Chapter Ninety-Four

This psalm in the Hebrew Bible has no inscription naming the author, which is indicated in the Slavonic Bible as well, with the addition “praise, a song to David,” which, as we shall see, should be understood to mean: a hymn of praise in the manner of David.

In the psalm is depicted an extraordinary popular jubilation of a religious character, expressed in the singing of hymns of praise and thanksgiving to God. The essence and cause of the triumph lay in the revelation of divine will to all the people (see the end of Ps 94:7 and Ps 94:8). Such an elevation of religious enthusiasm in the people can be found only during the reign of Josiah, when he restored true worship and when the autograph of the law of Moses found by the high priest Hilkiah was read publicly. Under the reign of David (as some think), the content of the psalm has no connection: then there was no public revelation of divine will and no such general, purely religious jubilation for this reason. Who was the writer of the psalm, is not exactly known; perhaps Josiah himself.

The entire psalm is a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to God for the revelation of His will to the people, and the latter is invited by the author to sincere and constant adherence to His commandments.

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord, the King over all gods, the Creator of the earth, mountains, and seas (1–5). Let us bow in prayer before this great Lord, who is our God, and we are the sheep of His pasture (6–7). If we would only hear His voice now: “Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as in the day of testing in the wilderness!” (8–11).

Psalm 94:1. Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Psalm 94:2. Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song. Full of religious fervor, the author invites all Jews to hasten to confess, glorify God with hymns in solemn praise.

Psalm 94:3. For the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods. Psalm 94:4. In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him; Psalm 94:5. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. Psalm 94:6. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; Psalm 94:7. for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care. Oh, that today you would hear His voice: The subject of the singing is great: this is God, the Creator of the whole world and its Lord. He is also God especially of the Jews, whom He tends like a shepherd tends sheep. Such a relation of God to the Jewish people is revealed from all its previous history, as well as from the giving of the law, which was given only to them, which clearly testifies how much the Lord loves and distinguishes the Jews from all other peoples.

Psalm 94:8. “Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness, Psalm 94:9. where your fathers tested and tried Me, though they had seen what I did. Psalm 94:10. For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known My ways,’ Psalm 94:11. So I declared on oath in My anger, “They shall never enter My rest. For this reason the Jewish people must cherish the benevolence of such a great Being, and (“Oh, that today you would hear His voice”) when they hear the reading of the law, they should assimilate it deeply and obediently submit to the directions of divine will, but not act according to the example of their ancestors, who proved to be crude and unresponsive (“do not harden your hearts”) to His words, and therefore incurred His wrath through their actions after the exodus from Egypt (understood as their repeated murmuring against Moses and against God), when the Lord performed many wonders for them (“they had seen what I did”). “Meribah”—the name of a place where the Jews rebelled in the wilderness of Rephidim (Exod 17:1-7), which Moses called “Meribah,” meaning murmuring. The Lord condemned them to forty years of wandering, and appointed to die all who “go astray in their hearts,” constantly showing a lack of faith. Regarding the latter, the Lord pronounced a severe, but just and compelled by their behavior judgment—they shall not enter Palestine (“that they shall never enter My rest”), appointed as the place of their permanent, peaceful, and independent existence. Inheritance of Palestine was conditioned by the exact and constant observance by the Jews of all of Moses’s law. The public reading of the law under Josiah made it possible for every Jew to become acquainted with the will of God, and it already depended on his desire whether to follow it or not, and together with this whether to inherit Palestine or be deprived of it. In the Letter to the Hebrews (Heb 3:7-11) the aforesaid fact is given a messianic meaning. In the public preaching of Josiah is prefigured the times of grace of the Christian era, when the teaching of Christ is proclaimed publicly, when everyone can know the will of the Lord, and according to his relation to this will will either inherit or lose the place of rest, the New Testament Palestine—bliss with God, paradise.