Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 81:7
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.
7. From the divine decree for Israel’s liberation the transition to an address to Israel is easy. Israel of the present is regarded as one with Israel of the past.
Thou calledst &c.] For the phrase cp. Psa 50:15; and for the fact, Exo 2:23 ff.
in the secret place of thunder ] In the covert of the thunder-cloud God conceals and reveals Himself (Psa 18:11; Psa 18:13; Psa 77:17 ff.). At the passage of the Red Sea, when Israel was sore afraid and cried out unto Jehovah, He “looked forth upon the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of cloud, and discomfited the host of the Egyptians” (Exo 14:10; Exo 14:24).
I proved thee at the waters of Meribah ] Testing thy faith and obedience. The name Meribah or Strife was a reminder of repeated unbelief and ingratitude (Exo 17:7; Num 20:13; Psa 78:20); of the long ‘controversy’ (Mic 6:2) of a long-suffering God with an obstinate people. It is possible that the reference to this miracle in particular was suggested by the libations of water at the Feast of Tabernacles, which commemorated the supply of water in the wilderness.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Thou calledst in trouble – The people of Israel. Exo 2:23; Exo 3:9; Exo 14:10.
And I delivered thee – I brought the people out of Egypt.
I answered thee in the secret place of thunder – That is, in the lonely, retired, solemn place where the thunder rolled; the solitudes where there was no voice but the voice of thunder, and where that seemed to come from the deep recesses of the mountain gorges. The allusion is doubtless to Sinai. Compare Exo 19:17-19. The meaning is, that he gave a response – a real reply – to their prayer – amid the solemn scenes of Sinai, when he gave them his law; when he recognized them as his people; when he entered into covenant with them.
I proved thee – I tried you; I tested your fidelity.
At the waters of Meribah – Margin, as in Hebrew, strife. This was at Mount Horeb. Exo 17:5-7. The trial – the proof – consisted in his bringing water from the rock, showing that he was God – that he was their God.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 81:7
I answered thee in the secret place of thunder.
Answers to prayer often come mysteriously
God has a thousand secret ways of granting our requests.
I. He may do it by a wave of air. A man is the subject of a painful disease, that seems progressing to the utter extinction of his life; for the sake of others depending on him, he implores his Maker to restore him. A fresh breeze from heaven is let into his chamber, it not only sweeps his foul room, but heaves his lungs with a new force, oxygenizes his blood, and quickens his pulses with a new vitality. Wave after wave continues to play around him until he is able to rise from his couch and go into the open fields. God has answered him from the secret place of thunder.
II. He may do it by the birth of a thought, The good man may be enfolded in darkness, wrapped in perplexities, so utterly embarrassed by his circumstances that he knows not what step to take next. He cries to Heaven for guidance; all worldly resources have failed. A new thought springs up in his mind, solves his problems, scatters his darkness, removes his embarrassments, reveals a path to enter, safe and sunny, full of promise. He pursues it, and all is right. His prayer is answered from the secret place of thunder.
III. He may do it by the visit of a friend. As he talks, the burden of sorrow falls from his heart, and he breathes once more the free air of hope. His prayer has been answered from the secret place of thunder.
IV. He may do it by a verse of scripture. (Homilist.)
The place of thunder
As there is a secret place of natural thunder, there is a secret place of moral thunder. In other words, the religious power that you see abroad in the Church and in the world has a hiding-place, and in many cases it is never discovered at all. I will use a similitude. Many years ago there was a large church. It was characterized by strange and unaccountable conversions. There were no great revivals, but individual cases of spiritual arrest and transformation. A young man sat in one of the front pews. He was a graduate of Yale, brilliant and dissolute. Everybody knew him and liked him for his geniality, but deplored his moral errantry. To please his parents he was every Sabbath morning in church. One day there was a ringing of the door-bell of the pastor of that church, and that young man, overwhelmed with repentance, implored prayer and advice, and passed into complete reformation of heart and life. All the neighbourhood was astonished, and asked, Why was this? His father and mother had said nothing to him about his souls welfare. In the course of two years, though there was no general awakening in that church, many such isolated cases of unexpected and unaccountable conversions took place. The very people whom no one thought would be affected by such considerations were converted. The pastor and the officers of the church were on the look-out for the solution of this religious phenomenon. Where is it, they said, and who is it, and what is it? At last the discovery was made and all was explained. A poor old Christian woman standing in the vestibule of the church one Sunday morning, trying to get her breath again before she went up-stairs to the gallery, heard the inquiry and told the secret. For years she had been in the habit of concentrating all her prayers for particular persons in that church. She would see some man or some woman present, and, though she might not know the persons name, she would pray for that person until he or she was converted to God. All her prayers were for that one person–just that one. She waited and waited for communion days to see when the candidates for membership stood up whether her prayers had been effectual. It turned out that these marvellous instances of conversion were the result of that old womans prayers as she sat in the gallery Sabbath by Sabbath, bent and wizened and poor and unnoticed. That was the secret place of the thunder. The day will come–God hasten it-when people wilt find out the velocity, the majesty, the multipotence of prayer. O ye who are wasting your breath and wasting your brains and wasting your nerves and wasting your lungs wishing for this good and that good for the Church and the world, why do you not go into the secret place of thunder? But, says some one, that is a beautiful theory, yet it does not work in my case, for I am in a cloud of trouble or a cloud of sickness or a cloud of persecution or a cloud of poverty or a cloud of bereavement or a cloud of perplexity. How glad I am that you told me that. That is exactly the place to which my text refers. It was from a cloud that God answered Israel–the cloud over the chasm cut through the Red Sea–the cloud that was light to the Israelites and darkness to the Egyptians. It was from a cloud, a tremendous cloud, that God made reply. It was a cloud that was the secret place of thunder. So you cannot get away from the consolation of my text by talking that way. Let all the people under a cloud hear it. I answered thee in the secret place of thunder. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 7. Thou calledst in trouble] They had cried by reason of their burdens, and the cruelty of their task-masters; and God heard that cry, and delivered them. See Ex 3:7, c.
