Thou visitest the earth - God seems to come down that he may attend to the needs of the earth; survey the condition of things; arrange for the welfare of the world which he has made; and supply the needs of those whom he has created to dwell upon it. See the notes at Psalm 8:4.

And waterest it - Margin, After thou hadst made it to desire rain. This difference between the translations in the text and in the margin can be accounted for by the various meanings of the original word. The Hebrew term - שׁוק shûq - means properly:

(a) to run;

(b) to run after anything, to desire, to look for;

(c) to run over, to overflow; and then,

(d) to cause to overflow.

The meaning here evidently is, he drenched the earth, or caused the water to run abundantly. The reference is to a copious rain after a drought.

Thou greatly enrichest it - That is, Thou givest to it abundance; thou pourest water upon it in such quantities, and in such a manner, as to make it rich in its productions.

With the river of God - A river so abundant and full that it seems to come from God; it is such as we should expect to flow from a Being infinite in resources and in benevolence. Anything great is in the Scriptures often described as belonging to God, or his name is added to it to denote its greatness. Thus, hills of God mean lofty hills; cedars of God, lofty cedars, etc.

Which is full of water - The waters are so abundant that it seems as if they must come from God.

Thou preparest them corn - Grain. Thou givest to those who cultivate the earth an abundant harvest.

When thou hast so provided for it - Or rather, When thou hast thus prepared the earth, to wit, by sending down abundant rains upon it. God prepares the earth to bear an abundant harvest, and then he gives that harvest. The preparation of the earth for the harvest, and then the givinq of the harvest, are alike from him. The harvest could not be without the previous rain, and neither the rain nor the harvest could be without God. He does not create a harvest by miracle, but follows the order which he has himself ordained, and has respect to his own laws.

Thou visitest the earth - God is represented as going through the whole globe, and examining the wants of every part, and directing the clouds how and where to deposit their fertilizing showers, and the rivers where to direct their beneficial courses.

The river of God - Some think the Jordan is meant; and the visiting and watering refer to rain after a long drought. But the clouds may be thus denominated, which properly are the origin of rivers.

Thou preparest them corn - Or, Thou wilt prepare them corn, because "thou hast provided for it." Thou hast made all necessary provision for the fertilization of the earth. Thou hast endued the ground with a vegetative power. Rains, dews, and the genial heat of the sun enable it to put forth that power in providing grass for cattle, and corn for the service of man.

Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it,.... So the Lord looked upon the earth, quickly after its formation, before rain came upon it, and he watered the whole face of the ground, Genesis 2:5; so he cared for the land of Judea in particular, and watered it with the rain of heaven, Deuteronomy 11:11; see 2 Samuel 21:1; to which some think reference is had here; and so he visits and waters the whole earth in general, at certain times and seasons, Acts 14:16; this may be applied to the church and people of God in Gospel times, who are his husbandry, and the good ground on which the seed falls and is received, and brings forth fruit; and are comparable to the earth that drinks in the rain that comes oft upon it, and brings forth herbs meet for those that dress it, and receives a blessing from God, Hebrews 6:7; thus the Lord visited his people, by the mission of his Son to redeem them, whose coming was as the rain, the former and latter, to the earth, Luke 1:68; so he visited the Gentile world, by the preaching of the Gospel by his apostles, whose doctrines dropped as the rain, and distilled as the dew and small rain on the tender herb, and as showers on the grass; and so made a wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water, Acts 15:14; and in like manner he visits particular persons in conversion, and waters them with the graces of his Spirit, by which he regenerates, quickens, and sanctifies them, and makes them fruitful, Isaiah 44:3;

thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water; not Shiloah nor Jordan; but the clouds which are full of rain, which falling upon the earth, impregnate it with rich particles, which make it very fertile and fruitful; so the Targum,

"with a multitude of fruits thou enrichest it out of the river of God, which is in heaven, which is full of rain:''

this may mystically denote the river of God's everlasting love, which is full of the blessings of grace, and which flowing upon his people, makes them fruitful, and enriches them with the riches of grace and glory; see Psalm 46:4;

thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it; or because thou hast so prepared it (o); that is, the earth being disposed and prepared by the Lord, watered and enriched with the rain of heaven, produces corn in great plenty for the inhabitants of the earth; which may spiritually design either the fruitfulness of the saints, whose hearts are disposed and prepared by the grace of God to receive the seed of the word, which brings forth fruit in them; or the bread corn, that wheat of the Gospel, and Christ the sum and substance of it, which is of God's preparing for his people, and by which they are nourished and made comfortable; see Zechariah 9:17.

