9Who keeps us in life
         And does not allow our feet to slip.

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

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

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

13I shall come into Your house with burnt offerings;
         I shall pay You my vows,

14Which my lips uttered
         And my mouth spoke when I was in distress.

15I shall offer to You burnt offerings of fat beasts,
         With the smoke of rams;
         I shall make an offering of bulls with male goats.

16Come and hear, all who fear God,
         And I will tell of what He has done for my soul.

17I cried to Him with my mouth,
         And He was extolled with my tongue.

18If I regard wickedness in my heart,
         The Lord will not hear;

19But certainly God has heard;
         He has given heed to the voice of my prayer.

20Blessed be God,
         Who has not turned away my prayer
         Nor His lovingkindness from me.

Parallel Verses

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
Bless our God, O peoples, And sound His praise abroad,

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
Thank our God, you nations. Make the sound of his praise heard.

King James Bible
O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard:

Douay-Rheims Bible
O bless our God, ye Gentiles: and make the voice of his praise to be heard.

Darby Bible Translation
Bless our God, ye peoples, and make the voice of his praise to be heard;

English Revised Version
O bless our God, ye peoples, and make the voice of his praise to be heard.

Webster's Bible Translation
O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard:

World English Bible
Praise our God, you peoples! Make the sound of his praise heard,

Young's Literal Translation
Bless, ye peoples, our God, And sound the voice of His praise,

Cross References

Psalm 98:4 Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth; Break forth and sing for joy and sing praises.

Psalm 66:9 Who keeps us in life And does not allow our feet to slip.

Commentary

Matthew Henry's Whole Bible Commentary

Verses 8-12

In these verses the psalmist calls upon God's people in a special manner to praise him. Let all lands do it, but Israel's land particularly. Bless our God; bless him as ours, a God in covenant with us, and that takes care of us as his own. Let them make the voice of his praise to be heard (v. 8); for from whom should it be heard but from those who are his peculiar favourites and select attendants? Two things we have reason to bless God for:-

I. Common protection (v. 9): He holdeth our soul in life, that it may not drop away of itself; for, being continually in our hands, it is apt to slip through our fingers. We must own that it is the good providence of God that keeps life and soul together and his visitation that preserves our spirit. He puts our soul in life, so the word is. He that gave us our being, by a constant renewed act upholds us in our being, and his providence is a continued creation. When we are ready to faint and perish he restores our soul, and so puts it, as it were, into a new life, giving new comforts. Non est vivere, sed valere, vita-It is not existence, but happiness, that deserves the name of life. But we are apt to stumble and fall, and are exposed to many destructive accidents, killing disasters as well as killing diseases, and therefore as to these also we are guarded by the divine power. He suffers not our feet to be moved, preventing many unforeseen evils, which we ourselves were not aware of our danger from. To him we owe it that we have not, long ere this, fallen into endless ruin. He will keep the feet of his saints.

II. Special deliverance from great distress. Observe,

1. How grievous the distress and danger were, v. 11, 12. What particular trouble of the church this refers to does not appear; it might be the trouble of some private persons or families only. But, whatever it was, they were surprised with it as a bird with a snare, enclosed and entangled in it as a fish in a net; they were pressed down with it, and kept under as with a load upon their loins, v. 11. But they owned the hand of God in it. We are never in the net but God brings us into it, never under affliction but God lays it upon us. Is any thing more dangerous than fire and water? We went through both, that is, afflictions of different kinds; the end of one trouble was the beginning of another; when we had got clear of one sort of dangers we found ourselves involved in dangers of another sort. Such may be the troubles of the best of God's saints, but he has promised, When thou passest through the waters, through the fire, I will be with thee, Isa. 43:1. Yet proud and cruel men may be as dangerous as fire and water, and more so. Beware of men, Mt. 10:17. When men rose up against us, that was fire and water, and all that is threatening (Ps. 124:2, 3, 4), and that was the case here: "Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads, to trample upon us and insult over us, to hector and abuse us, nay, and to make perfect slaves of us; they have said to our souls, Bow down, that we may go over," Isa. 51:23. While it is the pleasure of good princes to rule in the hearts of their subjects it is the pride of tyrants to ride over their heads; yet the afflicted church in this also owns the hand of God: "Thou hast caused them thus to abuse us;" for the most furious oppressor has no power but what is given him from above.

2. How gracious God's design was in bringing them into this distress and danger. See what the meaning of it is (v. 10): Thou, O God! hast proved us, and tried us. Then we are likely to get good by our afflictions, when we look upon them under this notion, for then we may see God's grace and love at the bottom of them and our own honour and benefit in the end of them. By afflictions we are proved as silver in the fire. (1.) That our graces, by being tried, may be made more evident and so we may be approved, as silver, when it is touched and marked sterling, and this will be to our praise at the appearing of Jesus Christ (1 Pt. 1:7) and perhaps in this world. Job's integrity and constancy were manifested by his afflictions. (2.) That our graces, by being exercised, may be made more strong and active, and so we may be improved, as silver when it is refined by the fire and made more clear from its dross; and this will be to our unspeakable advantage, for thus we are made partakers of God's holiness, Heb. 12:10. Public troubles are for the purifying of the church, Dan. 11:35; Rev. 2:10; Deu. 8:2.

3. How glorious the issue was at last. The troubles of the church will certainly end well; these do so, for (1.) The outlet of the trouble is happy. They are in fire and water, but they get through them: "We went through fire and water, and did not perish in the flames or floods." Whatever the troubles of the saints are, blessed be God, there is a way through them. (2.) The inlet to a better state is much more happy: Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place, into a well-watered place (so the word is), like the gardens of the Lord, and therefore fruitful. God brings his people into trouble that their comforts afterwards may be the sweeter and that their affliction may thus yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness, which will make the poorest place in the world a wealthy place.

