Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 65:11
Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.
11. Thou crownest &c.] Thou hast crowned the year of thy goodness, added fresh beauty and perfection to a year already marked by special bounty, and thy paths drop fatness, rich blessings fall as Thou traversest the land, an allusion probably to an unusually copious fall of the ‘latter rain,’ which was more uncertain than the early rain, and was most anxiously looked for as a special blessing (Job 29:23; Pro 16:15; Jer 3:3; Zec 10:1).
P.B.V. clouds (Great Bible, not Coverdale, who has fotesteppes) seems to be intended as an explanation of paths. Cp. Nah 1:3.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Thou crownest the year with thy goodness – Margin, the year of thy goodness. The Hebrew is literally the year of thy goodness – meaning a year remarkable for the manifestation of kindness; or a year of abundant productions. But the Hebrew will admit of the other construction, meaning that God crowns or adorns the year, as it revolves, with his goodness; or that the harvests, the fruits, the flowers of the year are, as it were, a crown set on the head of the year. The Septuagint renders it, Thou wilt bless the crown of the year of thy goodness. DeWette renders it, Thou crownest the year with thy blessing. Luther, Thou crownest the year with good. On the whole, the most probable meaning is that expressed in our common version, referring to the beauty and the abundant productions of the year as if they were a crown on its head. The seasons are often personified, and the year is here represented as a beautiful female, perhaps, walking forward with a diadem on her brow.
And thy paths drop fatness – That is, fertility; or, Fertility attends thy goings. The word rendered drop, means properly to distil; to let fall gently, as the rain or the dew falls to the earth; and the idea is, that whereever God goes, marching through the earth, fertility, beauty, abundance seems to distil or to fall gently along his path. God, in the advancing seasons, passes along through the earth, and rich abundance springs up wherever he goes.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 65:11
Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness: and Thy paths drop fatness.
Thanksgiving and prayer
Nothing can be more right than that Christian people should publicly render thanksgiving to the God of the harvest. And let there be thankofferings likewise.
I. Crowning mercies calling for crowning gratitude. All the year round God is richly blessing us; both when we sleep and when we work, His mercy waits upon us.
1. If we begin with the blessings of the nether springs, the joyous days of harvest are a special season of favour. The psalmist tells us that the harvest is the crowning of the year. What would it have been for us as a nat:on had there been a total failure of the crops? Or even a partial scarcity. We none of us can fully estimate the amount of happiness conferred by a luxuriant yield. How shall we give praise? By inward gratitude; by words of thanksgiving in psalms and hymns; and by our gifts.
2. And there have been heavenly harvests. In ancient days there was Pentecost. And we have had revivals where spiritual life has been awakened and quickened. How the Lord has blessed us in this respect. As for conversions, has not the Lord been pleased to give them to us as constantly as the sun rises in his place? Scarce a sermon without the benediction of the Most High. We must not forget this. And we are looking for greater things still–the conversion of the whole world to God.
II. Paths of fatness should be ways of duty. The paths of war, how terrible are they, but the paths of God–they drop fatness. It is so in providence. Do but trust the Lord. Yet more in things spiritual. In the use of the means of grace. If you come to them desiring to meet with Jesus, you shall do so, and you shall find our text true. And so is it with the path of prayer, and of communion, and of faith. Let the Lord come into our congregations by His Spirit, then would His paths drop fatness. This is what we want: let us pray for it.
III. Suggestions as to our duty. Yield yourselves to Christ. What a harvest for you that would be. Serve Him more. As Churches let us pray more. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The first Sabbath in the New Year
Let us note that goodness of God–
I. As to our country.
II. As to our families.
III. As to our personal experience.
IV. As to the universal Church. (R. Watson.)
Crowning blessings ascribed to God
I shall use our text not in reference to the outside world and to the husbandry of man, but we shall see how true it is within the Church, which is the husbandry of God.
I. The Divine goodness ordered. Thou crownest the year, etc. Now, praise must be for God alone: not for any man, however helpful to your souls he may have been. And in this spirit of praise every action of the Church ought to be performed. We shall be helped to praise by remembering how God has answered our prayers; and this in spite of our sins; and what sacred privileges He has admitted us to.
II. The encircling blessing of the Divine goodness is to be conferred. Thou crownest the year, etc. See it in the history of our own Church.
III. And this, also, is of God. Again, we look back on the same history for these last twenty-five years, and we see the goodness of God everywhere. In conversions, in consistent character maintained, in triumphant departures to heaven. Let more come to Him now. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The crown of the year–A harvest sermon
I. How the harvest, the crown of the year, displays the great goodness of our God. For think–
1. Of the perils that beset the harvest.
2. How God demands mans co-operation, yet reserves to Himself the sole efficiency.
3. The manner of conducting the whole to a successful issue–so slow, still, imperceptible, and yet so all at once.
4. Its fulfilment of the ancient promise.
5. The universality of the blessing.
II. What return is due from us to God? Praise, for–
1. We celebrate the bestowment of forfeited blessings.
2. Harvest blessings serve purposes higher than themselves. They minister to life, and that may lead to salvation.
3. They are pledges of yet greater blessings which God will give. (Isaac Vaughan.)
Thoughts on the harvest
I. Lively gratitude. The ravages of famine have been averted, suspense has been relieved, anxious forebodings dissipated, and a rich recompense has crowned the husbandmans toil. Surely a world so full of Gods goodness should be vocal with His praise.
