Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 81:13
Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, [and] Israel had walked in my ways!
13. O that my people were hearkening unto me,
That Israel would walk in my ways!
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
13 16. Yet God’s mercy is inexhaustible. Even now if Israel would obey Him, He would subdue their enemies, and bless them abundantly. Cp. Isa 48:17-19.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Oh that my people had hearkened unto me – This passage is designed mainly to show what would have been the consequences if the Hebrew people had been obedient to the commands of God, Psa 81:14-16. At the same time, however, it expresses what was the earnest desire – the wish – the preference of God, namely, that they had been obedient, and had enjoyed his favor. This is in accordance with all the statements, all the commands, all the invitations, all the warnings, in the Bible. In the entire volume of inspiration there is not one command addressed to people to walk in the ways of sin; there is not one statement that God desires they should do it; there is not one intimation that he wishes the death of the sinner. The contrary is implied in all the declarations which God has made – in all his commands, warnings, and invitations – in all his arrangements for the salvation of people. See Deu 5:29; Deu 32:29-30; Isa 48:18; Eze 18:23, Eze 18:32; Eze 33:11; 2Pe 3:9; Luk 19:42.
And Israel had walked in my ways! – Had kept my commandments; had been obedient to my laws. When people, therefore, do not walk in the ways of God it is impossible that they should take refuge, as an excuse for it, in the plea that God desires this, or that he commands it, or that he is pleased with it, or that he approves it. There is no possible sense in which this can be true; in every sense, and on every account, he prefers that people should be obedient, and not disobedient; good, and not bad; happy, and not miserable; saved, and not lost. Every doctrine of theology should be held and interpreted in consistency with this as a fundamental truth. That there are things which are difficult to be explained on the supposition that this is true, must be admitted; but what truth is there in reference to which there are not difficulties to be explained? And is there anything in this, or in any of the truths of the Bible, which more demands explanation than the facts which are actually occurring under the government of God: the fact that sin and misery have been allowed to come into the universe; the fact that multitudes constantly suffer whom God could at once relieve?
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 81:13-14
Oh that My people had hearkened unto Me, and Israel had walked in My ways!
Jehovahs complaint against the condition and conduct of His people
I.
The humiliating position in which the Church is supposed to be standing towards its enemies. Think of the damnable heresies and apostasies from truth, which the abused name of religion is employed to cover, and the consummate wickedness with which the profession of Christianity has been converted by iniquitous laws into a tyranny and a trade. Look at every aspect of society, examine every walk of life, and what do you behold, but impiety triumphant in the very capital of Christianity? Take the most favourable estimate that Christian charity will allow, and yet how feeble in influence and numbers is the Church of Christ compared with its enemies! And if, after two thousand years, such be our position, how solemnly does it behove us to ask in what way this humiliating state of things is to be accounted for.
II. The sinful cause to which its humiliation is ascribed.
1. God has commanded His ministers to go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature; and, in order that they might do so, His people are enjoined to send them forth, for how, says the apostle, can they preach except they be sent? And when the Church, in the warmth of her first love, responded to her Lords commands, consecrating her energies arid her treasures freely to His service, city after city, kingdom after kingdom, and one system of error after another, fell vanquished at her feet. But, corrupted by covetousness and love of the world, His people grew weary of hearkening unto Him, and to walk in His ways, and consequently soon lost the conquests that apostles won.
2. But, besides sending forth ministers to preach the Word, God has commanded His people, individually, to labour for the spread of truth. But the individual responsibility of Christians has been almost forgotten; while a few are making personal exertions in Gods service, how many hearers and even professors of the Gospel are no more concerned by any personal effort to extinguish the rebellion against God, than so many statues on a building wrapt in flames!
3. Again; as it is impossible by error to destroy error, and as the only antidote to darkness is light, Jesus Christ has commanded His followers to preserve the faith of the Gospel inviolably pore; warning them in admonitions of awful solemnity against adding to, or taking away, a tittle from His Word. And from how many sinful practices, how many debasing sentiments, how many idle ceremonies, how many bitter controversies and persecutions would the Church have been saved, had Israel walked in His ways, had His people hearkened to His voice. But, preferring the wisdom of man to that which cometh down from above, they have altered the constitution of the Church, perverted its ordinances, and corrupted its doctrines, suffering foreign mixtures, careless omissions, and presumptuous additions, to deface the beauty and destroy the simplicity of the truth.
4. Could the Christian Church, however, when she threw away the unity of faith, have preserved the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, she might, possibly, soon have recovered what she had lost; but converting every difference of creed into an occasion of division and strife, she advanced further in disobedience, and, consequently, further and further in weakness and disgrace.
5. Moreover, as the world is less likely to be subdued by precept than example, Christ has said to His disciples, Let your light shine before men, that they seeing your good works may glorify your Father which is in heaven. And had the Church paid a becoming regard to His repeated injunctions upon this subject, she would have appeared in every conflict as bright as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners.
6. And along with a far higher degree of holiness, would there not have been among the people of God, had they hearkened to His voice, an infinitely larger amount of fervent and effectual prayer?
