Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 95:6
O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
6. Let us offer the lowliest homage expressive of humility and submission to His Will, in contrast to that obstinacy of heart ( Psa 95:8) which was the ruin of our fathers.
our Maker ] It is the ‘making’ of Israel into a nation, rather than the creation of individuals, that is meant. Cp. Deu 32:6; Deu 32:15; Deu 32:18; Isa 44:2; Isa 51:13; Isa 54:5; Psa 100:3; Psa 149:2.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
6, 7. A renewed call to worship Jehovah, on the ground of His relation to Israel.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
O come, let us worship and bow down – Let us worship him by bowing down; by prostrating ourselves before him. The word here rendered come is not the same which is used in Psa 95:1. Its literal meaning is come, and it is an earnest exhortation to come and worship. It is not a particle merely calling attention to a subject, but it is an exhortation to approach – to enter – to engage in a thing. The word rendered worship, means properly to bow down; to incline oneself; and then, to bow or prostrate oneself before anyone in order to do him homage, or reverence. Then it means to bow down before God in the attitude of worship. It would most naturally refer to an entire prostration on the ground, which was a common mode of worship; but it would also express adoration in any form. The word rendered bow down, means properly to bend, to bow, spoken usually of the knees. Isa 45:23 : every knee shall bow. Compare Jdg 7:5-6; 1Ki 8:54; 2Ki 1:13. The word might be applied, like the former word, to those who bow down with the whole person, or prostrate themselves on the ground. 2Ch 7:3.
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker – The usual attitude of prayer in the Scriptures. See the notes at Dan 6:10; compare 2Ch 6:13; Luk 22:41; Act 7:60; Act 9:40; Act 20:36; Act 21:5. All the expressions here employed denote a posture of profound reverence in worship, and the passage is a standing rebuke of all irreverent postures in prayer; of such habits as often prevail in public worship where no change of posture is made in prayer, and where a congregation irreverently sit in the act of professedly worshipping God. People show to their fellowmen the respect indicated by rising up before them: much more should they show respect to God – respect in a posture which will indicate profound reverence, and a deep sense of his presence and majesty. Reverently kneeling or standing will indicate this; sitting does not indicate it.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 95:6-7
O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
Congregational worship
I. Its principle. God made each, and God rules all; and while of each is demanded individual acknowledgment and homage–Stand in awe and sin not, commune with your own heart upon your bed and be still, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door, and pray to thy Father which is in secret,–yet of all is required, that they should acknowledge a common origin, recognize a common supremacy, confess a common necessity, deprecate a common peril, avail themselves of a common salvation.
II. The form. We are enjoined in the text to worship and bow down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
III. The benefits. We thus realize by faith the presence of an unseen Deity. We thus recognize the moral supremacy of the God who wilt be our Judge. We feel the precariousness of life, and are thus made to improve its remaining opportunities. The act of coming hither is the confession that we have a soul; and the act of uniting in what is here transacted is a cultivation of the soul for immortality. (T. Dale, M. A.)
Worship
Our modern word worship is the old Saxon worth-ship–that is, in its application, the adequate recognition of Gods worth or due, and the creatures loyal payment of his debt. In the Bible the word signifies generally an act of respect or of homage. Sometimes it is used of the deference which one man pays to another–as, for example, the case of Nebuchadnezzar, who worshipped Daniel. Sometimes it is used to express the spurious devotion which men of old paid to idols. But most frequently it is used to indicate the highest homage that man can pay to his Maker, i.e. adoration. It is only moral intelligence that can appreciate the worth and due of God, and that is capable of offering to Him the sublimest adoration. Now, man is involved in a threefold relationship–a personal one, a family one, and a public one. From none of these will God consent to be excluded, nor is it right that He should be. We cannot dismiss Him from our personal lives, for He so encompasses us that to be rid of God means that we cease to exist. We may not close the door of the family against Him, for the family is peculiarly His institution, over which He has the right of perpetual superintendence. And if public life advances without God as its Captain, it must, as all history demonstrates, finally land in the bog of despair and ruin. But it is not sufficient that God be not excluded from the threefold life of man. He must be actively welcomed into each sphere, and His worthship be recognized therein. Undoubtedly, the most important thing of all is the worship of God in the persona! life of each man. As individuals we must recognize and love God. We cannot in this matter lose ourselves in the crowd. Next in importance to personal life is the life of the family and the worship of God there. With every fibre of my being I say to you, guard your families. Do not let your children grow up little better than heathens–teach them the Fatherhood of God and His right to their love and service. But now let us give all our attention to the matter of the public acknowledgment of the worship of God. The New Testament throughout assumes the necessity of public worship, while in several places it commands it (Heb 10:25; Mat 18:20; 1Co 14:40). And there is the example of Christ (Luk 4:16). But these commands