II. Adoring wonder. Instead of assuming a stolid indifference and unconcern, as many do, or taking the laws of nature and arrangements of Providence as things of course, in presence of processes whose operation, repeated from year to year, testifies to a Power before which all the achievements of human skill are utterly insignificant, let us go through life finding each day new cause for intelligent wonder and admiration, and fresh reason for declaring to all around the wondrous works of God. Nor, while cherishing feelings of adoring wonder in contemplating the wonders of nature and of Providence, ought we to forget the more amazing things in Gods character and in Gods law, in the person and work of Him who is Wonderful, in the operations of the Holy Spirit on the hearts and lives of men.
III. Humble dependence. And, while cherishing feelings of humble dependence for the bounties of Providence, let us be daily constrained to acknowledge ourselves debtors to Divine grace.
IV. Restful confidence. Men may alter their intentions or be defeated in their purposes; their promises are precarious, being dependent upon many contingencies; but the laws of nature reflect the immutability of their Author. As the seasons revolve fresh proof is afforded of Gods faithfulness which anew should strengthen confidence and call forth praise. After we have done our part we can repose our faith in the constancy of nature and experience the satisfaction and comfort which proceed from committing the result to Him who giveth the increase. Besides, our confidence is based not only on the high attributes of a God whose nature is unchangeable, and on the covenant into which God was pleased to enter with Noah and his seed, but specially on the securities of that covenant which cannot be broken into which God has entered with Jesus as our representative and Saviour. We may well trust in the Lord.
V. Enlarged benevolence. The worlds harvests are for the worlds inhabitants. We are all children of the common Father, members of the same great family, and if some perish from hunger or are stinted in their supply of bread, this is due, not to want of the precious commodity in the world, but to the thoughtlessness and improvidence of men. Let us imitate the Divine example by devoting of the gifts of His bounty as He may prosper us for the relief and help of those whose necessities are greater than our own, and who have, therefore, a claim on our sympathy and assistance. Freely ye have received, freely give. (T. B. Johnstone, D. D.)
Gods crowning of the year
God is from everlasting to everlasting, and there are no limits of days, or seasons, or years, in His boundless existence. The diurnal rotation of our earth on its axis never glooms Him in shadows; nor does its circuit round the sun affect Him by the successive alternations of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. And yet the guiding hand of God is ever present with all His works, moulding and fashioning them to sublimer ends. God has been working through all eternity, and Gods labour is always being crowned with Gods harvest. By all the slow processes of Divine growth, by all the convulsions of internal elements and external commotions, God has perfected, and beautified, and crowned our world with His goodness. We have reached the season when we should thank Him for the harvest crown that He has placed upon our year. We should realize our dependence on the harvest, and then we should feel more grateful for the exquisite harvest weather with which He has blessed our year. In former times, before the means of distributing were so greatly multiplied, each country had to subsist largely on its own harvest. Then drought was followed by famine, and multitudes perished of hunger, blow, we are so linked with other people in interdependence that we share in their harvests and they in the fruits of our labours, and the powers of carrying by land and sea are so complete that the worlds harvests are for the worlds inhabitants. To-day, then, we thank Almighty God for crowning the great worlds industry with the great worlds harvest. God is always crowning the year with His goodness. He crowns the ermined winter with a diadem of snow. He decks the spring like a bride, clothed in emerald and wreathed with lilies. He floods the summer with light and heat, and fills it with sweet scents and sweeter songs. He poises the sun and smites the autumn into gold, and crowns it with yellow harvests and rosy fruit. But God not only crowns the harvest as a whole with His goodness. He crowns it in all its parts, and in all its stages, in early spring He silvers the fields with daisies, or makes them gleam like a cloth of gold with yellow buttercups. And the crowns that God bestows with such regal bounty are as lovely in form as they are exquisite in colour. As we study the tiniest flower that lifts to heaven its chalice of flame, we see with what marvellous wisdom and beauty God decks the little things which He has caused to grow. But when we lift our minds from the unit to the whole, we see God all the world round crowning the year. Not only every tree in its grace and beauty, but every forest in which it waves. Not only the little flowers in our gardens and in our fields, but every growth in garden, field, or prairies throughout the world. Gods crowns are placed on the results of labour. God works and man works, and the Divine crown adorns the outcome of their efforts. The laws of nature and the processes of grace run so closely on parallel lines that they have been considered by some identical. And just as God has crowned with glory the prodigious work of redemption, so He crowns with salvation the faith that worketh by love. (W. Wright, D. D.)
The goodness of God
To teach man of God is Natures greatest work. She tells of His attributes, the nightly panorama of the starry heavens speaks His power, the tiny floweret His skill. But if there is one chord in Natures song sung sweeter than the rest it is the goodness of God.
