Commentary - Psalm 66:8-12

Bird's-eye view

This section of Psalm 66 is a corporate testimony of deliverance, a national anthem sung by those who have been brought through the furnace. The psalmist, speaking for the people of God, calls on all nations to bless the Lord. And why? Because God is the one who sovereignly orchestrates both the trial and the triumph. This is not a testimony that papers over the hard parts. It is brutally realistic about the affliction. God tested them, refined them, trapped them, burdened them, and let enemies humiliate them. They went through fire and flood. But the testimony does not end there, because God is the one who also brought them out into a place of abundance. The central theological truth here is the absolute and meticulous sovereignty of God over the sufferings of His people for their ultimate good. He is the metallurgist, and we are the silver. The fire is His tool, and the purpose is our purity and His praise.

The passage moves from a public call to worship to a detailed remembrance of the hardship, and then climaxes in the celebration of deliverance. It is a microcosm of the Christian life. God does not promise to keep us from the furnace, but He does promise to sit with us as the refiner and to bring us out shining. This is theology forged in affliction, where the goodness of God is not an abstract proposition but a hard-won reality, proven in the crucible of experience.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 66 is a psalm of corporate thanksgiving. It begins with a universal call for all the earth to praise God for His awesome deeds (vv. 1-7), specifically mentioning the Exodus as a paradigm of His power. The section we are looking at (vv. 8-12) then shifts to a more intimate reflection on a more recent, or perhaps archetypal, experience of national suffering and deliverance. After this corporate testimony, the psalm transitions again to a personal testimony, where an individual "I" comes to fulfill his vows in the temple, having been personally heard by God (vv. 13-20). This movement from the universal, to the corporate, to the individual is significant. It shows that God's great redemptive acts in history are the foundation for the nation's confidence, and the nation's experience of deliverance is the context for the individual's personal faith and worship. The trouble described here is not random; it is a part of God's covenant dealings with His people, designed to test and purify them before bringing them into a place of blessing.

Key Issues

The Meticulous Hand of God

One of the central temptations for Christians in the midst of suffering is to believe that God has lost control, or that He has taken His hand off the wheel. We look at the circumstances, the oppression, the pain, and we think that this must be the work of the devil, or random chance, or our enemies alone. But this psalm will not let us go there. Notice the consistent use of "You." "For You have tested us... You have refined us... You brought us into the net... You established an oppressive burden... You made men ride over our heads... Yet You brought us out."

This is not fatalism. This is robust, biblical theism. God is not simply the one who cleans up the mess after the fact. He is the one who ordains the mess for His own holy purposes. He is the one who turns up the heat on the furnace. He is the one who allows the enemy to gain a temporary upper hand. To the modern, sentimental Christian, this can sound harsh. But to the believer who is actually in the fire, this is the only doctrine that provides any real comfort. If God is not in control of the trial, then there is no guarantee that it has any meaning, and no guarantee that it will ever end. But if God is the one who led you into the fire, He is also the one who knows the way out, and He will not leave you there one second longer than is necessary for your purification and His glory.

Verse by Verse Commentary

8 Bless our God, O peoples, And make the sound of His praise heard,

The testimony begins with an evangelistic summons. The psalmist, speaking on behalf of Israel, turns to the surrounding nations, the Gentiles, and invites them into the chorus of praise. This is not a private affair. When God delivers His people, it is meant to be a public spectacle. The deliverance is so remarkable that it ought to be talked about. The praise is not to be a quiet, internal sentiment. It is a sound that must be heard. This is the overflow of a heart that has experienced both the severity and the goodness of the Lord. The first thing they want to do with their deliverance is to tell everyone else how great their God is.

9 Who establishes us among the living And does not allow our feet to stumble.

Here is the foundation for the praise. First, God gives and preserves life itself. He "establishes us among the living," which means He sets our soul in life. It is not that we are alive by accident; our very existence is a direct and ongoing act of His sustaining power. Second, He provides stability. He "does not allow our feet to stumble." This doesn't mean we never face treacherous paths; the following verses will make that abundantly clear. It means that in the midst of those paths, He provides a supernatural sure-footedness. He keeps us from the kind of fall that would take us out of the covenant and into ultimate ruin. He preserves His saints, not from all trouble, but through all trouble.