Calvin's Commentary

5. Come and see the works of God; he is terrible in his dealing towards the children of men. 6. He turned the sea into dry land; they went through the flood on foot; there did we rejoice in him. 7. He ruleth by his power over the world; his eyes behold the nations; rebels [471] shall not exalt themselves. 8. Bless our God; [472] O ye people! and resound the voice of his praise. 9. Who hath brought our souls unto life, and hath not suffered our feet to fall.

5. Come and see the works of God An indirect censure is here passed upon that almost universal thoughtlessness which leads men to neglect the praises of God. Why is it that they so blindly overlook the operations of his hand, but just because they never direct their attention seriously to them? We need to be aroused upon this subject. The words before us may receive some explanation by referring to a parallel passage, Psalm 46:8. But the great scope of them is this, that the Psalmist would withdraw men from the vain or positively sinful and pernicious pursuits in which they are engaged, and direct their thoughts to the works of God. To this he exhorts them, chiding their backwardness and negligence. The expression, Come and see, intimates that what they blindly overlooked was open to observation; for were it otherwise with the works of God, this language would be inappropriate. He next points out what those works of God are to which he would have our attention directed; in general he would have us look to the method in which God governs the human family. This experimental or practical kind of knowledge, if I might so call it, is that which makes the deepest impression. [473] We find, accordingly, that Paul, (Acts 17:27) after speaking of the power of God in general, brings his subject to bear upon this one particular point, and calls upon us to descend into ourselves if we would discover the proofs of a present God. The last clause of the fifth verse I would not interpret with some as meaning that God was terrible above the children of men -- superior to them in majesty -- but rather that he is terrible towards them, evincing an extraordinary providence in their defense and preservation, as we have seen noticed, Psalm 40:5. Men need look no further, therefore, than themselves, in order to discover the best grounds for reverencing and fearing God. The Psalmist passes next from the more general point of his providence towards mankind at large, to his special care over his own Church, adverting to what he had done for the redemption of his chosen people. What he states here must be considered as only one illustration of many which he might have touched upon, and as intended to remind God's people of the infinite variety of benefits with which their first and great deliverance had been followed up and confirmed. This appears obvious from what he adds, there we rejoiced in him It is impossible that the joy of that deliverance could have extended to him or any of the descendants of the ancient Israelites, unless it had partaken the nature of a pledge and illustration of the love of God to the Church generally. Upon that event he showed himself to be the everlasting Savior of his people; so that it proved a common source of joy to all the righteous.

7. He ruleth by his power over the world The Hebrew word vlm, olam, which I have translated the world, signifies occasionally an age, or eternity; [474] but the first sense seems to agree best with the context, and the meaning of the words is, that God is endued with the power necessary for wielding the government of the world. What follows agrees with this, that his eyes behold the nations Under the law, Judea was the proper seat of his kingdom; but his providence always extended to the world at large; and the special favor shown to the posterity of Abraham, in consideration of the covenant, did not prevent him from extending an eye of providential consideration to the surrounding nations. As an evidence of his care reaching to the different countries round, he takes notice of the judgments which God executed upon the wicked and the ungodly. He proves that there was no part of the human family which God overlooked, by referring to the fact of the punishment of evil-doers. There may be much in the Divine administration of the world calculated to perplex our conclusions; but there are always some tokens to be seen of his judgments, and these sufficiently clear to strike the eye of an acute and attentive observer.

8 Bless our God, O ye people! Although calling upon all, without exception, to praise God, he refers particularly to some Divine interposition in behalf of the Church. He would seem to hint that the Gentiles were destined, at a future period, to share the favor now exclusively enjoyed by God's chosen people. In the meantime, he reminds them of the signal and memorable nature of the deliverance granted, by calling upon them to spread abroad the fame of it. Though he speaks of the Jewish people as having been brought unto life, (an expression intended to denote deliverance of a more than ordinary kind,) this means that they had been preserved from approaching danger rather than recovered from a calamity which had actually overtaken them, It is said that their feet had not been suffered to fall, which implies, that, through seasonable help which they had received, they had not fallen, but stood firm. The Psalmist, however, does not take occasion, from the evil having been anticipated and averted, to undervalue it. As they had been preserved safe by an interposition of Divine goodness, he speaks of this as tantamount to having been brought or restored to life.

Footnotes:

[471] Defectores -- Lat Apostats -- Fr The original word is hsvrrym, hassorerim, from svr, sur, to turn aside

[472] "On this Theodoret remarks, that when men bless God they offer him words only; but when God blesses man, it is not in word only, but in deed; an abundance of good things always accompanying the benediction." -- Cresswell

[473] "Haec enim experimentalis (ut ita loquar) notitia magis afficit." -- Lat. "Car ceste cognoissance d'experience et de prattique esmeut d'avantage." -- Fr.

[474] Our English version renders the word in this last sense. Hammond, with Calvin, prefers reading, "over the world." "That vlm," says he, "aion, as the English age, signifies not only time and duration, but also the men that live in any time, there is no question. And then mvsl vlm, must here most properly be rendered ruling the world, or over the world; and so the Chaldee certainly understood, who read, who exerciseth dominion over the world;' and so I suppose the LXX. their despoxouti tou aionos,' having dominion over the world,' doth import." The Vulgate, in this instance not following the Septuagint, has "in aeternum," "for ever."

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