III. The affecting manner in which both the cause and the consequences are by God himself deplored.
1. From all that God has spoken or accomplished, it is evident that His love for His Church is infinite and unchangeable. It is His husbandry and His vineyard, the garden He delights to water, His inheritance, and the place of His rest, the wife of His bosom, His peculiar treasure, His crown, His portion, and His joy. Next to His own glory, nothing, therefore, is so near to His heart, as the prosperity of His people; and while upon the warlike enterprises which historians and poets delight to celebrate, He looks with comparative indifference, the minutest victories of His Church have an everlasting record in heaven, and are celebrated by the angels of God in songs of ecstatic praise.
2. Nor must we exclude from our interpretation of this language the idea of infinite pity H a perishing world. In secular contests the triumph of one party is the disgrace, misery, or destruction of the other; and most justly and humanely has it been said by a great living warrior, nothing is so calamitous as a victory excepting a defeat. But to extend the conquests of the Church is to push forward the boundary of life and happiness into the realms of darkness and death; to subdue her enemies, to bring the haters of the Lord to submission is to save them with an everlasting salvation; to leave them unsubdued is to destroy them for ever. (J. E. Giles.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 13. O that my people had hearkened unto me, – Israel had walked in my ways] Nothing can be more plaintive than the original; sense and sound are surprisingly united. I scruple not to say to him who understands the Hebrew, however learned, he has never found in any poet, Greek or Latin, a finer example of deep-seated grief, unable to express itself in appropriate words without frequent interruptions of sighs and sobs, terminated with a mournful cry.
Lo ammi shomea li
Yishrael bidrachi yehallechu!
He who can give the proper guttural pronunciation to the letter ain; and gives the vau, and the yod, their full Asiatic sound, not pinching them to death by a compressed and worthless European enunciation; will at once be convinced of the propriety of this remark.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
13-16. Obedience would havesecured all promised blessings and the subjection of foes. In thispassage, “should have,” “would have,” &c.,are better, “should” and “would” expressing God’sintention at the time, that is, when they left Egypt.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
O that my people had hearkened unto me,…. This might have been expected from them, as they were his professing people; and it would have been to their advantage if they had hearkened to him, as well as it would have been well pleasing to him; for that is what is designed by this wish, which does not express the purposing will of God; for who hath resisted that? if he had so willed, he could have given them ears to hear; but his commanding will, and what is his approving one: to hearken to him is not only to hearken to what he commands, but to what he approves of; it is the good and acceptable will of God that men should hearken to the declarations of his will in the law, and to the declarations of his grace in the Gospel; and indeed it is the voice of Christ, the Angel of God’s presence, who went before the children of Israel in the wilderness, which they were to hearken to and obey, that is here meant; see Ex 23:20, and Heb 3:6,
and Israel had walked in my ways; which he marked out and directed them unto, meaning his ordinances and commandments; which to walk in, as it denotes progress and continuance, and supposes and requires life and strength, so it is both pleasant and profitable.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
13. O if my people had hearkened to me! By the honorable designation which God gives to the people of Israel, He exposes the more effectually their shameful and disgraceful conduct. Their wickedness was doubly aggravated, as will appear from the consideration, that although God called them to be his people, they differed nothing from those who were the greatest strangers to him. Thus he complains by the Prophet Isaiah,
“
The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” (Isa 1:3)
The Hebrew particle לו, lu, which I have rendered O if! is not to be understood as expressing a condition, but a wish; and therefore God, I have no doubt, like a man weeping and lamenting, cries out, O the wretchedness of this people in wilfully refusing to have their best interests carefully provided for! He assumes the character of a father, and observing, after having tried every possible means for the recovery of his children, that their condition is utterly hopeless, he uses the language of one saddened, as it were, with sighing and groaning; not that he is subject to human passions, but because he cannot otherwise express the greatness of the love which he bears towards us. (416) The Prophet seems to have borrowed this passage from the song of Moses in Deu 32:29, where the obstinacy of the people is bewailed in almost the same words: “Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” He means tacitly to upbraid the Jews, and to impress upon their minds the truth, that their own perverseness was the only cause which prevented them from enjoying a state of great outward prosperity. If it is objected, that God in vain and without ground utters this complaint, since it was in his power to bend the stiff necks of the people, and that, when he was not pleased to do this, he had no reason to compare himself to a man deeply grieved; I answer, that he very properly makes use of this style of speaking on our account, that we may seek for the procuring cause of our misery nowhere but in ourselves. We must here beware of mingling together things which are totally different — as widely different from each other as heaven is distant from the earth. God, in coming down to us by his word, and addressing his invitations to all men without exception, disappoints nobody. All who sincerely come to him are received, and find from actual experience that they were not called in vain. At the same time, we are to trace to the fountain of the secret electing purpose of God this difference, that the word enters into the heart of some, while others only hear the sound of it. And yet there is no inconsistency in his complaining, as it were, with tears, of our folly when we do not obey him. In the invitations which he addresses to us by the external word, he shows himself to be a father; and why may he not also be understood as still representing himself under the image of a father in using this form of complaint? In Eze 18:32, he declares with the strictest regard to truth, “I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth,” provided in the interpretation of the passage we candidly and dispassionately take into view the whole scope of it. God has no pleasure in the death of a sinner: How? because he would have all men turned to himself. But it is abundantly evident, that men by their own free-will cannot turn to God, until he first change their stony hearts into hearts of flesh: yea, this renovation, as Augustine judiciously observes, is a work surpassing that of the creation itself. Now what hinders God from bending and framing the hearts of all men equally in submission to him? Here modesty and sobriety must be observed, that instead of presuming to intrude into his incomprehensible decrees, we may rest contented with the revelation which he has made of his will in his word. There is the justest ground for saying that he wills the salvation of those to whom that language is addressed, (Isa 21:12,) “Come unto me, and be ye converted.” In the second part of the verse before us, we have defined what it is to hear God. To assent to what he speaks would not be enough; for hypocrites will grant at once that whatever proceeds from his mouth is true, and will affect to listen just as if an ass should bend its ears. But the clause is intended to teach us that we can only be said to hear God, when we submit ourselves to his authority.