and assumptions are not arbitrary; they simply voice the Divine instinct within us, that gregarious instinct which results in public gatherings. It is this instinct that makes public worship a necessity, for in it we express our common belief, our common prayers, and our common thanksgivings. Each of us is bound to a common Creator by a common bond, and each creature is bound to every other creature by virtue of the bond which binds all to God, and this common bond must receive common recognition. How shall this recognition be best set forth so as to employ the whole of our faculties in the exercise? Our public worship should be a service common to all. It is impossible for any minister to pray so as to comprehend all the needs of his people; at best he can only touch the surface, and it is inconvenient and might be indecorous for each person to state his own case in public. But there are certain thanksgivings and prayers which touch every nature, and in public worship these should be stated. Christ taught His disciples a form of prayer in which they were to say, Our Father, Give us, Our trespasses–a prayer common to all. But for thanksgiving and prayer to be common they must be responsive–this is demanded by the necessity of the case. The Bible patterns of worship are responsive. Read the accounts of worship in Rev 5:12. And that great Temple book–the Psalter–was composed for responsive worship. This, you perceive, brings us at once to the question of a liturgy. Might we not have a series of liturgies, compiled, if you will, from the Bible only, so arranged as to promote unity of thought? (F. C. Spurt.)
Adoration
The psalm contains two strophes or stanzas: the first consisting of five verses and the second of six. Each of these stanzas opens with an invitation. The first is an invitation to praise offered loudly with the voice. O come, let us shout joyfully to the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation; let us go forth to meet Him with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him with hymns. And the second stanza begins with an invitation to something altogether different,–to worship, or as we had better render it, to adoration. O come, let us prostrate ourselves, let us bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. The word which is rendered worship means prostration, literally nothing less than prostration. The two Words which follow mean something less emphatic–the first, the bending of the body while the worshipper still stands, the second kneeling. Nothing changes in the East so far as habit is concerned, and you cannot to-day enter a mosque without seeing each of these three words literally acted on. Sometimes the worshipper bends his head and shoulders, then he kneels, then he prostrates himself entirely, touching the ground with his forehead. This, so far as the outward posture goes, is undoubtedly what the psalmist meant to invite the congregation of Israel to do, as being the outward expression of adoration. But adoration is an inward act of the soul which corresponds with those postures of the body which have just been described. It is the soul recognizing its nothingness before the magnificence of God, its sin before His purity, its ignorance before His omniscience, its feebleness before His power. It is the creature lying in the dust and understanding, as by a flash of light from heaven, what it is to have a Creator and to be alive in His presence. It is sinful man emptying himself of self-assertion before the Being who made him, knowing himself, or almost knowing, himself as he is known, crying: Out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord, etc. When we assemble and meet together in church, it is to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at Gods bands, to set forth His most worthy praise, to hear His most holy Word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary as well for the body as the soul. Of these four objects of assembling together in church, that of hearing Gods Word, whether read or preached, is not now in question. But what is the relation of the other three, thanksgiving, praise, and prayer for blessings, to adoration? They all three differ from adoration in this, that in each of them the soul is less prostrate, more able to bear the thought of self, than in pure and simple adoration. Certainly, in praise we seem to forget self more easily than in thanksgiving or prayer, since thanksgiving carries the mind back to something which we have received, and by which presumably we have profited, and prayer, in the narrower sense of the word, asks for new blessings, whether for the body or soul. Pure adoration has no heart for self; it lies there silent at the foot of the throne, conscious only of two things, the insignificance of self and the greatness of God. And yet adoration must be the basis, so to put it, of true thanksgiving, and praise, and prayer; it is the fitting acknowledgment of our real relations with God, which should precede them. It sometimes does, indeed, imply so paralyzing a sense of this our nothingness before God that left to itself it would make praise, thanksgiving, and prayer impossible. But here, as we lie in the dust, the one Mediator between God and man bids us take heart as He utters that most consoling sentence: No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. He-bids us, as it were, take His hand, and thus, with Him and by Him, not merely adore God, but praise Him, thank Him, pray to Him. Let us, then, briefly remind ourselves of some leading benefits of worship, which explain the importance which is assigned to it by the Church of Christ. First of all, it places us, both as individuals and as a body of men, in our true place before God our Creator. Unless, or until, we believe that one Being exists to whom we stand in a relation utterly different from that in which we stand to any other–namely, that of owing our very existence to Him–worship is impossible. Worship only begins when faith acknowledges the Almighty Creator: it dies away as faith in