(o) "quia sic parasti eam", Pagninus; so Cocceius.

9 Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it.

10 Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the springing thereof.

11 Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness.

12 They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness; and the little hills rejoice on every side.

13 The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.

Psalm 65:9

"Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it." God's visits leave a blessing behind; this is more than can be said of every visitor. When the Lord goes on visitations of mercy, he has abundance of necessary things for all his needy creatures. He is represented here as going round the earth, as a gardener surveys his garden, and as giving water to every plant that requires it, and that not in small quantities, but until the earth is drenched and soaked with a rich supply of refreshment. O Lord, in this manner visit thy church, and my poor, parched, and withering piety. Make thy grace to overflow towards my graces; water me, for no plant of thy garden needs it more.

"My stock lies dead, and no increase

Doth my dull husbandry improve;

O let thy graces without cease

Drop from above."

"Thou greatly enrichest it." Millions of money could not so much enrich mankind as the showers do. The soil is made rich by the rain, and then yields its riches to man; but God is the first giver of all. How truly rich are those who are enriched with grace; this is great riches. "With the river of God, which is full of water." The brooks of earth are soon dried up, and all human resources, being finite, are liable to failure; but God's provision for the supply of rain is inexhaustible; there is no bottom or shore to his river. The deluge poured from the clouds yesterday may be succeeded by another tomorrow, and yet the waters above the firmament shall not fail. How true is this in the realm of grace; there "the river of God is full of water," and "of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace." The ancients in their fables spake of Pactolus, which flowed over sands of gold; but this river of God, which flows above and from which the rain is poured, is far more enriching; for, after all, the wealth of men lies mainly in the harvest of their fields, without which even gold would be of no value whatever. "Thou preparest them corn." Corn is specially set apart to be the food of man. In its various species it is a divine provision for the nutriment of our race, and is truly called the staff of life. We hear in commerce of "prepared corn-flour" but God prepared it long before man touched it. As surely as the manna was prepared of God for the tribes, so certainly is corn made and sent by God for our daily use. What is the difference whether we gather wheat-ears or manna, and what matters it if the first comes upward to us and the second downward? God is as much present beneath as above; it is as great a marvel that food should rise out of the dust, as that it should fall from the skies. "When thou hast so provided for it." When all is prepared to produce corn, the Lord puts the finishing stroke, and the grain is forthcoming; not even, when all the material is prepared, will the wheat be perfected without the continuous and perfecting operation of the Most High. Blessed be the Great Householder; he does not suffer the harvest to fail, he supplies the teeming myriads of earth with bread enough from year to year. Even thus does he vouchsafe heavenly food to his redeemed ones: "He hath given meat unto them that fear him; he is ever mindful of his covenant."

Psalm 65:10

"Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly: thou settlest the furrows thereof." Ridge and furrow are drenched. The ridges beaten down and settled, and the furrows made to stand like gutters flooded to the full. "Thou makest it soft with showers." The drought turned the clods into iron, but the plenteous showers dissolve and loosen the soil. "Thou blessest the springing thereof." Vegetation enlivened by the moisture leaps into rigour, the seed germinates and sends forth its green shoot, and the smell is that of a field which the Lord has blessed. All this may furnish us with a figure of the operations of the Holy Spirit in beating down high thoughts, filling our lowly desires, softening the soul, and causing every holy thing to increase and spread.

continued...