I. Gods goodness is manifested in the harvest. Certain seasons speak to us and teach us lessons; and it is necessary, in the hurry and scurry of modern civilization, that something should remind us of the hereafter, or we might think, with the secularist, that this life only demands our attention. And in contemplating the harvest we are led to think of the goodness of God. The harvest is, as it were, the crowning point of Gods goodness. Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness. As if the psalmist would say that the goodness of God in preparing the ground and in blessing the springing of the seed reached its highest manifestation in the ingathering of the earths increase. Gods promise to Noah still stands secure, although our friends the farmers, with their usual characteristic, have prophesied with lugubrious faces the failure of the harvest. The goodness of God is further exhibited in the bountiful provision which He has made for all His creatures. So ample is it that even birds know how to get their food. He provides for man physically, intellectually, and spiritually. In the physical world mans wants are supplied, both for food and clothing, from the lower order of animals and from plants. In the intellectual sphere man finds food for his intellect in the realms of agriculture, astronomy, physics and metaphysics, arts and sciences, and in the more humble, and yet, perhaps, more useful occupations of the home life. But does Gods goodness stop here? Oh, no. God has provided in His Word for all mans requirements in the spiritual world.
II. Note some characteristics of Gods goodness. It is continuous. The goodness of the Lord endureth continually. Gods goodness is satisfying. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house. Nothing short of God and His goodness can satisfy the souls deep longings. None but Christ can satisfy. We cannot understand the souls yearnings, but we know they are there. But, says somebody, Gods goodness does not satisfy me. Then be assured that you are out of harmony with goodness and with God. A man who has no soul for the beautiful will spend a miserable half-hour if taken to the Royal Academy. One with no soul for music can see no beauty in the production of the Elijah. Gods goodness is universal. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. Why, then, so much misery and starvation in our streets? Because man has placed himself outside the pale of Gods goodness by sin. If we could dig clown deep into the very cause of misery, we should find this true.
III. Gods goodness demands much of us. What are we going to give Him? An adequate return? We cannot. At best we can but pay a few shillings in the pound. Shall we give Him our intellect, to think for Him, and use the best means of building up His kingdom? Shall we give Him our possessions, our riches, our wealth, to be used in His service? Shall we give Him our hearts, that He may rule and reign as Lord of every motion there? Shall we give Him our life–aye, and before the best of it is gone? (H. M. Draper.)
Great Britains present joys and hopes
I. Every year is crowned with Gods goodness.
1. The annual revolutions of the heavenly bodies, and the benefit we receive by their light and influences, in the several seasons of the year.
2. The annual fruits and products of the earth, grass for the cattle, and herbs for the service of men, with these the earth is every year enriched for use; as well as beautified and adorned for show. The harvest is the crown of every year, and the great influence of Gods goodness to an evil and unthankful world.
II. Some years are, in a special manner, crowned with the goodness of God more than other years.
1. God and His providence must be owned in all the blessings of the year. Whatever has been or is our honour, our joy, our hope, comes from Gods hand, and He must have the praise of it.
2. The goodness of God must in a particular manner be acknowledged, as that in which all our springs are, and from which all our streams flow.
3. These blessings which flow from the goodness of God have crowned this year; He in them has crowned it. That word shall lead us into the detail of those favours, which we are this day to take notice of, with thankfulness, to the glory of God. A crown signifies three things, and each will be of use to us.
(1) It dignifies and adorns.
(2) It surrounds and encloses. And–
(3) It finishes and completes.
And accordingly this year has been dignified, surrounded, and finished with the blessings of Gods goodness.
III. Application.
1. Has God thus crowned the year? Let us cast all the crowns of it at His feet, by our humble, grateful acknowledgments of His infinite wisdom, power, and mercy. What we have the joy of, let God have the praise of.
2. Has God thus crowned the year? Let not us then profane our crown, nor lay our honour in the dust, by our unworthy walking. Let the goodness of God lead us to repentance, and engage us all to reform our lives and families, to be more watchful against sin, and to abound more in the service of God, and in everything that is virtuous and praiseworthy.
3. Let Gods goodness to us engage, and increase, our goodness to one another: it is justly expected, that they who obtain mercy should show mercy, and so reflect the rays of the Divine goodness upon all about them; being herein followers of God as dear children; followers of Him that is good, in His goodness. (M. Henry.)
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Psa 66:1-20
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 11. Thou crownest the year] A full and plentiful harvest is the crown of the year; and this springs from the unmerited goodness of God. This is the diadem of the earth; ittarta, Thou encirclest, as with a diadem. A most elegant expression, to show the progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, producing the seasons, and giving a sufficiency of light and heat alternately to all places on the surface of the globe, by its north and south declination (amounting to 23 28′ at the solstices) on each side of the equator. A more beautiful image could not have been chosen; and the very appearance of the space termed the zodiac on a celestial globe, shows with what propriety the idea of a circle or diadem was conceived by this inimitable poet.
Thy paths drop fatness.] magaleycha, “thy orbits.” The various planets, which all have their revolutions within the zodiacal space, are represented as contributing their part to the general fructification of the year. Or perhaps the solar revolution through the twelve signs, dividing the year into twelve parts or months, may be here intended; the rains of November and February, the frosts and snows of December and January, being as necessary for the fructification of the soil, as the gentle showers of spring, the warmth of summer, and the heat and drought of autumn. The earth’s diurnal rotation on its axis, its annual revolution in its orbit, and the moon’s course in accompanying the earth, are all wheels or orbits of God, which drop fatness, or produce fertility in the earth.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thou, by thy powerful goodness, dost enrich and adorn all the seasons of the year with their proper fruits and blessings.
