian’s strength. We should rejoice in Him always.

 

Leviticus 23:24  Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation.

 

Although there are many different opinions on verse 5 perhaps this has to do with the fact that people had not heard God speak like He did to the Hebrews before in a new written language which I discussed in Exodus and through fire and the sound of a trumpet and many other ways. The languages that God used to lead the Hebrews was something unknown before that time.

 

He gave them their alphabet some have written. When Moses came down the mountain with the Ten Commandments that may be the beginning of the alphabet that we use, the precursor to it. God created the writing that contrasted with the pictograms of hieroglyphics and cuneiform writing that dominated the ancient world. From China, Sumeria, and Egypt to the civilizations of the ancient Americas pictures were used to convey ideas and history and as representations of things worshipped. The basic units of writing, the letters, become symbols for ideas rather than pictures representing things to be worshipped as idols. ‘A’, instead of a symbol for a bull or an ox, is Aleph in Hebrew and Alpha in Greek, and ‘A’ for modern purposes. A good study for this is Marc A. Ouaknin’s Mysteries of the Alphabet. This could be part of God drawing a people out of a world of idolatrous pictures to be adored and turning their writing into ideas to be expressed by symbols.

Exodus 20:18 ¶  And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 19  And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. 20  And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. 21  And the people stood afar off, and

Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

 

But God’s Law, given to Moses, was also a new language which while men may have known God’s standard from the beginning as Genesis and Job seem to suggest and we have discussed it was codified and “written in stone”. See my commentaries on Genesis and Job.

 

Pots in this context were the baskets where the bricks were put that the Hebrews had to make that they were forced to carry. For Meribah see;

 

Exodus 17:4  And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me. 5  And the LORD said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go. 6  Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7  And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not?