Chronicles of a Journeyman

Psalm 81

1-5: Call to worship at Israel’s solemn feast

6-10: God speaks: revisits deliverance, tests, and commandments

11-16: God speaks: describes rebellion and forgone blessings

This psalm of Asaph, set as a discourse on a feast day, recounts a call to worship and God’s unexpected response to the psalmist. God launches a monologue that makes up the rest of the psalm, describing His deeds in Israel and its rebellious response to Him.

He delivered them from Egypt, rescuing them from slavery, testing them severally in the desert, and giving them commands at Mount Sinai, all to prepare them for a life of prosperity in the Promised Land.

Once there, however, they rejected the Lord and refused to obey His voice, walking in their own plans. The Lord laments how He would have subdued their enemies and fed them with good if they would have obeyed.

And that’s how the psalm ends. It is not an express call to repentance but a revelation of the forgone alternative when God’s people reject Him and go their way. We who are now reading can learn from Israel’s history – devotion to God always pays!