Thy paths; the clouds, upon which God is frequently said to walk or ride, as Job 36:28; 38:26,27; Psa 104:3; Nah 1:3; which sense is favoured by the next verse, where these paths are said to drop, &c.
Drop fatness; make the earth fat and fruitful.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
11. thy pathsways ofprovidence (Psa 25:4; Psa 25:10).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Thou crownest the year with thy goodness,…. The whole circling year, from one end of it to the other; particularly that season of it when the harvest is gathered in; the seed being sown, the earth watered, the springing of it blessed, and the corn brought to perfection, the year is crowned with a plentiful harvest: this may denote the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of the redeemed, the whole Gospel dispensation, Isa 61:2; in certain seasons and periods of which there have been great gatherings of souls to Christ; at the first of it multitudes were converted in Judea, and in the Gentile world, which were the first fruits of the Spirit; and in all ages there have been more or less instances of this kind; and in the latter day there will be a large harvest, when the Jews will be converted, and the fulness of the Gentiles brought in;
and thy paths drop fatness; the heavens, as Jarchi interprets it; or the clouds, as Kimchi; which are the chariots and horses of God, in which he rides, and are the dust of his feet, Ps 104:3 Na 1:3; and these drop down rain upon the earth, and make it fat and flourishing; and may mystically design the administration of the Gospel, and the administration of ordinances; which are the paths in which the Lord goes forth to his people, and directs them to walk in, and in which he meets them with a fulness of blessings, and satisfies them as with marrow and fatness.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
11 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness (461) Some read — Thou crownest the year of thy goodness; as if the Psalmist meant that the fertile year had a peculiar glory attached to it, and were crowned, so to speak, by God. Thus, if there was a more abundant crop or vintage than usual, this would be the crown of the year. And it must be granted that God does not bless every year alike. Still there is none but what is crowned with some measure of excellency; and for that reason it would seem best to retain the simpler rendering of the words, and view them as meaning that the Divine goodness is apparent in the annual returns of the season. The Psalmist further explains what he intended, when he adds, that the paths of God dropped fatness, — using this as a metaphorical term for the clouds, upon which God rideth, as upon chariots, as we read in Psa 104:3 (462) The earth derives its fruitfulness from the sap or moisture; this comes from the rain, and the rain from the clouds. With a singular gracefulness of expression, these are therefore represented as dropping fatness, and this because they are the paths or vehicles of God; as if he had said, that, wherever the Deity walked there flowed down from his feet fruits in endless variety and abundance. He amplifies this goodness of God, by adding, that his fatness drops even upon the wilder and more uncultivated districts. The wilderness is not to be taken here for the absolute waste where nothing grows, but for such places as are not so well cultivated, where there are few inhabitants, and where, notwithstanding, the Divine goodness is even more illustrated than elsewhere in dropping down fatness upon the tops of the mountains. (463) Notice is next taken of the valleys and level grounds, to show that there is no part of the earth overlooked by God, and that the riches of his liberality extend over all the world. The variety of its manifestation is commended when it is added, that the valleys and lower grounds are clothed with flocks, (464) as well as with corn. He represents inanimate things as rejoicing, which may be said of them in a certain sense, as when we speak of the fields smiling, when they refresh our eye with their beauty. It may seem strange, that he should first tell us, that they shout for joy, and then add the feebler expression, that they sing; interposing, too, the intensative particle, אף, aph, they shout for joy, yea, they also sing The verb, however, admits of being taken in the future tense, they shall sing, and this denotes a continuation of joy, that they would rejoice, not only one year, but through the endless succession of the seasons. I may add, what is well known, that in Hebrew the order of expression is frequently inverted in this way.
(461) This, say some, was probably the year which followed the three years of famine, after Absalom’s rebellion.
(462) Some have imagined that instead of paths we should render cloud; but the former reading is more poetical. The original word מעגלך, paths, is derived from עגל, round, circular, smooth, because paths are made by cart-wheels turning round upon them. Accordingly, Horsley renders it, “thy chariot-wheels,” and French and Skinner, “the tracts of thy chariot-wheels.” God is here represented as driving round the earth, and from the clouds the paths of his chariot everywhere scattering blessings upon mankind. This is an instance of the bold and sublime imagery for which the Hebrew poetry is so remarkably distinguished. God is elsewhere described as riding on the clouds during a storm of rain or thunder, Psa 18:9. Some read, “thy orbits,” and understand all the circling seasons of the year, as ruled by the courses of the heavenly bodies.
(463) “By desert or wilderness,” observes Dr Shaw, “the reader is not always to understand a country altogether barren and unfruitful, but such only as is rarely or never sown or cultivated; which, though it yields no crops of corn or fruit, yet affords herbage, more or less, for the grazing of cattle, with fountains or rills of water, though more sparingly interspersed than in other places.”
(464) The phrase, “the pastures are clothed with flocks,” cannot be regarded as the vulgar language of poetry. It appears peculiarly beautiful and appropriate, when we consider the numerous flocks which whitened the plains of Syria and Canaan. In the Eastern countries, sheep are much more prolific than with us, and they derive their name from their great fruitfulness; bringing forth, as they are said to do, “thousands and ten thousands in their streets,” Psa 144:13. They, therefore, formed no mean part of the wealth of the East.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(11) Thou crownest.Better, hast crowned. We generally connect the idea of completion with this metaphor, but the original thought in the Hebrew word, as in the Greek , is probably to encompass. Comp. the Latin corono in Lucretius, 2:802
Sylva coronat aquas ingens nemus omne.