Him decays; it dies away as He gives place in thought to some purely human imagination respecting how the universe came to be what it actually is. But even where there is no difficulty in believing in God the Creator, and no disposition to question His existence or His power, we sometimes observe that this great belief has no practical effect whatever upon life and thought. Many men practically live as though it were not true that it is God who has made us and not we ourselves. Now, the corrective to this–which is a practical failure, after all, rather than an intellectual mistake–the corrective to this is worship. Worship places us face to face with the greatness of the Creator. The very first effort of worship implies that God is resuming, has resumed, His true place in our thoughts, that He is no longer jostled out of our mental life by a hundred puny worthless rivals belonging to the world of sense. Worship, too, obliges us to think that we are ourselves. It is one thing to hold the immortality of man as an abstract tenet; it is another to be looking forward with a steady, practical aim to a life to come. Worship, depend upon it, is the great preparation for another life–a waste of time, no doubt, if the soul dies with the perishing body, if decay be succeeded by no resurrection, but a use of time than which none can be more sensible, more legitimate, if there be a most certain hereafter, and if, while the things that are seen are temporal, the things that are not seen are eternal. And thus, lastly, worship is a stimulus to action when–and, of course, only when–it is sincere. If it be true that to work is to pray, it is also true that to pray is to work. Prayer is, in fact, work, since it makes a large demand upon the energies of the soul, and it creates and trains in us capacity for other kinds of work than itself. It not only illuminates the understanding and kindles the affection, it braces, it invigorates the will. In worship we are in contact with the most real of all beings; with Him off whose will all else that is strictly depends, and in comparison with whom the most solid matter in His universe is but as an unsubstantial shadow. This contact with the highest reality cannot but brace us, and accordingly we find in all ages that the noblest resolves to act or to suffer have again and again been formed as though in obedience to what seems a sudden overpowering flash of light during worship. So it was with Isaiah when he saw the vision in the temple. Then said I, Here am I; send me. So it has been with more than one enterprise of our own day; the original resolution to make the venture has dated from the half hour of sincere worship, in which the energies of a single character have been lifted altogether above their average level, so that it became natural and easy to remove the mountains of obstacles around that had before barred the way to action. In another world we shall probably look back upon the way in which we have spent much of our time here with deep, although unavailing, regret; but we may be sure that no such regret will ever be felt on account of any time that has been devoted to the worship of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. (Canon Liddon.)
The duty of external worship
External adoration may be considered as–
I. A part of that natural homage which the whole man, soul and body, owes to God, upon the account of His creation and preservation of us, and His sovereign dominion over us. We all look for the glorification, not only of our souls, but bodies, in the life to come. Now, a reward supposeth a work; it is meet and right, therefore, that we should worship and glorify God in this life with the body as well as the soul, if so be we expect that God should glorify both our bodies and souls in another.
II. A help and assistance towards promoting the spiritual worship of our souls. There is so close a connection between the mind and its organs, that they act, as it were, by consent; and the motions of the one do commonly, and in some degree, pass into the other. And this natural sympathy shows itself nowhere more remarkably than in acts of devotion. We usually blame the body to a high degree, as the great clog and hindrance of the soul. And so it often is. But here it may be made to draw equally in the yoke of duty; nay, even to give wings to the mind, which it presseth down, and overwhelms on many other occasions. Nor is the body more beholden to the soul, for the beginning of its motions, than the soul afterwards is to the body, for the increase of hers.
III. A sign by which we express to others the religious esteem and veneration that dwells in us. Great are the advantages which the people of God, when they are met together, do mutually receive from it. The cold and remiss worshipper is, at the sight of an exemplary, kindled into some degrees of holy warmth; the fervent and devout in the presence of it becomes yet more inflamed. A religious emulation rises then in the breast of the faithful, a holy strife and desire of excelling. But believers are not the only persons that receive benefit by it; unbelievers, too, though unwillingly, have their share. The profane scoffer, who dares encounter a single Christian without shame or fear of reproof has here an answer to his bold scoffs, in that still and powerful argument, which arises from the behaviour of a devout multitude, worshipping God in the beauty of holiness: such an argument as will destroy all its unreasonable suspicions, and convince him of the sincerity of mens hearts towards God, by the natural unaffected signs of it, which are shown in his service: such as will put him in mind of the numbers of devout and good men against which he engages; lead him on from the thought of the present congregation to those of the same kind that are spread over the face of the earth; and make him sit down and consider whether with such a small strength (his own, and that of a few more) he can encounter so many thousands, even the united wisdom and practice of mankind (1Co 14:24-25). (Bp. Atterbury.)