In the secret place of thunder] On Mount Sinai where God was heard, but not seen. They heard a voice, but they saw no shape.
At the waters of Meribah.] See this transaction, Ex 17:1, &c.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Thou calledst in trouble; at the Red Sea, Exo 14:10-12.
In the secret place of thunder; from the dark and cloudy pillar, whence I thundered and fought against the Egyptians. See Exo 13:21; 14:19,24. Others refer this to the thunder at Sinai. But at that time they were
not in trouble, but in a safe and glorious condition.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
7. secret placethe cloud fromwhich He troubled the Egyptians (Ex14:24).
proved thee (Psa 7:10;Psa 17:3) tested their faithby the miracle.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee,…. That is, when Israel were in trouble in Egypt, as the Targum adds, and they cried unto the Lord in their distress, he heard them, and answered them, and sent them a deliverer, and brought them out of all their troubles, Ex 3:7.
I answered thee in the secret place of thunder; by bringing the plague of thunder and lightnings upon the Egyptians, when the Israelites were hidden from them; a sense given by some, as Kimchi observes: or rather this was done when the Lord looked out of the pillar of cloud at the Red sea upon the Egyptian host, and troubled them; at which time the voice of his thunder was heard in heaven, Ps 77:16. Some think this has reference to the thunder at the giving of the law on Mount Sinai; but the sense before given is best:
I proved thee at the waters of Meribah; by withholding water from them to try them, and see whether they would behave patiently, and put their trust and confidence in the Lord, or not; see Ex 17:4.
Selah. [See comments on Ps 3:2].
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
7 Thou didst cry in trouble, and I delivered thee. Here the same subject is prosecuted. By their crying when they were in distress, I understand the prayers which they then offered to God. It sometimes happens that those who are reduced to extremity bewail their calamities with confused crying; but as this afflicted people still had in them some remains of godliness, and as they had not forgotten the promise made to their fathers, I have no doubt that they directed their prayers to God. Even men without religion, who never think of calling upon God, when they are under the pressure of any great calamity, are moved by a secret instinct of nature to have recourse to Him. This renders it the more probable that the promise was, as it were, a schoolmaster to the Israelites, leading them to look to God. As no man sincerely calls upon Him but he who trusts in him for help; this crying ought the more effectually to have convinced them that it was their duty to ascribe to Him alone the deliverance which was offered them. By the secret place of thunder some, in my opinion, with too much refinement of interpretation, understand that God by thundering rendered the groanings of the people inaudible to the Egyptians, that by hearing them the Egyptians might not become the more exasperated. But the meaning simply is, that the people were heard in a secret and wonderful manner, while, at the same time, manifest tokens were given by which the Israelites might be satisfied that they were succoured by the Divine hand. God, it is true, was not seen by them face to face; but the thunder was an evident indication of his secret presence among them. (410) To make them prize more highly this benefit, God upbraidingly tells them that they were unworthy of it, having given such a manifest proof at the waters of Meribah, (411) that they were of a wicked and perverse disposition, Exo 17:7. Your wickedness, as if he had said, having at that time so openly shown itself, surely it must from this be incontrovertible that my favor to you did not proceed from any regard to your good desert. This rebuke is not less applicable to us than to the Israelites; for God not only heard our groanings when we were afflicted under the tyranny of Satan, but before we were born appointed his only begotten Son to be the price of our redemption; and afterwards, when we were his enemies, he called us to be partakers of his grace, illuminating our minds by his gospel and his Holy Spirit; while we, notwithstanding, continue to indulge in murmuring, yea, even proudly rebel against Him.