All the circle of the golden year had been attended by Divine goodness. The meaning seems to be that God had made a year which was naturally prosperous still more abundant.
Paths.The root from which the Hebrew word is formed means to roll, or revolve, and it often means the track made by a wheel. This idea may be present since God is often represented in Hebrew poetry as riding on a chariot of clouds, generally with the association of wrath and destruction (Psa. 18:10; Psa. 68:4), but here, with the thought of plenty and peace following on His track, as in the Latin poet
Te fugiunt venti, te nubila cli
Adventumque tuum, tibi suaves ddala tellus
Submittit flores, tibi rident quora ponti
Placatumque ridet diffuso lumine clum.
LUCRETIUS, i. 6.
But it is more natural to give the word the meaning revolutions, and to think of the blessings brought by the seasons as they roll.
Fatness.A cognate accusative to the word drop used absolutely in the next verse. (Comp. Pro. 3:20.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
11. Crownest the year From the sprouting (Psa 65:10) to the harvest, the year is honoured, distinguished, by God’s blessing. The crowning, as with a chaplet, is at once a finishing act and a token of honour, and completes the cycle of blessings on the year.
Thy paths fatness God’s “paths” are his ways, or modes of procedure, and whether in nature, moral government, or redemption, his footsteps, or, as the word literally means, the tracks of his chariot, are rich in blessings of wisdom, power, and grace. Here his way is in nature, with its lesson of providence to man and all living creatures. “He maketh the clouds his chariot,” (Psa 104:3,) which along their pathway distil “upon the pastures of the wilderness,” and “the little hills” are girded with joy.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 65:11 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.
Ver. 11. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness ] While each month produceth its several fruits or commodities; so that the whole is, as it were, a crown royal; but especially a year of extraordinary plenty, such as was the last of Queen Mary, when wheat was sold for five shillings a quarter, malt for four shillings and eightpence, and a bushel of rye for fourpence (Mr Clark’s Martyrol.).
Thy paths drop
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Crowning of the Year
Thou crownest the year with thy goodness;
And thy paths drop fatness.Psa 65:11.
In the midst of great political convulsions, of a shaking of nations and kingdoms, Jehovah had manifested His goodness to His people by sending down a blessing upon their flocks and their fields. The folds were full of sheep, the valleys stood so thick with corn that they laughed and sang; the garners were filled with all manner of store. Peace had been given to Zion as well as plenty. A year of blessing, temporal and spiritual, had been crowned by a secure provision against the drought and famine which had at one time threatened the chosen people.
I
Thou hast set a crown upon the year of thy goodness. Such is the literal rendering of the text. God is represented as setting the crown of completeness and perfection upon a long process. In the previous verses we have a graphic picture of how the grain is prepared. We see the plough at work, scooping out furrows and turning up ridges by one and the same process: and the Divine Co-operator dealing with both according to need and capacity. The furrows are naturally receptive of the streams which flow in abundance from those upper and invisible channels of God which are full of water; and what they thus receive, they hold and convey to the roots of the young plants. The turned-up ridges need to be settled down and closed well in upon the precious seed which they have received. The same rain that does the one does the other: fills the furrows and settles the ridges. Divine agriculture is economic of means, various in adaptations. But soon the surface becomes encrusted, and might imprison the tender blade, did not the gentler after-showers with their myriad drops come to soften the soil and make it easily permeable. And so, as eyes of wonder look on, and discreet judgment calculates how many dangers have been passed as the green crop carpets the earth, devotion exclaims, The sprouting thereof thou dost bless.
God crowns the world of men as well as the world of nature. Human life and character and experience have their supreme culminating moments. Love comes to crown the solitary life. Success comes to crown legitimate ambitionnot forgetting that there may be a true success in honourable failure. Influence comes to crown character. Friendship comes to crown the longings of the heart. Trust and confidence and admiration come to crown the life lived in honest toil, and with a single eye to the common welfare. But the culmination is a process: the crown is sometimes long deferred. It is deferred in nature, yet experience has taught us to expect it. It looks as if nothing were being done during the dreary, sterile months of winter. The earth seems to be dead, and God appears to have withdrawn. Yet if our hearing were acute enough, we might lay our ear to the ground in December and hear the pulse still beating in that mighty bosom, and by and by we shall behold again the riotous life of spring. We must not despond when there is a winter season in our mental growth, in our spiritual experience, in our church life. In these higher regions, the crown is often long withheld. But if a man is all the time reading, observing, studying, thinking, though there be no immediate visible result, there will come a moment of rapturous emancipation when he realizes that cold fetters, as it were, have fallen from his brain, and left him free to enter upon a richer and riper life of understanding. God has crowned the intellectual year.
Tennyson was in his 81st year when he wrote Crossing the Bar. He showed the poem to his son, who exclaimed, That is the crown of your lifes work. It came in a moment, was the aged poets reply. Yes, but however instantaneous was the inspiration, the hymn had behind it a lifetime of careful, painstaking, even fastidious work.
