Psalm 66:12

The psalm opens by calling “all the earth” to make a joyful noise to God and to see his terrible works (Psalm 66:1–4). It then recalls how he made a way for his people through the sea and through the river (Psalm 66:5–7). Verse 8 turns from the whole earth to the people who belong to him: “O bless our God, ye people.” He is “our God”, and the call goes to the whole community together, as people who share one experience of his faithfulness. These verses lead into the second half of the psalm, where a single worshipper pays his vows and tells of the prayer God answered (Psalm 66:13–20).

To bless God, bârak, comes from a root meaning to kneel. Said of God, it is the word for adoring him, acknowledging his goodness and his worth and thanking him for what he has done. We add nothing to God when we bless him. We honour him as the one to whom all honour already belongs.

The second half of the verse says how the blessing is to be given: “make the voice of his praise to be heard.” The word for praise, tᵉhillâh, means laudation, and in its concrete sense a hymn, a song of praise. The verb shâmaʻ is the ordinary word for hearing, with the sense of hearing with understanding and paying heed, and here it is causative, “to make to hear”. The thanks God’s people feel is to be sung and spoken so that others hear it.

In Israel, worship was shared and public, with singing, processions and sacrifice, and praise that was heard did several things at once. It honoured God before others. It reminded the gathered people of his faithfulness and taught it to the next generation. It also carried his fame to those outside, which is why another psalm tells God’s people to declare his glory among the nations (Psalm 96:3), and another calls all lands to make a joyful noise to the LORD and come before him with singing (Psalm 100:1–2). The psalm gives the occasion of this praise only as a great deliverance. It may have followed a national crisis, a victory in war or the return from exile.

Verse 9 gives the first reason for the praise: God “holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved.” The verb behind “holdeth” is sûwm, which means to put, set or place. God has set his people among the living and keeps them there. Life is something he places and maintains, every moment of it.

“Soul” is nephesh, from the verb nâphash, to breathe. It means a breathing creature, life, the self, the whole person. “Our soul in life” is therefore our whole living being, breath and all, kept alive by God. Moses told Israel that the eternal God was their refuge (Deuteronomy 33:27), and Paul told the Athenians that in God we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Our existence depends on him from first to last.

The second line pictures a person on foot. “Moved” is môwṭ, to waver, totter, shake or slip, and at its worst to be overthrown. In a land where war, famine and unrest made life uncertain, a man who kept his footing was secure, and a man who was moved had lost his place. God keeps his people’s feet steady. Another psalm promises that the LORD will not let your foot be moved (Psalm 121:3), and David calls him his rock and his fortress (Psalm 18:2).

This verse stands just before the trials of verses 10 to 12. The people who say their feet were kept from slipping are the same people who were caught in the net and went through fire and water. God’s keeping held them up during the testing, and that is why they can praise him for it afterwards.

In verse 10 the psalm speaks to God directly: “For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried.” The name used is ʼĕlôhîym, plural in form and, when it names the true God, a plural of majesty. The “For” ties this verse to the one before. The God who kept them alive is the God who tested them.

Two verbs describe the testing. The first, bâchan, means to test, especially metals, and more broadly to examine or investigate. It is the assayer’s word, the testing that finds out whether metal is genuine. God already knows the hearts he tests, so this testing is for his people’s sake, to show them what is really in them and to prove their faith true. He tested Israel in the same way during the years in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2–3).

The second verb, tsâraph, means to fuse or refine metal, and it is used both literally and figuratively. It takes the picture further, from examining the metal to purifying it in the fire. The metal is silver, keçeph, a word named for its pale colour, which by implication also means money. Everyone in Israel knew how silver was refined. The ore was heated until the dross separated from the precious metal, and the refiner watched the heat so that the silver came out pure and was never lost in the fire. God’s people are the silver in this picture, precious to him and still in need of purifying.

The rest of Scripture uses the same picture. Malachi speaks of the Lord coming as a refiner’s fire to purify his people (Malachi 3:3). Job, in the middle of his suffering, was confident that God’s testing would bring him out refined (Job 23:10). Peter tells believers that the trial of their faith, tested by fire, is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:6–7). Paul says that tribulation works patience, then experience, then hope (Romans 5:3–5), and James calls believers to count it joy when trials come, because they produce endurance (James 1:2–4). Hebrews explains such hardship as the discipline of a Father who deals with his children for their good (Hebrews 12:5–11). The outcome of God’s refining is a purer people and a faith shown to be real.