(410) Bishop Lowth understands by “the secret place of thunder” the communication of the Israelites with God upon mount Sinai, the awfulness of which is expressed by these few words. (Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, volume 2, page 220.) Walford reads, “I answered thee by thunder, from a hidden retreat;” and he observes, that this contains “a reference to the majestic display on Sinai, where, though the symbols of the present Deity were seen and heard, the lightnings and thunders, he himself was concealed from all human view.” The only objection which can be made against interpreting this of Sinai is, that the murmuring at Meribah, Exo 17:0, was before the thundering on Sinai, Exo 19:0; whereas here the thunder is mentioned first, and then what took place at Meribah in the end of the verse. But this objection is easily removed; for in the poetical compositions of Scripture strict order is not, always observed in the narration of facts. Thus in Psa 83:9, the victory over the Midianites (Jud 7:0) is mentioned before that over Sisera, (Jud 4:0,) which was the victory first achieved.
(411) Literally “the waters of contradiction;” מריבה, meribah, from רוב, rub, to quarrel, being a noun signifying contention, strife It is therefore fitly used as the name of the place in the desert where the Israelites quarrelled with Moses. “The local specification,” observes Bishop Mant, “as used in our Bible translation, is much more poetical than the rendering in the Common Prayer-Book, ‘the waters of strife.’” “The mention of Meribah,” says Lowth, “introduces another idea, namely, the ingratitude and contumacy of the Israelites, who appear to have been ever unmindful of the favors and indulgence of their heavenly Benefactor.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(7) Thou calledst.The recital of Gods past dealings with the people usual at the Feast of the Tabernacles (Deu. 31:10-13; Neh. 8:18) appears to follow here as if the feast were actually in progress and the crowd were listening to the psalmist.
I answered thee in the secret place of thunder.Mr. Burgess is undoubtedly right in taking the verb as from nan, to cover, instead of nah, to answer. I sheltered thee in the thundercloud, with plain allusion to the cloudy pillar. The same verb is used in Psa. 105:39, He spread out the cloud for a covering.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
7. Secret place of thunder That is, the recesses of Sinai, at this time the mysterious seat of divinity. See the fundamental passage, Exo 19:19. In other theophanies the pavilion of God is located “in darkness,” “dark waters and thick clouds of the sky.” Psa 18:11; Psa 68:7-8. The unwonted terror of thunderstorms on Mount Sinai is attested by travellers, but at this time the “thunder” and earthquake were supernatural. God is represented as thus speaking from the clouds and the storm, to teach us that the answer of prayer is not from earth, but from Heaven; from the same great Power that rules the forces of created nature. The physical scenery and awful phenomena of Sinai were adapted to impress the people with the majesty and power of God.
Waters of Meribah Both Meribah-Kadesh (Num 20:13) and Rephidim, called “Massah and Meribah, [ temptation and strife, ] because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not?” Exo 17:7. See on Psa 78:15-16. This latter was the scene of the most signal temptation and miracle since the passage of the Red Sea. See on Psa 78:15-16; Psa 106:32. This last clause forms the link between the joyful retrospections of the previous section of the psalm and the admonitory address of God to his people which follows.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 81:7. I answered thee in the secret place of thunder I spoke to thee in the obscurity of thunder.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
These are sweet views of God’s former dealings with his people; and a reference to Israel’s history will mark out the several periods here spoken of. But, Reader! do not you and I also see our own history, and Jesus interposing for our salvation?
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 81:7 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.
Ver. 7. Thou calledst in trouble ] Their trouble called, though themselves had been silent. I have seen, I have seen the afflictions of my people, &c., but they cried to the Lord at the Red Sea, Exo 14:10 ; Exo 14:15 , and were delivered.
I answered thee in the secret place of thunder
I proved thee at the waters of Meribah
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
in, or from.
proved. Compare Exo 17:6. Num 20:1-13.
Selah. Connecting the merciful deliverance with the reason why Israel should hearken. See App-66.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
calledst: Psa 50:15, Psa 91:14, Psa 91:15, Exo 2:23, Exo 14:10, Exo 14:30, Exo 14:31, Exo 17:2-7
secret: Exo 14:24, Exo 19:19, Exo 20:18-21
proved: Exo 17:6, Exo 17:7, Num 20:13, Num 20:24, Deu 33:8
Meribah: or, strife
Reciprocal: Exo 15:25 – proved Exo 18:8 – how the Lord Exo 19:20 – the Lord came Deu 8:2 – prove thee Deu 13:3 – proveth Psa 18:11 – secret Psa 106:32 – angered Eze 47:19 – strife Mat 17:5 – a voice
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
81:7 Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I {g} answered thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah.
(g) By a strange and wonderful fashion.