Marcus Dods was a probationer for six years before being called to Renfield Church, Glasgow. During these years of waiting he was sometimes so discouraged as to think of giving up the ministry altogether. In a letter to his sister he wrote: Do these two years and more waiting not show that I am seeking my work in the wrong direction, or why do they not show this, or how long would show this? Possibly you may say, Wait till some evident call to some other work arises; but then, of course, evident calls enough would soon arise were I to put myself in the way of them, e.g., were I to go along to Clark the publisher and ask him for some work, or go out to Harvey of Merchiston and ask him for some; whereas, so long as I keep myself back from such openings they are not a tenth part so likely to arise. But apart from growlery, let me give you a problem. I will give it you in the concrete, as being easier stated and easier apprehended. Is it right of me to wait and see whether I get a call or no, and let this decide whether I ought or ought not to take a charge? To me it seems not (though its just what Im doing), and on this ground, because in fact we find that God has often suffered men to enter the Church who were not worthybecause, that is, the call of the people does not always represent the call of God. He was afterwards Professor of Exegesis and Principal of the New College, Edinburgh.1 [Note: Early Letters of Marcus Dods, 198.]
II
The harvest crown comes as the reward of human labour. Man is called to be a co-worker with God. The sun and the rain may do their best, and the earth yield all its quickening powers, but the harvest would be but a heap of wild and tangled weeds without the constant work and toil of man. The earth will show its wondrous fecundity. Every seed that drops into its bosom must grow or die, and it is mans part to curb the wild extravagance of nature, to destroy that which is mere weed or worthless, in order that there may be room for the good to grow and ripen. God gives little even in nature without our toil; He never gives a rich and bounteous harvest unless we give our work, and care, and watchful supervision over its growth.
The world is but a great harvest-field, in which, each in his own place, we are called forth to take our part, and to do our share of labour. Neither by the structure of our nature, nor by the constitution of society, is there any room for the idler, or any possibility of true enjoyment and happiness without work. If we want to be truly happy, to attain in any measure to the real use and enjoyment of life, work of some kind we must have. There ought to be no play without work. No man is entitled to enjoyment who does not purchase it by labour. The sweetest holiday is that which we have earned by strenuous application. God has so made us that we must find our pleasure either in working, or as the reward of working.
There are certain countries of such tropical luxuriance and fertility that you have only to tickle the earth with a hoe, and she laughs with a harvest. But you do not find the highest type of men where Nature is so kind. There is an enervating kindness. In these Northern lands men have a tussle with the earth to make her yield up her fruits, and they become the stronger for their battle with the elements. But they invariably find that God answers the prayer of their labour. There is a flourishing kitchen garden behind the hotel at Gairloch, reclaimed from the barest and barrenest bit of moorland I ever saw. All that countryside is just wild mountain, bare rock, shaggy heath, and desolate moor; to get a kitchen garden out of such a spot is a triumph. It must have needed some considerable faith to make the attempt, and it was justified. God is always ready to supply if man only has conscience enough to demand. He is faithful that promised.1 [Note: W. A. Mursell.]
My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. And I work! Say that too. If you destroy the sequence, life loses heart, and joy, and meaning, and value. Swing into line with the eternal energy, be a force among forces, a toiler, a producer, a factor, and life never loses its tone and flavour, its bead or glamour. There is no real taste to bread nor bliss in sleep for the idler. He is the doubter, the sceptic, the unhappy man. His idleness proclaims him diseased and decaying.2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 15.]
Get leave to work
In this worldtis the best you get at all;
For God, in cursing, gives us better gifts
Than men in benediction. God says, Sweat
For foreheads, men say crowns, and so we are crowned,
Aye, gashed by some tormenting circle of steel
Which snaps with a secret spring. Get work, get work;
Be sure tis better than what you work to get.3 [Note: E. B. Browning.]
III
And yet the harvest is the gift of God, and should link man to God. Man can only do a little; he ploughs and sows, and makes what preparation he can, and then he has to sit down and wait. He can hasten nothing. If he goes out and waves his hands magically over the brown furrows, nothing happens; if he stamps and rages, he does but reveal his impatience, and emphasize his own impotence. He must work, and then he must wait; and there is something profoundly religious and infinitely suggestive in that waiting. What is he waiting for? God. For aught we know, God could do the work instantly; the harvest might follow immediately upon the seed-sowing, like the genii in the fairy tale. God could bring the gift at once on mans asking. But our world is not the world of the Arabian Nights. God chooses to wait on mans co-operation. He allows him to do so much that man is tempted to suppose that he is himself the author of the whole process of production. But man has not cleared up the mystery of growth by calling it Evolution. Whatever scientific explanation the human mind can offer of a harvest-field, the element of mystery remains precisely where it was before, and it is that element of mystery that makes us fall down and worship; it is that element of mystery that fills us with a wonder akin to prayer; it is that element of mystery that turns every flower into an altar, and makes a sanctuary of every cornfield. God thus keeps His hold of us by the persistence of the mysterious element in things. If we could explain the harvest, we could explain God, and our fairest vision would fade into the light of common day.
In harvest time the Greek saw the good goddess Ceres bearing her golden sheaves; the modern farmer too frequently sees only the result of his own knowledge, or of the latest patent manure. We pity the poor heathen Greek; ought we not rather to pity ourselves?1 [Note: H. J. Wilmot-Buxton.]
