Commentary - Psalm 81:6-10

Bird's-eye view

This section of Psalm 81 is a dramatic shift in voice. After the call to festive worship in the opening verses, God Himself begins to speak, reminding Israel of His past salvation and their subsequent faithlessness. This is a courtroom scene, a covenant lawsuit in miniature. Yahweh takes the witness stand to testify against His own people. He recounts His mighty act of deliverance in the Exodus, freeing them from the crushing slavery of Egypt. He reminds them of how He answered their cries, tested them to reveal their hearts, and established His covenant with them. The central issue is one of allegiance. Having been saved by the one true God, they are now flirting with "strange gods." The passage is therefore a potent mixture of gracious remembrance and stern warning. God's appeal is grounded in His redemptive history with them: "I am the God who saved you, therefore listen to Me and worship Me alone." It climaxes with a beautiful, tragic promise of blessing that goes unclaimed because of their stubborn disobedience.

The logic is simple and powerful: redemption is the foundation of ethics. Because God has acted mightily on their behalf, He has the sole right to their worship and obedience. Their dalliance with other gods is not just a theological mistake; it is covenantal adultery, an act of cosmic ingratitude. The God who can remove the burdens of Egypt can certainly fill the mouths of His people. The choice presented is between the full provision of Yahweh and the empty promises of idols, a choice that every generation of God's people must face.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 81 is one of the Psalms of Asaph. It begins as a call to worship, specifically for a festival, likely the Feast of Tabernacles, which celebrated the harvest and remembered the wilderness wanderings. The first five verses are full of joyful noise, trumpets, and celebration. But in verse 6, the tone shifts dramatically. The voice is no longer the psalmist's but God's. This turn from celebration to divine oracle is a common feature in the psalms, reminding the worshippers that true worship involves listening to God as well as singing to Him. This divine speech continues to the end of the psalm, turning it into a prophetic warning. It stands in a line of covenant-lawsuit psalms (like Psalm 50) where God summons His people to account for their breaches of His covenant. The psalm thus models a crucial aspect of worship: it is a covenant renewal ceremony, where we remember God's salvation, listen to His commands, confess our failures, and are called back to faithful obedience.

Key Issues

The God Who Speaks

It is one thing to sing songs about God. It is another thing entirely when God interrupts the song service to speak for Himself. And that is precisely what happens here. The party is in full swing, the trumpets are blowing, and then God takes the microphone. What He has to say is a bracing reminder that our relationship with Him is not a one-way street. We praise Him for what He has done, and He, in turn, tells us what we are to do. And the foundation of His command is always His prior act of grace.

Notice the structure of God's argument. It is the structure of the Ten Commandments. "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt" (Ex. 20:2). That is the preamble, the statement of grace. Everything that follows is the response to that grace. God does not say, "If you obey Me, I will rescue you." He says, "I have rescued you, therefore obey Me." This is the fundamental grammar of the gospel. Redemption is the root, and obedience is the fruit. Any attempt to reverse this order is to slide into legalism, the very thing the Pharisees mastered and which Jesus condemned. God's speech here is a call back to this foundational reality. He is reminding His people who He is and what He has done, so that they might remember who they are supposed to be.

Verse by Verse Commentary

6 “I relieved his shoulder of the burden, His hands were freed from the basket.

God begins His testimony by taking Israel back to Egypt. He speaks in the first person ("I relieved") but refers to Israel in the third person ("his shoulder"), as a judge might recount the facts of a case. The imagery is potent and earthy. The "burden" was the forced labor, the crushing weight of slavery. The "basket" was used for carrying clay and bricks to build Pharaoh's store cities. This was not a dignified construction job; it was chattel slavery. God is saying, "Remember the feel of that? Remember the ache in your shoulders and the callouses on your hands? I am the one who took that away." Every Israelite knew this story. It was their founding story. God's grace to them was not an abstract concept; it was a historical, tangible, political, and economic deliverance. He broke the back of their taskmasters and set them free. This is where their relationship with Him began.

7 You called in distress and I rescued you; I answered you in the hiding place of thunder; I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Selah.