Verse 11 describes the trial in pictures taken from ordinary life. “Thou broughtest us into the net” uses mâtsûwd, a hunting net or snare, from a root meaning to hunt. The people were caught like animals in a trap, helpless and with no way out. The psalm says God brought them there, and the capture was part of his purpose for them.

“Thou laidst affliction upon our loins” adds the weight of the trial. The word for affliction, mûwʻâqâh, comes from a root meaning to press, and it means pressure, distress, a crushing load. The loins, môthen, are the waist or the small of the back, the part of the body that stands for strength. The burden was laid where a person’s strength is, and it pressed down on their power to stand and to carry on. Both lines open with “thou”, so that everything in the verse is traced to God’s hand.

Verse 12 begins, “Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads.” The verb râkab means to ride or to mount and ride, and here it is causative, “to make ride”. The picture is of a defeated people lying on the ground while their conquerors ride over them, and it speaks of the deepest humiliation and subjection. Some have heard in it the slavery in Egypt, the raids of the Philistines or the later exile. The psalm names no single event, and its words fit every time God’s people have been trampled by their enemies.

“We went through fire and through water.” Fire, ʼêsh, is used literally and figuratively, and here it stands for intense, consuming suffering, the heat of the refiner from verse 10. Water, especially deep water, stands for troubles that rise and threaten to drown. Taken together, fire and water cover every kind of danger, and the people went through them both. Isaiah gives God’s promise to be with his people when they pass through the waters and walk through the fire (Isaiah 43:2). The words also recall the psalm’s earlier memory of the sea and the river, the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 14) and of the Jordan (Joshua 3).

“But thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place.” The word “but” is the turning point of the whole passage. The God who brought them into the net now brings them out. The word for the wealthy place, rᵉvâyâh, means satisfaction, a state that runs over, and it comes from a root meaning to drink deeply, to be saturated, to be refreshed. After fire and flood, God leads his people into a well-watered place of plenty, the kind of land Israel was promised after the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:7–9). It is the same movement as the song of Exodus 15:13, which praises God’s mercy in leading the people he redeemed out of Egypt on toward his holy dwelling.

The New Testament gives God’s people a greater reason than any rescue in Israel’s history to make the voice of his praise heard. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and his cross (Colossians 2:14) and his resurrection (Romans 4:25) are at the heart of our thanksgiving. The church is a royal priesthood and a holy nation, called to proclaim the excellencies of the God who called it out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9). Filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4), believers offer God the sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15), joining heaven’s song that the Lamb that was slain is worthy (Revelation 5:12).

Christ is also the one through whom God holds our soul in life. John writes, “In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4), and Jesus calls himself the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). He builds his church on the rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). Of his sheep he says, “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28). Jude praises God as the one “able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 1:24).

The pattern of these verses, testing and then deliverance, is seen most fully in Jesus. He was proved and found without fault, obedient unto death, and God then highly exalted him (Philippians 2:8–11). God made him to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), and he bore our griefs and was wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:4–5). The captain of our salvation was made perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10), and he is a High Priest touched with the feeling of our infirmities, tempted as we are and yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). His resurrection and exaltation are the wealthy place into which God brought him.

His people are refined through him. His blood cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7), and the Spirit changes us into his image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). Our trials are a share in the fellowship of his sufferings (Philippians 3:10), and if we suffer with him we shall also be glorified together with him (Romans 8:17). The last wealthy place is the one God has prepared for his people, where he wipes away every tear and there is no more death, sorrow or pain (Revelation 21:4).

These verses give God’s people words for the time after a trial. They name the net, the burden, the riders, the fire and the water honestly, and they say to God, “thou” did this. They also say “thou broughtest us out”, and that is where the passage ends. The God they show is the one who holds every life in his hand, who tests his people as a refiner tests silver, keeping watch over the fire, and who leads them out into overflowing plenty.

Because both the testing and the rescue come from his hand, a believer in the middle of the fire can know that the refiner is watching and that the fire has an end. And when God has brought his people out, the psalm’s first call stands ready for them: “O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard.”