The seed was spread in the furrowed earth,
And nurtured long in the gloom it lay,
Till the beckoning hours led on its birth
And drew it up to the laughing day.
The young spring soothed and cherished the blade,
And summer stablished the stately stem,
And the Lord was glad of the thing Hed made,
The fair green ears and the fruit of them.
Summer had worked her will, and past
With her world of green, and autumn arose
And over the prospering tillage cast
A glory of change; the marshalled rows
Of bearded barley and four-square wheat
And pale oats, bearing a hundredfold,
Ripened under her shapely feet,
And out of the green ear grew the gold.
God, how wonderful this the thing,
The new-old miracle Thou hast done,
This proud triumphant fashioning,
Through rains and wind and shine of the sun,
Of ripe and rich abundance, borne
To-day to the sheltering homes of men;
For us Thy Spirit among the corn
Has moved, and one has grown as ten.1 [Note: J. Drinkwater, Poems of Men and Hours, 24.]
IV
The crown of harvest is woven in the loom of winter. Out of December comes June. Out of the Cross is fashioned the Crown. Perpetual summer would be loss unutterable. Perpetual summer would be perpetual mockery. There is no greenness of the grass in June unless there be the chillness of November. God needs the one if He would make the other; fashions the glory out of the decay; lays the field under the grip of ice that it may be golden with the waving grain.
If any one should ask me where I have seen, in the course of my journeyings, the freshest verdure and the greenest grass, I think I might surprise you with my answer. I have seen the tenderest foliage where the fire has recently swept through the forest. Whether it was because of the contrast provided by the blackened timbers or not, I cannot say, but the truth is I never saw such tender green as springs amongst the blackened embers of the forest fire. Certain it is I have never seen such graces as those that spring when the tribulation has passed by. Oh! what a scorching flame it was; but the grass grows green there, and the flowers spring tender there by reason of the fire. There was a soil prepared which has suited the tender growth. Thank God for the tribulation that makes us greener and tenderer in consequence.2 [Note: Thomas Spurgeon.]
I suppose there are many of us who are lovers of the Tweed. It is so beautiful, that river Tweed, and is so haunted by a hundred memories. And yet that river, in whose gentle murmuring we catch the echo of unforgotten voices, rises where everything is bleak and bare. There is no beauty that we should desire it there. There is only the desolate and lonely moor. There is no song, no shadowing of tree, no gathering of the great dead beside its waters. Out of that winter God has made its summer, and to that summer come a thousand pilgrims, who know not, for they have never seen, the bleak and barren region of its rise.1 [Note: G. H. Morrison, The Afterglow of God, 94.]
Christ was content to have His crown of glory fashioned in agony. He took to Himself a crown of thorns. He came to wear it, and He would have no other. After the miracle of the loaves the people would have crowned Him with an earthly crown, and He fled from them. He was afraid of them. He hid Himself in a quiet place. They wanted to give Him an honour He could not accept. They wanted to put around His brow the golden circlet of a brief popularity and a civic leadership. But He would not have it. There was a crown of thorns waiting for Him, and He would not be defrauded of it. There was a coronation day coming, and it must not be anticipated. He was going by a path that few would be willing to followunto an honour that few would be wishful to win. Oh, who is strong enough and brave enough to go on as Christ went treading underfoot the golden crown of gain and reaching out after the thorny crown of sacrifice? He chose between the crown that glitters and the crown that wounds. He refused the one that He might wear the other.2 [Note: P. C. Ainsworth, A Thornless World, 194.]
It was a thorn,
And it stood forlorn
In the burning sunrise land:
A blighted thorn
And at eve and morn
Thus it sighed to the desert sand:
Every flower,
By its beautys power,
With a crown of glory is crowned;
No crown have I;
For a crown I sigh,
For a crown that I have not found.
Sad thorn, why grieve?
Thou a crown shalt weave,
But not for a maiden to wear;
That crown shall shine
When all crowns save thine
With the glory they gave are gone.
For thorn, my thorn,
Thy crown shall be worn
By the King of Sorrows alone.1 [Note: Owen Meredith.]
V
The crown of harvest is not for ornament and beauty only, but for utility and beneficence. The ripe grain becomes the seed of future harvests. The husbandman takes of his best corn, safe in his granary, and casts it into the earth. He sacrifices what is precious to him for the sake of the harvest in the future. So it is with those who work for worldly success. They sacrifice time, rest, ease, comfort; they deny themselves pleasure now that they may reap a rich harvest in the end. So must it be with those who sow for eternity. They must deny themselves, they must sow in tears, they must go forth weeping and bearing this good seed. Jesus, our Master, sowed in tears, sowed in the agony and bloody sweat. He sacrificed Himself that He might gather the glorious harvest of a world redeemed, of a Church bought with His Precious Blood. He gave up His Sacred Body, like a seed to be bruised and crushed by cruel hands, and to be sown in the furrow of the grave. But the harvest came. That Body sown in the weakness of death was raised in the power of the resurrection, and so Jesus reaped the harvest for Himself and for us His people.
