Like Psa 65:1-13, this Psalm, inscribed To the Precentor, with accompaniment of stringed instruments, a song-Psalm (מזמור שׁיר), also celebrates the blessing upon the cultivation of the ground. As Psa 65:1-13 contemplated the corn and fruits as still standing in the fields, so this Psalm contemplates, as it seems, the harvest as already gathered in, in the light of the redemptive history. Each plentiful harvest is to Israel a fulfilment of the promise given in Lev 26:4, and a pledge that God is with His people, and that its mission to the whole world (of peoples) shall not remain unaccomplished. This mission-tone referring to the end of God's work here below is unfortunately lost in the church's closing strain, “God be gracious and merciful unto us,” but it sounds all the more distinctly and sweetly in Luther's hymn, “Es woll uns Gott genädig sein,” throughout.
There are seven stanzas: twice three two-line stanzas, having one of three lines in the middle, which forms the clasp or spangle of the septiad, a circumstance which is strikingly appropriate to the fact that this Psalm is called “the Old Testament Paternoster” in some of the old expositors.[1]
The second half after the three-line stanza beings in Psa 67:6 exactly as the first closed in Psa 67:4. יברכנוּ is repeated three times, in order that the whole may bear the impress of the blessing of the priest, which is threefold.
- ↑ Vid., Sonntag's Tituli Psalmorum (1687), where it is on this account laid out as the Rogate Psalm.