Spiritual worship
Whatever other ends are secured by sanctuary service,–the education of thought, the quickening of sensibility, and the deepening of religious trust,–this is one main end, the worship of God. We bow before God because He is infinitely just, and true, and pure, and good,–worthy of all our reverence and love; and the song of redemption, as it is celebrated in heaven, fixes our attention upon the glory of the Saviours nature, as well as the merit of the Saviours work.
I. Everything in a Christian service should be regulated so as to advance spiritual life. The instincts of a fervent Christian man will resent all that is showy and formal, and will rejoice in all that lifts his heart and his thoughts into communion with the living God.
II. If that spiritual worship be present there will be no cry for forms of prayer. To enjoy prayer is one of the marks of true devoutness, and when there is delight in approaching God, the soul will choose its own simplest forms of speech. They will be touched with a broken spirit and a contrite heart. Meditation is prayer in preparation, and prayer is preparation spoken.
III. In the preservation of spiritual devoutness the worshippers have much to do. Remember this: that worship must be in harmony with our life, and not a brilliant exception to it. True prayer is connected with the continuous life of God in the soul. It is not the lifting up into a region we are strangers to, a kind of Alpine summit situation to which we have painfully climbed, but rather the enjoyment of an air which is the common breath of our souls. Then the worshipper can afford his earnest and hearty Amen! This he ought to do, this God wishes him to do: Let all the people say, Amen.
IV. In such spiritual worship, praise takes, its appropriate place. We desiderate united praise. It is not loudness we want; shouting, either in preaching, praise, or prayer, is not power; but we do want the united service of all voices and hearts, as they are touched with the Spirit of the living God. Nothing is so painful as a kind of languid indifference, or a listless mannerism, as though we had little at all to do with the service. Every man, woman, and child in the sanctuary ought to sing, ought to be in earnest about it, and ought to do their best at it.
V. In such spiritual service we are typing and tasting the worship of heaven. That worship we may well believe will be all that is deepest in reverence, all that is sweetest in melody, all that is purest in love. (W. M. Statham.)
Divine worship
I. The component elements of true worship. As it is the chief fact with regard to man, so it is of the highest consequence.
1. It has its inward principles. Its root is in the soul. God is a Spirit, etc. There must be–
(1) Profound reverence. This is the basis of religious excellence, and is inspired by the contemplation of God and of ourselves in His sight.
(2) Humility.
(3) Submissive trust and love.
(4) Humble hope.
2. It has its proper external acts. As the face is the index of the emotions, so outward acts are the index of the spiritual feelings within. There must be–
(1) Appropriate postures and demeanour.
(2) Appropriate times.
(3) Appropriate acts and places.
Splendour of churches is only blameable when it interferes with charity; God, who requireth charity as necessary, accepteth the other also as being an honourable work.
II. The reasons rendering Divine worship obligatory.
1. It is based upon our relations to God and the constitution and nature of the human mind.
2. It is a Divine institution. In the Old Testament it is abundantly commanded; taken for granted in the New Testament.
3. It is of supreme importance to the mental and spiritual welfare of the world.
(1) Its importance to ourselves is great. It maintains a sense of religion in the soul.
(2) To others the value is great.
Without our days, and acts, and places of worship, men would become entirely abandoned to a worldly and irreligious life. The maintenance of worship is the proclamation of the fundamental truths of religion, which bring blessedness to the individual soul, and peace and prosperity to society. Seek to attain the highest ends of worship in yourselves. Make your life one act of worship, one great psalm. (James Foster, B.A.)
Humility in approaching God
Shall we presume, says Thoreau, to alter the angle at which God chooses to be worshipped–kneel before the Lord our Maker?
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 6. O come, let us worship] Three distinct words are used here to express three different acts of adoration:
1. Let us worship, nishtachaveh, let us prostrate ourselves; the highest act of adoration by which the supremacy of God is acknowledged.
2. Let us bow down, nichraah, let us crouch or cower down, bending the legs under, as a dog in the presence of his master, which solicitously waits to receive his commands.
3. Let us kneel, nibrachah, let us put our knees to the ground, and thus put ourselves in the posture of those who supplicate.
