Psalms 65: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm is a song of praise to God in Zion, thanking him for hearing prayer and for forgiving wrongdoing, and calling happy the person God chooses to bring near to his temple. It then praises God's power over mountains, seas, and the uproar of nations, and his signs that reach people in the farthest places. The last part describes God watering the land, providing grain, and crowning the year with plenty, until the meadows are clothed with flocks and the valleys shout and sing.

Claim by Claim

1. 65:1
   • Praise belongs to God in Zion, awaiting him in silence (the Hebrew word rendered 'waiteth' means silence or still waiting, and the line is ambiguous between the two)
   • Vows will be paid to God
2. 65:2
   • God hears prayer
   • All flesh will come to God
3. 65:3
   • Deeds of iniquity are too strong for the speaker
   • God covers over our transgressions
4. 65:4
   • The one whom God chooses and brings near to dwell in his courts is blessed
   • We will be satisfied with the goodness of God's house
   • That goodness is the goodness of God's holy temple
5. 65:5
   • God answers us with awesome deeds in righteousness
   • God is the God of our salvation
   • God is the trust of all the ends of the earth
   • God is the trust of the distant sea, or of those far off upon the sea (the Hebrew is ambiguous)
6. 65:6
   • God sets the mountains firm by his strength
   • God is girded with might
7. 65:7
   • God stills the roaring of the seas
   • God stills the roaring of their waves
   • God stills the tumult of the peoples
8. 65:8
   • Those who dwell at the farthest limits are afraid at God's signs
   • God makes the goings out of the morning and the evening shout for joy
9. 65:9
   • God attends to the earth and waters it
   • God greatly enriches the earth
   • The channel of God is full of water
   • God prepares grain for the people
   • God has so provided for the earth
10. 65:10
    • God waters the earth's furrows abundantly
    • God settles its ridges
    • God softens the earth with showers
    • God blesses its sprouting growth
11. 65:11
    • God crowns the year with his goodness
    • God's tracks drip with fatness
12. 65:12
    • The pastures of the wilderness drip with abundance
    • The hills are girded with rejoicing
13. 65:13
    • The meadows are clothed with flocks
    • The valleys are covered over with grain
    • They shout for joy
    • They also sing

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

65:1

Zion was the hill in Jerusalem on which the city and its temple stood; the name is often used for the city itself. "Praise waiteth for thee" translates a Hebrew phrase that can also be read "praise is silence to you" (that is, silent waiting before God is itself the praise due him. Translators are divided, and both senses have been read here since antiquity. A "vow" was a formal promise to give God something specific) a sacrifice, a gift, a payment at the temple, usually made when asking for help, and settled up afterwards.

65:2

"All flesh" is an old way of saying every living person. It does not mean bodies without people.

65:3

The verb behind "purge them away" is the ordinary Hebrew word for making atonement: covering over or wiping out an offense, the language used of what the temple sacrifices accomplished. Note the shift the King James preserves: the trouble is spoken of in the singular ("against me") and the remedy in the plural ("our transgressions"). The change from one voice to many is in the Hebrew, not an error.

65:4

The "courts" are the open walled courtyards surrounding the temple building, where worshipers gathered; the building itself was entered only by priests. To "dwell in thy courts" pictures someone given permanent access to that space. "House" and "temple" here are the same place, named twice.

65:5

"Terrible" in 1611 English meant awe-inspiring, fear-producing, the effect of something overwhelming, not "very bad," which is the modern sense. "The ends of the earth" is a standard Hebrew phrase for the farthest inhabited lands.

65:6

To be "girded" is to tie a belt around the waist, pulling loose robes tight and out of the way, what a person did before hard work, a journey, or a fight. Saying God is girded with power pictures him dressed and braced for action.

65:7

In Hebrew poetry the roaring sea and the uproar of nations are a conventional pair, described in the same words; "the people" here translates a plural noun meaning the peoples or nations, not one particular population.

65:8

"Tokens" is the older English word for signs, visible things that carry a meaning. "The outgoings of the morning and evening" means the points where dawn and dusk come out, that is, the eastern and western horizons; the phrase can be heard either as those two ends of the world or as the two moments of the day themselves.

65:9

"Corn" in 1611 English meant grain of any kind, chiefly wheat and barley, not maize or sweetcorn, which are American plants unknown in Europe when this was translated. "Visitest" means comes to attend to, the way one comes to inspect and care for something, not merely to call in. "The river of God" translates a word for an irrigation channel or watercourse; in a land farmed almost entirely on rainfall, water arriving from the sky was the whole margin between harvest and famine.

65:10

"Ridges" and "furrows" are the raised lines and the trenches between them left by a plow. Whether the second verb means God levels the ridges down or settles the soil in the furrows is unclear in the Hebrew, and translations differ.

65:11

"Fatness" in older English meant richness or abundance (the good, rich part of anything, as fat was the prized portion of an animal) with none of the modern sense of being overweight. The image is of God traveling across the land and fertility dripping from the tracks his chariot leaves.

65:12

"The wilderness" here is open uncultivated country used for grazing, scrubland and rough pasture, not lifeless desert. It is where flocks were driven, away from the plowed fields.

65:13

"Corn" again means grain, wheat or barley in the ear. The valleys and pastures are the ones doing the shouting and singing: the land itself is spoken of as a crowd celebrating.