2 So that men may see your way on the earth, and your salvation among all nations.
For the grace of God has come, giving salvation to all men,
The Lord has given to all the knowledge of his salvation; he has made clear his righteousness in the eyes of the nations. He has kept in mind his mercy and his unchanging faith to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
And Mordecai went out from before the king, dressed in king-like robes of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold and clothing of purple and the best linen: and all the town of Shushan gave loud cries of joy. And the Jews had light and joy and honour. And in every part of the kingdom and in every town, wherever the king's letter and his order came, the Jews were glad with great joy, and had a feast and a good day. And a great number of the people of the land became Jews: for the fear of the Jews had come on them.
Why are you crushed down, O my soul? and why are you troubled in me? put your hope in God, for I will again give him praise who is my help and my God.
<To the chief music-maker. A Song. A Psalm.> Send up a glad cry to God, all the earth: Make a song in honour of his name: give praise and glory to him. Say to God, How greatly to be feared are your works! because of your great power your haters are forced to put themselves under your feet. Let all the earth give you worship, and make songs to you; let them make songs to your name. (Selah.)
For great is his mercy to us, and his faith is unchanging for ever. Praise be to the Lord.
It is not enough for one who is my servant to put the tribes of Jacob again in their place, and to get back those of Israel who have been sent away: my purpose is to give you as a light to the nations, so that you may be my salvation to the end of the earth.
This is what the Lord of armies has said: It will again come about that when peoples and those living in great towns come, And the people of one town go to another and say, Let us certainly go with a request for grace from the Lord, and to give worship to the Lord of armies, then I will go with you. And great peoples and strong nations will come to give worship to the Lord of armies in Jerusalem and to make requests for grace from the Lord. This is what the Lord of armies has said: In those days, ten men from all the languages of the nations will put out their hands and take a grip of the skirt of him who is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for it has come to our ears that God is with you.
Go then, and make disciples of all the nations, giving them baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit:
And so the church through all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was made strong; and, living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, was increased greatly.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 67
Commentary on Psalms 67 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Harvest Thanksgiving Song
Like Psalms 65:1-13, this Psalm, inscribed To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments, a song-Psalm ( מזמור שׁיר ), also celebrates the blessing upon the cultivation of the ground. As Psalms 65:1-13 contemplated the corn and fruits as still standing in the fields, so this Psalm contemplates, as it seems, the harvest as already gathered in, in the light of the redemptive history. Each plentiful harvest is to Israel a fulfilment of the promise given in Leviticus 26:4, and a pledge that God is with His people, and that its mission to the whole world (of peoples) shall not remain unaccomplished. This mission-tone referring to the end of God's work here below is unfortunately lost in the church's closing strain, “God be gracious and merciful unto us,” but it sounds all the more distinctly and sweetly in Luther's hymn, “ Es woll uns Gott genädig sein ,” throughout.
There are seven stanzas: twice three two-line stanzas, having one of three lines in the middle, which forms the clasp or spangle of the septiad, a circumstance which is strikingly appropriate to the fact that this Psalm is called “the Old Testament Paternoster” in some of the old expositors.
(Note: Vid., Sonntag's Tituli Psalmorum (1687), where it is on this account laid out as the Rogate Psalm.)
The second half after the three-line stanza beings in Psalms 67:6 exactly as the first closed in Psalms 67:4. יברכנוּ is repeated three times, in order that the whole may bear the impress of the blessing of the priest, which is threefold.
The Psalm begins (Psalms 67:1) with words of the priest's benediction in Numbers 6:24-26. By אתּנוּ the church desires for itself the unveiled presence of the light-diffusing loving countenance of its God. Here, after the echo of the holiest and most glorious benediction, the music strikes in. With Psalms 67:2 the Beracha passes over into a Tephilla . לדעת is conceived with the most general subject: that one may know, that may be known Thy way, etc. The more graciously God attests Himself to the church, the more widely and successfully does the knowledge of this God spread itself forth from the church over the whole earth. They then know His דּרך , i.e., the progressive realization of His counsel, and His ישׁוּעה , the salvation at which this counsel aims, the salvation not of Israel merely, but of all mankind.
Now follows the prospect of the entrance of all peoples into the kingdom of God, who will then praise Him in common with Israel as their God also. His judging ( שׁפט ) in this instance is not meant as a judicial punishment, but as a righteous and mild government, just as in the christological parallels Psalms 72:12., Isaiah 11:3. מישׁר in an ethical sense for מישׁרים , as in Psalms 45:7; Isaiah 11:4; Malachi 2:6. הנחה as in Psalms 31:4 of gracious guidance (otherwise than in Job 12:23).
The joyous prospect of the conversion of heathen, expressed in the same words as in Psalms 67:5, here receives as its foundation a joyous event of the present time: the earth has just yielded its fruit (cf. Psalms 85:13), the fruit that had been sown and hoped for. This increase of corn and fruits is a blessing and an earnest of further blessing, by virtue of which (Jeremiah 33:9; Isaiah 60:3; cf. on the contrary Joel 2:17) it shall come to pass that all peoples unto the uttermost bounds of the earth shall reverence the God of Israel. For it is the way of God, that all the good that He manifests towards Israel shall be for the well-being of mankind.