1 To Thee silence is praise, O God, in Zion, And to Thee shall the vow be paid. 2 O Thou hearer of prayer, To Thee all flesh comes. 3 Deeds of iniquity have been too strong for me: Our transgressions--Thou, Thou coverest them. 4 Blessed is he whom Thou choosest and bringest near, That he may dwell in Thy courts: We would be filled with the goodness of Thy house, Thy holy temple.
5 By dread deeds in righteousness Thou dost answer us, O God of our salvation, The confidence of all the ends of the earth and of the remotest sea: 6 Setting fast the mountains by His strength, Being girded with might, 7 Stilling the roar of the seas, the roar of their billows, And the tumult of the peoples. 8 So that the inhabitants of the ends [of the earth] become afraid at Thy signs: The regions whence morning and evening come forth Thou makest to shout for joy.
9 Thou hast visited the land and watered it, Thou enrichest it abundantly [by] a river of God, full of water, Thou preparest their corn when thus Thou preparest it: 10 Watering its furrows, levelling its ridges, With showers Thou softenest it, Its outgrowth Thou dost bless. 11 Thou hast crowned the year of Thy goodness, And Thy chariot-tracks drop fatness. 12 The pastures of the wilderness drop, And the heights gird themselves with leaping gladness. 13 The meadows are clothed with flocks, And the valleys are covered with corn, They shout for joy, they also sing.
This and the two following psalms form a little group, with one great thought dominant in each--namely, that God's manifestations of grace and providence to Israel are witnesses to the world. They all reach out to "the ends of the earth" in yearning and confidence that God's name will be adored there, and they all regard His dealings with His people as His appeals to mankind, which will not always be vain. Psalm lxv. begins with that privilege of approach to God with which Psalm lxvi. ends. In both, iniquity in heart is regarded as hindering access to God; and, in both, the psalmist's experience of answered prayer is treated as testimony for the world of the blessedness of worshipping Israel's God. This psalm falls into three parts, which set forth a threefold revelation of God in His acts. The first (vv. 1-4) deals with the most intimate privileges of the men who dwell in His house. The second (vv. 5-8) points to His rule in nature, the tokens of God's power in the mighty things of creation--mountains, ocean, day and night, the radiant east, the solemn sunset-west. The third (vv. 9-13) gives a lovely picture of the annual miracle which brings harvest joys. The underlying thought binding these three parts into unity seems to be the witness to God's name which each set of His acts bears--a witness which "they that dwell in the uttermost parts" hear sounded in their ears. If this is the true view of the psalm, we may hear a reminiscence of it in Paul's remonstrance with the rude Lycaonian peasants: "He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness."
The first strophe is wholly concerned with the glory of God as answering prayer. It begins with enigmatical words, which, if the existing text is adhered to, carry a deep truth. There are two kinds of prayer--wordless submission of will and spoken vows. The former is truly praise. The same thought is found in Psalm lxii. It goes down to the root of the matter. The true notion of prayer is not that of swaying God's will to gratify ours, but that of bringing ours into unremonstrating acceptance of His. When the accents of eager desire or of impatient murmuring and vain sobs and weeping are hushed, the still soul enters into closeness of communion, else unattainable. Beautiful and profoundly true as this is, it is not indubitably the psalmist's meaning; and there is much to be said for the rendering which is adopted from the LXX. by many commentators, and which only requires a slight change in the vocalisation--namely, "Praise is meet for Thee." But that idea is expressed in Psalm xxxiii. 1 by a different word, and the meaning of the one used here is not _to be suitable for_, but _to be like_. So that we have to choose between altering the text and then imposing a somewhat unusual meaning on the word gained, and adhering to the present reading and gaining a meaning which is admitted to be "fine" but alleged to be "unbiblical." On the whole, that meaning seems preferable. The convictions that God accepts silent devotion and answers vows, so that the thank-offering promised in trouble will be called for by deliverance, "fill the psalmist with a longing that all mankind may have recourse to the same Divine Friend" (Cheyne, _in loc._). His experience of accepted prayers has taught him that it is God's nature and property to be "the hearer of prayer" (the word is a participle, expressive of a permanent characteristic), and therefore he is sure that "all flesh," in its weariness and need of an ear into which to pour necessities and sorrows, will come to Him. His eye travels far beyond Israel, and contemplates mankind as coming to worship. But one black barrier rises between men and God, the separating power of which the singer has painfully felt. Sin chokes the stream that would flow from seeking hearts into the ocean of God. The very act of gathering himself up to pray and praise quickens the sense of sinfulness in the psalmist. Therefore his look turns swiftly inwards, for the only time in the psalm. The consciousness of transgression wakes the sense of personality and isolation as nothing else will, and for one bitter moment the singer is, as it were, prisoned in the awful solitude of individual responsibility. His words reflect his vivid sight of his sins in their manifoldness, for he says that "matters of iniquities" have overcome him. The exuberant expression is not tautological, but emotional. And then he passes into sunshine again, and finds that, though he had to be alone in guilt, he is one of a company in the experience of forgiveness. Emphatically he reduplicates "Thou" in his burst of confidence in God's covering of sins; for none but God can cope with the evil things that are too strong for man. I can neither keep them out, nor drive them out when they have come in, nor cleanse the stains that their hoofs have made; but Thou, Thou canst and dost cover them. Is not that an additional reason for "all flesh" coming to God, and almost a guarantee that they will?