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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 65:9 - 65:9
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The praise of God on account of the present year's rich blessing, which He has bestowed upon the land of His people. In Psa 65:10, Psa 65:11 God is thanked for having sent down the rain required for the ploughing (vid., Commentary on Isaiah, ii. 522) and for the increase of the seed sown, so that, as vv. 12-14 affirm, there is the prospect of a rich harvest. The harvest itself, as follows from v. 14b, is not yet housed. The whole of Psa 65:10, Psa 65:11 is a retrospect; in vv. 12-14 the whole is a description of the blessing standing before their eyes, which God has put upon the year now drawing to a close. Certainly, if the forms רַוֵּה and נַחֵת were supplicatory imperatives, then the prayer for the early or seed-time rain would attach itself to the retrospect in Psa 65:11, and the standpoint would be not about the time of the Passover and Pentecost, both festivals belonging to the beginning of the harvest, but about the time of the feast of Tabernacles, the festival of thanksgiving for the harvest, and vv. 12-14 would be a glance into the future (Hitzig). But there is nothing to indicate that in Psa 65:11 the retrospect changes into a looking forward. The poet goes on with the same theme, and also arranges the words accordingly, for which reason רַוֵּה and נַחֵת are not to be understood in any other way. שֹׁקֵק beside הֶֽעֱשִׁיר (to enrich) signifies to cause to run over, overflow, i.e., to put anything in a state of plenty or abundance, from שׁוּק (Hiph. Joe 2:24, to yield in abundance), Arab, sâq, to push, impel, to cause to go on in succession and to follow in succession. רַבַּת (for which we find רַבָּה in Psa 62:3) is an adverb, copiously, richly (Psa 120:6; Psa 123:4; Psa 129:1), like מְאַת, a hundred times (Ecc 8:12). תַּעְשְׁרֶנָּה is Hiph. with the middle syllable shortened, Ges. §53, 3, rem. 4. The fountain (פֶּלֶג) of God is the name given here to His inexhaustible stores of blessing, and more particularly the fulness of the waters of the heavens from which He showers down fertilizing rain. כֵּן, “thus thoroughly,” forms an alliteration with הֵכִין, to prepare, and thereby receives a peculiar twofold colouring. The meaning is: God, by raising and tending, prepared the produce of the field which the inhabitants of the land needed; for He thus thoroughly prepared the land in conformity with the fulness of His fountain, viz., by copiously watering (רַוֵּה infin. absol. instead of רַוֹּה, as in 1Sa 3:12; 2Ch 24:10; Exo 22:22; Jer 14:19; Hos 6:9) the furrows of the land and pressing down, i.e., softening by means of rain, its ridges (גְּדוּדֶהָ, defective plural, as e.g., in Rth 2:13), which the ploughshare has made. תֶּלֶם (related by root with Arab. tll, tell, a hill, prop. that which is thrown out to a place, that which is thrown up, a mound) signifies a furrow as being formed by casting up or (if from Arab. ṯlm, ébrécher, to make a fracture, rent, or notch in anything) by tearing into, breaking up the ground; גְּדוּד (related by root with uchdûd and chaṭṭ, the usual Arabic words for a furrow
(Note: Fürst erroneously explains תֶּלֶם as a bed or strip of ground between two deep furrows, in distinction from מַֽעֲנָה or מַֽעֲנִית (vid., on Psa 129:3), a furrow. Beds such as we have in our potato fields are unknown to Syrian agriculture. There is a mode which may be approximately compared with it called ketif (כָּתֵף), another far wider called meskeba (מַשְׂכָּבָה). The Arabic tilm (תֵּלֶם, Hebrew תֶּלֶם = talm), according to the Kamûs (as actually in Magrebinish Arabic) talam (תָּלָם), corresponds exact to our furrow, i.e., (as the Turkish Kamûs explains) a ditch-like fissure which the iron of the plough cuts into the field. Neshwân (i. 491) says: “The verb talam, fut. jatlum and jatlim, signifies in Jemen and in the Ghôr (the land on the shore of the Red Sea) the crevices (Arab. 'l-šuqûq) which the ploughman forms, and tilm, collective plural tilâm, is, in the countries mentioned, a furrow of the corn-field. Some persons pronounce the word even thilm, collective plural thilâm.” Thus it is at the present day universally in Ḥaurân; in Edre‛ât I heard the water-furrow of a corn-field called thilm el-kanâh (Arab. ṯlm 'l-qnât). But this pronunciation with Arab. ṯ is certainly not the original one, but has arisen through a substitution of the cognate and more familiar verbal stem Arab. ṯlm, cf. šrm, to slit (shurêm, a harelip). In other parts of Syria and Palestine, also where the distinction between the sounds Arab. t and ṯ is carefully observed, I have only heard the pronunciation tilm. - Wetzstein.))
as being formed by cutting into the ground.
In Psa 65:12 the year in itself appears as a year of divine goodness (טֹובָה, bonitas), and the prospective blessing of harvest as the crown which is set upon it. For Thou hast crowned “the year of Thy goodness” and “with Thy goodness” are different assertions, with which also different (although kindred as to substance) ideas are associated. The futures after עָטַרְתָּ depict its results as they now lie out to view. The chariot-tracks (vid., Deu 33:26) drop with exuberant fruitfulness, even the meadows of the uncultivated and, without rain, unproductive pasture land (Job 38:26.). The hills are personified in Psa 65:13 in the manner of which Isaiah in particular is so fond (e.g., Psa 44:23; Psa 49:13), and which we find in the Psalms of his type (Psa 96:11., Psa 98:7., cf. Psa 89:13). Their fresh, verdant appearance is compared to a festive garment, with which those which previously looked bare and dreary gird themselves; and the corn to a mantle in which the valleys completely envelope themselves (עָטַף with the accusative, like Arab. t‛ṭṭf with b of the garment: to throw it around one, to put it on one's self). The closing words, locking themselves as it were with the beginning of the Psalm together, speak of joyous shouting and singing that continues into the present time. The meadows and valleys (Böttcher) are not the subject, of which it cannot be said that they sing; nor can the same be said of the rustling of the waving corn-fields (Kimchi). The expression requires men to be the subject, and refers to men in the widest and most general sense. Everywhere there is shouting coming up from the very depths of the breast (Hithpal.), everywhere songs of joy; for this is denoted by שִׁיר in distinction from קֹנֵן.