And let us consider that all this should be done in the presence of HIM who is Jehovah our Creator.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
By which expressions he teacheth that even in gospel times God is to be glorified and worshipped, as well with the members of our bodies, as with the faculties of our souls.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
6. comeor, “enter,”with solemn forms, as well as hearts.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
O come, let us worship and bow down,…. Before him who is the Rock of our salvation, the great God and great King, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the proper object of all religious worship and adoration: Christ is to be worshipped with every part of external worship under the New Testament dispensation; psalms and songs of praise are to be sung unto him; prayer is to be made unto him; the Gospel is to be preached, and ordinances to be administered, in his name; and likewise with all internal worship, in the exercise of every grace on him, as faith, hope, and love: see Ps 45:11,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; both in a natural and spiritual sense: Christ is the Maker of us as creatures, of our souls and bodies; we have our natural being from him, and are supported in it by him; and he is the Maker of us as new creatures; we are his workmanship, created in him, and by him; and therefore he should be worshipped by us, Eph 2:10. Kimchi distinguishes these several gestures, expressed by the different words here used; the first, we render worship, signifies, according to him, the prostration of the whole body on the ground, with the hands and legs stretched out; the second, a bowing of the head, with part of the body; and the third, a bending of the knees on the ground; but though each of these postures and gestures have been, and may be, used in religious worship, yet they seem not so much to design them themselves, and the particular use of them, as worship itself, which is in general intended by them.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
6. Come ye, let us worship Now that the Psalmist exhorts God’s chosen people to gratitude, for that pre-eminency among the nations which he had conferred upon them in the exercise of his free favor, his language grows more vehement. God supplies us with ample grounds of praise when he invests us with spiritual distinction, and advances us to a pre-eminency above the rest of mankind which rests upon no merits of our own. In three successive terms he expresses the one duty incumbent upon the children of Abraham, that of an entire devotement of themselves to God. The worship of God, which the Psalmist here speaks of, is assuredly a matter of such importance as to demand our whole strength; but we are to notice, that he particularly condescends upon one point, the paternal favor of God, evidenced in his exclusive adoption of the posterity of Abraham unto the hope of eternal life. We are also to observe, that mention is made not only of inward gratitude, but the necessity of an outward profession of godliness. The three words which are used imply that, to discharge their duty properly, the Lord’s people must present themselves a sacrifice to him publicly, with kneeling, and other marks of devotion. The face of the Lord is an expression to be understood in the sense I referred to above, — that the people should prostrate themselves before the Ark of the Covenant, for the reference is to the mode of worship under the Law. This remark, however, must be taken with one reservation, that the worshippers were to lift their eyes to heaven, and serve God in a spiritual manner. (47)
(47) “ Il faut neantmoins tousjours adjoustor ceste exception, que les fideles eslevans les yeux au ciel, adorent Dieu spirituellement.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(6) Worship.Properly, prostrate ourselves.
Kneel.The practice of kneeling low in the East, only used in moments of deep humiliation, is first mentioned in 2Ch. 6:13. It was also Daniels practice (Dan. 6:10).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
6. Worship bow down kneel Three different words, expressive of the humblest form of bodily prostration before a superior, and repeated for intensity.
Kneel before the Lord Literally, Kneel to the face of Jehovah; in his immediate presence a spiritual anticipation of Heb 10:22. The outward homage must arise from, and sincerely express, the inward feeling and desire. “In the shell of the kneeling there must be contained the kernel of unreserved surrender, which manifests itself in willing obedience.” Hengstenberg.
DISCOURSE: 660 Psa 95:6-11. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness; when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work. Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways; unto whom I sware in my wrath, that they should not enter into my rest.
IN the former part of this psalm, the Jewish people, for whom it was composed, mutually exhorted each other: in the latter part, God himself is the speaker: and the manner in which this latter part is cited in the Epistle to the Hebrews, shews, that the whole psalm is as proper for the use of the Christian, as it was of the Jewish, Church. The peculiar circumstance of its consisting of a mutual exhortation is there expressly noticed: and noticed with particular approbation: Exhort one another daily, while it is called To-day [Note: Heb 3:13.]. This hint the Compilers of our Liturgy attended to, when they appointed this psalm to be read constantly in the Morning Service, as introductory to the other psalms that should come in rotation: and, as being so appointed, it deserves from us a more than ordinary attention.
In discoursing upon it, we shall notice,
I.
The exhortation
[The proper object of our worship is here described. As addressed to the Jews, the terms here used would fix their attention on Jehovah, as contra-distinguished from all false gods: but, as addressed to Christians, they lead our minds to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God with us, even God over all, blessed for evermore. He is our Maker; for by him were all things created, both which are in heaven and in earth [Note: Joh 1:3.]. He is the good Shepherd, who laid down his life for his sheep, and who watches over them, and preserves them day and night [Note: Joh 10:11. Heb 13:20. Eze 34:11-16.]. Him then we must worship with all humility of mind, bowing down, and kneeling before him. At his hands must we seek for mercy, even through his all-atoning sacrifice and from him, as our living Head, must we look for all necessary supplies of grace and peace
O come, let us thus approach him! let us do it not merely in the public services of our Church, but in our secret chambers; and not occasionally only, but constantly; having all our dependence upon him, and all our expectations from him.] II.