Now God shifts to the second person, addressing Israel directly: "You called... I rescued." The deliverance was not arbitrary; it was a response to their cry for help. He heard them. And how did He answer? "In the hiding place of thunder." This likely refers to the awesome and terrifying display of God's power at Mount Sinai, where His presence was veiled in a thick cloud, and His voice boomed like thunder. He revealed Himself not as a tame, manageable deity, but as the sovereign, holy, and fearful Lord of all creation. But in the very same breath, He reminds them of Meribah. This was the place where the people grumbled and quarreled with Moses because they had no water. It was a place of failure, where they put God to the test. But here, God says, "I tested you." The same event that was their sinful failure was also God's sovereign test. He brought them to a place of desperation to reveal what was in their hearts. He wanted to see if they would trust the God of the thundercloud even in the parched wilderness. The "Selah" invites us to pause and consider this profound tension: God's glorious revelation and our grumbling unbelief, all held together in His sovereign plan.

8 Hear, O My people, and I will testify against you; O Israel, if you would listen to Me!

This is the central summons of the passage. It echoes the Shema: "Hear, O Israel" (Deut. 6:4). God identifies them as "My people," an expression of covenant relationship, but immediately follows it with a legal charge: "I will testify against you." This is the language of a prosecutor. He is bringing a case against His own beloved people. The verse ends with a cry of divine pathos: "O Israel, if you would listen to Me!" This is not the voice of a detached deity. It is the voice of a spurned husband, a grieving father. He has saved them, revealed Himself to them, and all He asks is that they listen. Their well-being, their very life, depends on it, but their ears are stopped. The tragedy is that the blessings of God are contingent on their listening, and they are refusing to do so.

9 Let there be no strange god among you; And you shall not worship a foreign god.

Here is the heart of the lawsuit, the specific charge. Having established who He is and what He has done, God lays down the fundamental rule of the relationship: absolute and exclusive allegiance. A "strange god" is any god that is not Yahweh. A "foreign god" is a god from outside the covenant family. This is the first and second commandment rolled into one. Why is this the central command? Because idolatry is the root of all other sins. When you get your god wrong, you will get everything else wrong. You become like what you worship. If you worship a god of stone, your heart becomes stony. If you worship a god of lust, your life becomes debauched. If you worship a god of power, you become a tyrant. God is not prohibiting other gods because He is insecure; He is prohibiting them because they are not gods at all. They are lies, deceptions that promise life but deliver death. He is protecting His people from spiritual poison.

10 I am Yahweh your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.

God concludes this section by restating the foundation and giving a glorious promise. First, the foundation: "I am Yahweh your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt." This is the gospel in the Old Testament. His identity is tied to His redemptive act. This is who He is for them. On the basis of that unshakeable fact, He issues an invitation: "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." This is a beautiful metaphor for faith and blessing. A baby bird opens its mouth wide, trusting its parent to provide food. In the same way, God tells His people to come to Him with great expectations. Ask for big things. Expect lavish provision. He is not a stingy God. The God who was powerful enough to break the chains of Egypt is more than capable of satisfying every need and desire of His people. The only limit to His blessing is their failure to ask, their refusal to open their mouths to Him, because they are too busy whispering to foreign gods.

Application

This passage speaks directly to the modern church, because our temptations are fundamentally the same as Israel's. We too have been delivered from a slavery far worse than Egypt's, the slavery to sin and death. Christ is our Exodus. He has relieved our shoulders of the burden of the law's condemnation and freed our hands from the filthy work of trying to earn our salvation. He has answered our distress call, not from a thundercloud on Sinai, but from a bloody cross on Calvary. And He tests us in our wilderness wanderings to see if we will trust Him.

And what is His charge against us? It is that we, having been so graciously saved, still entertain "strange gods." Our strange gods may not be carved out of wood or stone, but they are just as real. They are the idols of comfort, security, approval, political power, sexual gratification, or personal autonomy. We try to worship Yahweh on Sunday, and then bow down to the god of the stock market on Monday. We sing praises to Jesus, and then sacrifice our children's purity on the altar of secular education. God's word to us is the same: "Hear, O My people!" He is testifying against us.

The solution is also the same. We must return to the foundation: "I am Yahweh your God." Our security and identity rest not in our performance, but in His redemptive act in Christ. And from that place of security, we are invited to "open your mouth wide." We are to stop seeking satisfaction from the leaky cisterns of our modern idols and come to the fountain of living water. Are you anxious? Open your mouth wide in prayer. Are you in need? Open your mouth wide in supplication. Do you desire to see God's kingdom advance? Open your mouth wide and ask for great things. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is not a minimalist. He delights to give good gifts to His children. Our spiritual poverty is not due to His scarcity, but to our own idolatrously closed mouths.