The story of a night of seemingly fruitless toil, which resulted in great blessing, is retold in the Illustrated Missionary News. Miss Harris, of Medak, in India, utterly tired out, was one evening about to return home, when the son of the head-man of an important village, who had been poisoned, was hurriedly brought into the compound. She saw it was impossible to save him, and yet she kept the night vigil, rendering him the most menial serviceservice hardly fit for the village scavenger. The father and brothers watched all the time, and although the missionary returned home utterly spent next morning, feeling as if nothing had been accomplished, the chief and his family, as they watched, had judged between Hinduism and the Gospel of Christ, and within six months the whole of the large family of the village chief was baptized; soon a church and school were founded in the village, and from the chiefs family there are now (so runs the encouraging report) no fewer than ten evangelists and Bible-women.
A Sower went forth to sow;
His eyes were dark with woe;
He crushed the flowers beneath his feet,
Nor smelt their perfume, warm and sweet,
That prayed for pity everywhere.
He came to a field that was harried
By iron, and to heaven laid bare;
He shook the seed that he carried
Oer that brown and bladeless place.
He shook it, as God shakes the hail
Oer a doomed land,
When lightnings interlace
The sky and the earth, and his wand
Of love is a thunder-flail.
Thus did that Sower sow;
His seed was human blood,
And tears of women and men.
And I, who near him stood,
Said: When the crop comes, then
There will be sobbing and sighing,
Weeping and wailing and crying,
Flame, and ashes, and woe.
It was an autumn day
When next I went that way.
And what, think you, did I see?
What was it that I heard,
What music was in the air?
The song of a sweet-voiced bird?
Naybut the songs of many,
Thrilled through with praise and prayer.
Of all those voices not any
Were sad of memory;
But a sea of sunlight flowed,
A golden harvest glowed,
And I said: Thou only art wise,
God of the earth and skies!
And I praise Thee, again and again,
For the Sower whose name is Pain.1 [Note: R. W. Gilder, The Sower.]
Literature
Little (H. W.), Arrows for the Kings Archers, 50.
Mursell (W. A.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 95.
Rylance (J. H.), in The Complete Preacher, ii. 180.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxv. (1879), No. 1475.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), In Many Keys, 265.
Wilson (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Clifton College Chapel, ii. 35.
Churchmans Pulpit: Harvest Thanksgiving, Pt. 97, p. 68 (T. B. Johnstone); Pt. 98, p. 81 (J. S. James).
Treasury (New York), xiv. 585 (J. D. MCaughtry).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
crownest: Psa 5:12, *marg. Psa 103:4, Pro 14:18, Heb 2:7-9
with thy: Heb. of thy
thy paths: Psa 25:10, Psa 104:3, Joe 2:14, Joe 2:21-26, Hag 2:19, Mal 3:10
fatness: Psa 36:8, Rom 11:17
Reciprocal: 2Ch 6:41 – thy saints Neh 9:25 – did eat Psa 65:9 – greatly Psa 104:24 – the earth Isa 51:23 – Bow
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 65:11-12. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness Thou, by thy powerful goodness, dost enrich and adorn all the seasons of the year with their proper fruits and blessings. And thy paths Either, 1st, Thy clouds, (as the word , is rendered in the Liturgy version,) upon which God is frequently said to walk or ride, and which drop fatness upon the earth; or the outgoings, or ways of the divine goodness. Wherever God goes, speaking after the manner of men, or works, he leaves the tokens of his mercy behind him, he dispenses rich and salutary blessings, and thus makes his paths to shine after him. Mudge renders this verse, Thou encirclest the year with thy richness, and the tracks of thy wheels drop fatness. God is considered, he thinks, in his chariot, riding round the earth, and from that chariot, that is, the clouds, everywhere distilling fatness, fertility, and increase. They Gods paths, the clouds; drop upon the pastures of the wilderness And not only upon the pastures of the inhabited land. The deserts, which man takes no care of, and receives no profit from, yet are under the care of the divine providence; and the produce of them redounds to the glory of God, as the great Benefactor of the whole creation. For hereby they are furnished with food for wild beasts, which, being Gods creatures, he thus takes care of and provides for. And the little hills He intends chiefly the hills of Canaan, which, for the generality of them, were but small, if compared with the great and high mountains which are in divers parts of the world. He mentions the hills, because, being most dry and parched with the sun, they most need, and are most benefited by the rain; rejoice on every side That is, all around, as being clothed with verdure, enamelled with flowers, and rendered fertile for the use of man and beasts. Nothing can be more elegant and poetical than the personifying of the hills, the pastures, and valleys in this and the following verse. But, indeed, as Dr. Delaney justly observes, this whole paragraph, from the 9th verse to the 13th, is the most rapturous, truly poetic, and natural image of joy that imagination can form. The reader of taste cannot but see this in any translation of it, however simple. When the divine poet had seen the showers falling from heaven, and Jordan overflowing his banks, all the consequent blessings were that moment present to his quick, poetic sight, and he paints them accordingly.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
David pictured the earth richly plentiful with God’s blessing on fields and flocks, and he personified it as rejoicing in His goodness.
In spite of man’s sin, God blesses his environment with many good things so people can prosper and rejoice (common grace). God delights to bless all people (Mat 5:45). He is a good, as well as a great, God. [Note: See Allen, And I . . ., pp. 198-213.]