The warning with which it is enforced
[The Jews who, in the wilderness, disobeyed the heavenly call, were never suffered to enter into the land of Canaan. In the judgments inflicted upon them, they are held forth as a warning to us [Note: 1Co 10:1-11.]. Like them, we have seen all the wonders of Gods love, in delivering us from a far sorer than Egyptian bondage. Like them, we have had spiritual food administered to us in rich abundance in the Gospel of Christ. And if, like them, we harden our hearts, and rebel against our God, like them, we must be excluded from the heavenly Canaan. They by their obstinacy provoked God to exclude them with an oath: O that we may never provoke him to swear that we also shall never enter into his rest! That we are in danger of bringing this awful judgment on ourselves is evident from the intimation given us by the Apostle Jude [Note: ver. 5.], and yet more plainly from the warnings which St. Paul founds on this very passage [Note: Heb 3:7-19; Heb 4:1.] Let us then hear the voice of our good Shepherd, ere it be too late. Let us grieve him no longer but let us turn to him with our whole hearts Caleb and Joshua were admitted into Canaan, because they followed the Lord fully: let us follow him fully, and we shall certainly attain the promised rest.]
After the example of St. Paul, we would with all earnestness caution you against,
1.
Unbelief
[The Jews believed neither the promises nor the threatenings of God, and therefore they perished. Let us beware lest we fall after the same example of unbelief [Note: Heb 4:12.]. If we will not believe that we stand in need of mercy to the extent that God has declared, or that the service of God is so reasonable and blessed as he has represented it to be, or that the judgments of God shall infallibly come on all who refuse to serve him, there is no hope: we must perish, notwithstanding all the offers of mercy that are sent to us: for the word preached cannot profit us, if it be not mixed with faith in them that hear it [Note: Heb 4:2.].]
2.
Hardness of heart
[As Israel hardened themselves against God when his messages were sent them by Moses, so do many now harden themselves against the word preached by the ministers of Christ. They puff at all the judgments denounced against them [Note: Psa 10:4-5.]. But who ever hardened himself against God, and prospered? O! will your hearts be stout in the day that he shall deal with you? and will you thunder with a voice like his? Be persuaded: humble yourselves before him, yea, bow down and kneel before him, and never cease to cry for mercy, till he has turned away his anger, and spoken peace to your souls.]
3.
Delay
[To-day, says the Psalmist: To-day, while it is called To-day,says the Apostle Paul: and To-day, would I say: yes, Brethren, to-day harden not your hearts; for you know not what a day may bring forth. Before another day, you may be taken into the eternal world; or, if not, you may provoke God to swear in his wrath, that you shall never enter into his rest; and then your remaining days will answer no other end, than to fill up the measure of your iniquities. But surely you have grieved him long enough already; some of you twenty, some thirty, some perhaps even forty years. Let there be an end of this rebellion against your Maker and your Redeemer; and let this, which is with him the day of grace, be to you the day of salvation.]
The call is again in a beautiful manner repeated, and the invitation to praise him is now joined with a request also to pray to him, to fall down before him, both as our Maker in original creation, and our Maker in the new creation by the Holy Ghost; and, by every act of unfeigned love and holy joy and adoration, tell our glorious Immanuel what our souls feel in every suited affection towards him. And as these high-sounding praises are with special reference to Jesus, as the Rock of our salvation; so in the same special manner we behold ourselves as his redeemed, his people, and the sheep of his hand.
Psa 95:6 O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
Ver. 6. O come, let us worship and bow down ] With our whole bodies prostrate on the ground, our hands and feet stretched out (Kimchi). The Jews’ gesture of adoration at this day is the bowing forward of their bodies, for kneeling they use none (no more do the Grecians), neither stir they their bonnets in their synagogues to any man, but remain still covered.
The Lord our maker NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 95:6-7
6Come, let us worship and bow down,
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
7For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.
Today, if you would hear His voice,
Psa 95:6-11 This strophe is addressed to the Covenant people, calling them to
1. worship (Psa 95:6)
a. come (lit. come in; different word from Psa 95:1 but parallel) – BDB 97, KB 112, Qal imperative
b. let us worship – BDB 1005, KB 295, Hishtaphel imperfect used in a cohortative sense
c. let us bow down – BDB 502, KB 499, Qal cohortative
d. let us kneel before – BDB 138, KB 159, Qal cohortative
2. respond in faith (Psa 95:7)
3. not be hard hearted, as they were in the past (i.e., wilderness wandering period, Psa 95:8-11)
Psa 95:6 our Maker Gen 2:7 describes the special formation of Adam. The animals are said to be formed out of the ground also in Gen 2:19 (same verb, BDB 427, KB 428).