(416) “Nothing,” says Dr Adam Clarke on this verse, “can be more plaintive than the original: sense and sound are surprisingly united. I scruple not to say to him who understands the Hebrew, however learned, he has never found in any poet, Greek or Latin, a finer example of deep-seated grief, unable to express itself in appropriate words, without frequent interruptions of sighs and sobs, terminated with a mournful cry —
ילעמשימעולוכלהייכרדבלארשי
Loo-ghammee-shomeagh-lee Yishrael-bid’ rakee-yehallekoo!
“
He who can give the proper guttural pronunciation to the letter ע, ayin; and gives the ו, vau, and the י, yod, their full Asiatic sound; and does not pinch them to death by a compressed and worthless European enunciation; will at once be convinced of the propriety of this remark.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(13, 14) Hearken . . . subdue.The verbs should be taken in a future sense, Oh that my people would hearken . . . I should soon subdue, &c. The poet changes from reminiscences of the past to the needs of the present.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
13. Oh that So Christ lamented over Jerusalem. Mat 23:37. God sees the magnitude of the evils incurred, and the excellence of the blessings lost, and his regrets are commensurate.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
So Jesus wept over Jerusalem! And had Israel then, or upon the occasion which this Psalm records, hearkened unto the Lord, the temporal prosperity of Israel would have continued. For, I beg the Reader to observe, that in both instances it is of temporal prosperity the Lord evidently speaks. Here it is of feeding them with fine wheat, and honey out of the rock; and there, in Christ’s days, it is of preserving Jerusalem from being visited by the destruction of the sword. Luk 19:41-44 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 81:13 Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, [and] Israel had walked in my ways!
Ver. 13. Oh that my people had hearkened unto me ] A wish after the manner of men; to set forth God’s great desire of our welfare, which he here uttereth, as it were, with a sigh and a groan.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Oh . . . ! Figure of speech Eonismos. .
walked. Plural.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Oh that: Deu 5:29, Deu 10:12, Deu 10:13, Deu 32:29, Isa 48:18, Mat 23:37, Luk 19:41, Luk 19:42
Reciprocal: Gen 6:6 – grieved Exo 16:28 – General 1Ch 15:24 – the priests Psa 81:8 – if thou wilt Psa 107:8 – Oh that men Psa 128:1 – walketh Pro 1:33 – whoso Jer 25:3 – rising Jer 42:6 – that it Eze 12:3 – it may Mic 6:3 – O my Luk 13:34 – how Eph 2:10 – walk Heb 3:7 – hear
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 81:13. O that my people had hearkened unto me In this way does God testify his good-will to, and concern for, the welfare and happiness of these most refractory, disobedient, and obstinate sinners. The expressions are very affecting, and much like those he uttered by Moses concerning them, Deu 5:29, O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever. Or like those which Christ breathed forth over the same people, when, beholding the city, he wept over it, and said, If thou hadst known in this thy day the things which belong to thy peace, &c. Or those other words of similar import, O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! how often would I have gathered thy children together, &c. All these, and such like passages, manifest the tender mercies of God, and show that he is not only careful to provide for mankind the means of salvation, but that he grieves, speaking after the manner of men, and mourns, with paternal affection, over them, when their frowardness and obstinacy disappoint the efforts of his love. They demonstrate two things; 1st, How unwilling he is that any should perish, and how desirous that all should come to repentance; and, 2d, What enemies sinners are to themselves; and what an aggravation it will be of their misery, that they might have been happy on such easy terms, but would not.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
81:13 {k} Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, [and] Israel had walked in my ways!
(k) God by his word calls all, but his secret election appoints who will bear fruit.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Asaph continued to relate God’s account of Israel’s history since the Exodus. If only His people would obey Him, He would subdue their enemies and adversaries. He would also bless them abundantly with prosperity (cf. Deu 32:13-14). The last verse addresses Israel in the second person and constituted a call to the present generation of readers to follow God faithfully.
It is important to review God’s past grace periodically and regularly, because recalling His faithfulness will challenge His people to remain faithful to Him. This is one of the values of attending church services regularly.