10 For You have tested us, O God; You have refined us as silver is refined.

Now the psalmist gets to the heart of the testimony. The reason for the praise is not that God kept them from hardship, but that He took them through a very specific kind of hardship. The word for "tested" here means to prove or to examine. God puts His people through trials to reveal what is really in their hearts, both to themselves and to the watching world. The second clause explains the purpose of the test: "You have refined us as silver is refined." This is a metallurgical metaphor. Raw silver ore is full of dross, worthless impurities. To get pure silver, you have to put the ore into a crucible and heat it until the silver melts and the dross separates and can be skimmed off. It is a violent, fiery process. And this is what God does with His people. He puts us in the furnace of affliction to burn away our pride, our self-reliance, our idolatry, and our sin, leaving behind the pure reflection of His own character.

11 You brought us into the net; You established an oppressive burden upon our loins.

The psalmist now elaborates on the nature of the refining process, and he does not mince words. First, God "brought us into the net." This is the image of being trapped like a wild animal. It speaks of a situation of confinement, of feeling cornered with no way out. This was not an accident; God Himself led them into it. Second, He "established an oppressive burden upon our loins." The loins were considered the seat of strength. This is a picture of a crushing weight being placed right on the center of their power, causing them to buckle. It is a picture of being brought to the absolute end of their own resources, where all they can do is collapse under the load. God brings us to a place of weakness so that we might find our strength in Him alone.

12 You made men ride over our heads; We went through fire and through water, Yet You brought us out into a place of abundance.

The description of the trial reaches its climax here. "You made men ride over our heads." This is a picture of utter subjugation and humiliation. It is the image of a conquered army being trampled under the hooves of the victor's cavalry. God, in His sovereignty, allowed their enemies to completely dominate them. Then the imagery shifts from human oppression to elemental chaos: "We went through fire and through water." These are metaphors for the most extreme and life-threatening dangers imaginable. Fire consumes and water overwhelms. They were brought to the very brink of annihilation. But the verse does not end in the fire or the flood. The final clause is the great reversal: "Yet You brought us out into a place of abundance." The Hebrew word for abundance means a place of overflow, of saturation. After the confinement of the net, the pressure of the burden, the humiliation of defeat, and the terror of the ordeal, God brings them into a wide, open, and wealthy place. The deliverance is as total as the trial was severe. The trial was the pathway to the triumph, and God was the sovereign guide on every step of the journey.

Application

This passage is a dose of strong medicine for the modern church, which is often addicted to a theology of comfort and convenience. We are taught to expect a life free from trouble, and when the furnace gets turned up, our faith begins to wobble. This psalm teaches us to expect the furnace. It teaches us that trials are not a sign of God's displeasure, but rather a sign of His fatherly love. He is too good a Father to leave the dross of sin in His children. He loves us too much to let us remain impure.

Therefore, when you find yourself in the net, when the burden is crushing, when it feels like your enemies are riding roughshod over you, do not conclude that God has abandoned you. Conclude that the divine Refiner has put you in the crucible. Your job is not to find a way to escape the fire, but to trust the Refiner in the fire. He is sitting there, watching intently, controlling the temperature with a master's hand. He will not let you be destroyed. He is working to burn away everything that is not of Him, so that He can see His own image reflected in you.

And the end of the story is not the furnace. The end of the story is the "place of abundance." The cross comes before the crown. The suffering comes before the glory. Our story is a small echo of the great story of Christ, who went through the ultimate fire and flood of God's wrath on the cross, and was brought out into the ultimate place of abundance at the resurrection. Because He went through it, we who are in Him will also be brought through it. So bless our God, and make the sound of His praise heard, even, and especially, from the middle of the flames.