In Psa 139:13-16 (weave, BDB 697, KB 754) and Job 31:15 (made, BDB 793, KB 889, also Psa 139:15) God forms each human in the womb. The variety is literary but the truth is God did it/does it (cf. Psa 100:3; Psa 149:2; Isa 17:7; Hos 8:14). Humans are a special creation of God in His image and likeness (Gen 1:26-27) for the purpose of fellowship! To miss this is to miss the value and dignity of humankind (cf. Psalms 8).
Psa 95:7-11 It is interesting how the OT characterizes the wilderness wandering period differently.
1. positively
a. Deu 32:10-14
b. Jeremiah 2
c. Hos 2:15; Hos 9:10; Hos 11:1-2
2. negatively
a. Num 14:1-17
b. Psa 95:8-11
c. Ezekiel 23
This is the dilemma of all of our lives. None is perfect. There are good days and bad days, areas of strength and weakness. Thank God for His unchanging, merciful character, the New Covenant (i.e., Jer 31:31-34), and His Messiah (i.e., NT revelation).
Psa 95:7 God as Shepherd and His people as sheep is common OT imagery (see notes at Psalms 23).
The intimacy between Shepherd and sheep is strong and constant. It is ridiculous and dangerous for sheep not to listen to their shepherd! The Fall has affected us all!
1. they did not listen (Psa 95:7 c, quoted in Heb 3:7-11; Heb 3:15; Heb 4:7)
2. they harden their hearts
a. Meribah – Exo 17:7; Num 20:13
b. Massah – Exo 17:7; Deu 6:16
3. they tested God – Num 14:22
Several of the English translations start a new paragraph at Psa 95:7 c because at this point in the Psalm, YHWH is speaking (i.e., Psa 95:7-11).
Psa 95:6-7
Psa 95:6-7
“Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before Jehovah our Maker:
For he is our God,
And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
Today, oh that ye would hear his voice.”
“Oh come” (Psa 95:6) in the Latin is Venite, adopted as the opening word of the chorus in the famed Latin hymn, Adeste Fideles, “Oh Come All Ye Faithful, in which hymn the line, Venite Adoremus, is repeated three times.
“The people of his pasture” (Psa 95:7). We might have expected “sheep of his pasture” here, since it is sheep and not people who need pasture. However, such mixed metaphors are very common in scripture. Moreover, in this arrangement, the metaphor of the Lord himself as “The Good Shepherd” automatically comes to mind.
“Today, oh that ye would hear his voice” (Psa 95:7). These words form the opening line in Heb 3:7, where this passage is used as the background of what is written there, Psa 95:11, being quoted directly. “The passage in Heb 3:7 to Heb 4:13, expounding this psalm, forbids us to confine its thrust to Israel. “The `Today’ of which it speaks is this very moment; the `ye’ is none other than ourselves, and the promised `rest’ is not Canaan, but salvation.
One of the most important revelations in the New Testament turns upon this very passage. Heb 4:4 ties the “rest” mentioned in Psa 95:11 with God’s “rest” on the seventh day of creation, demanding that the present time, “this very moment,” as Kidner expressed it, be identified with God’s resting “on the seventh day.” The meaning of this is profound. H. Cotterill, the bishop of Edinburgh, declared that from this passage in Hebrews (Heb 7:3 to Heb 4:13), “We must conclude that the seventh day of God’s rest which followed the six days of creation is not yet completed.”
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 95:6. In view of the facts mentioned in the preceding verse, the Psalmist bids his people kneel and worship the Maker of all things.
Psa 95:7. The relationship between “people” and “God” would explain why David had called upon the former to kneel before the latter. Sheep of his hand denotes that the people were in the hand of God who cares for them as a shepherd cares for his flock. In view of these important facts the people are exhorted to hear the voice of the great Shepherd and follow him faithfully wherever he leads.
O come: Psa 95:1, Hos 6:1, Mat 4:2, Rev 22:17
worship: Psa 72:9, Exo 20:5, Mat 4:9, Mar 14:35, Act 10:25, Act 10:26, Rev 22:8
kneel: 1Ki 8:54, 2Ch 6:13, Ezr 9:5, Dan 6:10, Luk 22:41, Act 7:60, Act 20:36, Act 21:5, Eph 3:14, Phi 2:10, 1Co 6:20
our: Psa 100:3, Job 35:10, Ecc 12:1, Isa 54:5, Joh 1:3, 1Pe 4:19
Reciprocal: Gen 24:26 – General Gen 24:52 – worshipped Deu 26:10 – and worship Deu 32:6 – made thee 1Ch 29:20 – bowed down 2Ch 7:3 – they bowed 2Ch 20:18 – fell before 2Ch 29:30 – they sang Psa 45:11 – worship Psa 132:7 – worship Isa 43:7 – for I Jon 1:9 – which Mic 6:6 – bow Mat 2:11 – worshipped Rev 4:10 – worship
WORSHIP AND REST
O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us worship and fall down: and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
Psa 95:1; Psa 95:6 (Prayer Book Version)
Such is the invitation that Sunday by Sunday and day by day we give one another. We are about to do something joyous, gladsome, and inspiriting, and we wish others to come along with us and share our happiness. We are to fling ourselves at the feet of One Whose works proclaim His majesty.
I. Are we to acquiesce in a resting-place no larger than our counting-house or our office?Are we never to stretch ourselves beyond the narrow confines of domestic joys and business interests? Is it that we have lost what Bishop Westcott called the ennobling faculty of wonder, and with it the power of rising above ourselves and our surroundings? Ah! that is possible. The alarming increase in suicide and lunacy, in spite of the much higher standard of personal comfort, is a warning that we are losing something. And what is that? It is worship. Yes, again we are learning that the soul is made for God, and can find its rest only in Him, that no rest we can find for ourselves is comparable to the rest in worship. We are not indeed accustomed to put the two things together, we do not naturally associate rest with days of worship or places of worship. Worship as an obligation, a duty, we understand, but worship as a refreshment, a recreation, is quite novel. A day of worship we should suppose to be a dull and heavy day. And yet some can remember one day when the word spelt something like rest.
II. And afterwards, though they may not have expressed it, the same feeling was aroused by some sight of nature.A sunset, a stretch of mountain peaks, a quiet English pastoral scene, nay, even a flower, as it was with Linnus, have excited feelings too deep for tears. Or it has been the procession of an aged sovereign, dear to the hearts of the people, or of a weather-beaten soldier who has done his country great service, or some statesman who has given his nation peace. And as they stood silent, listening to the gathering roar of the people, they have realised for themselves those old Bible words, They worshipped the Lord and the King.
III. Alas! alas! My people are gone into captivity to sense for lack of knowledge.If only they knew! But why do they not know? Because the Bookthe real Wonder-Bookis often so imperfectly taught. The very wonder it is meant to excite is sometimes killed in the teaching of it. Instead of the children finding that they are insensibly drawn away from earth to a spiritual world of unseen beings, to which they are led by natural instincts, they never leave the class-room, but are confined to a school of ethics, where angels never minister, God never interferes, and miracles never happen. The natural faculty of wonder so strong in a child is checked instead of developed, and we have young people growing up who never wonder.
Yes, we begin our endeavour with those who pass our churches a little too late. Pleasant Sunday Afternoons, bright musical services, a carefully-arranged ritual, may attract and help those who can still admire and wonder, and so worship, but they cannot, except by Divine grace, touch those to whom life is but a paddock, with very insufficient pasture and very unreasonable competition. Sunday rest certainly depends on Sunday worship, but Sunday worship depends on that faculty of wonder which is kept alive by a living and growing Bible knowledge. It is that which we must strive for if Sunday is to be in the future what it has been in the past.
Canon Walpole.
Psa 95:6. O come, let us worship and bow down Let us not be backward, then, to comply with this invitation; but let us all, with the lowest prostrations, devoutly adore this great and glorious Being. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker With humble reverence, and a holy awe of him; as becomes those who know what an infinite distance there is between us and him, how much we are in danger of his wrath, and in how great need we stand of his mercy. The posture of our bodies, indeed, by itself, profits little; yet certainly it is meet and right they should bear a part in Gods service, and that internal worship should be accompanied and signified by that which is external, or that the reverence, seriousness and humility of our minds, should be manifested by our falling down on our knees before that great Jehovah, who gave us our being, and on whom we are continually dependant for the continuance of it, and for all our blessings.
95:6 O come, let us {d} worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
(d) By these three words he signifies one thing: meaning that they must wholly give themselves to serve God.
God was Israel’s Maker in a double sense. He created the nation and He redeemed it (cf. Deu 32:6). He was also Israel’s Shepherd, and the Israelites were His sheep.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
DEVOTION TO GOD RECOMMENDED AND ENFORCED
That this exhortation may not be in vain, we entreat you to consider,
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)