The praise of God on account of the present year's rich blessing, which He has bestowed upon the land of His people. In Psalm 65:10, Psalm 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 Psalm 65:10, Psalm 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 רוּה and נחת were supplicatory imperatives, then the prayer for the early or seed-time rain would attach itself to the retrospect in Psalm 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 Psalm 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 רוּה and נחת are not to be understood in any other way. שׁקק beside העשׁיר (to enrich) signifies to cause to run over, overflow, i.e., to put anything in a state of plenty or abundance, from שׁוּק (Hiph. Joel 2:24, to yield in abundance), Arab, sâq, to push, impel, to cause to go on in succession and to follow in succession. רבּת (for which we find רבּה in Psalm 62:3) is an adverb, copiously, richly (Psalm 120:6; Psalm 123:4; Psalm 129:1), like מאת, a hundred times (Ecclesiastes 8:12). תּעשׁרנּה is Hiph. with the middle syllable shortened, Ges. 53, 3, rem. 4. The fountain (פּלג) 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. כּן, "thus thoroughly," forms an alliteration with הכין, 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 (רוּה infin. absol. instead of רוּה, as in 1 Samuel 3:12; 2 Chronicles 24:10; Exodus 22:22; Jeremiah 14:19; Hosea 6:9) the furrows of the land and pressing down, i.e., softening by means of rain, its ridges (גּדוּדה, defective plural, as e.g., in Ruth 2:13), which the ploughshare has made. תּלם (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; גּדוּד (related by root with uchdûd and chaṭṭ, the usual Arabic words for a furrow

(Note: Frst erroneously explains תּלם as a bed or strip of ground between two deep furrows, in distinction from מענה or מענית (vid., on Psalm 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 (כּתף), another far wider called meskeba (משׂכּבה). The Arabic tilm (תּלם, Hebrew תּלם equals talm), according to the Kams (as actually in Magrebinish Arabic) talam (תּלם), corresponds exact to our furrow, i.e., (as the Turkish Kams explains) a ditch-like fissure which the iron of the plough cuts into the field. Neshwn (i. 491) says: "The verb talam, fut. jatlum and jatlim, signifies in Jemen and in the Ghr (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 Psalm 65:12 the year in itself appears as a year of divine goodness (טובה, 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 עטרתּ depict its results as they now lie out to view. The chariot-tracks (vid., Deuteronomy 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 Psalm 65:13 in the manner of which Isaiah in particular is so fond (e.g., Psalm 44:23; Psalm 49:13), and which we find in the Psalms of his type (Psalm 96:11., Psalm 98:7., cf. Psalm 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 (עטף 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 (Bttcher) 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 שׁיר in distinction from קנן.

Thou {g} visitest the earth, and waterest it: thou greatly enrichest it with the {h} river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for {i} it.

(g) That is, with rain.

(h) That is, Shiloh or the rain.

(i) You have appointed the earth to bring forth food to man's use.

65:9 River - With rain, which he very significantly calls a river for its plenty, and the river of God, of God's immediate providing. Them - The inhabitants of the earth. Provided - Or, disposed, the earth, which without this would be hard and barren.

and...: or, after thou hadst made it to desire rain

9. visitest-in mercy (compare Ps 8:4).

river of God-His exhaustless resources.

65:6-13 That Almighty strength which sets fast the mountains, upholds the believer. That word which stills the stormy ocean, and speaks it into a calm, can silence our enemies. How contrary soever light and darkness are to each other, it is hard to say which is most welcome. Does the watchman wait for the morning? so does the labourer earnestly desire the shades of evening. Some understand it of the morning and evening sacrifices. We are to look upon daily worship, both alone and with our families, to be the most needful of our daily occupations, the most delightful of our daily comforts. How much the fruitfulness of this lower part of the creation depends upon the influence of the upper, is easy to observe; every good and perfect gift is from above. He who enriches the earth, which is filled with man's sins, by his abundant and varied bounty, can neither want power nor will to feed the souls of his people. Temporal mercies to us unworthy creatures, shadow forth more important blessings. The rising of the Sun of righteousness, and the pouring forth of the influences of the Holy Spirit, that river of God, full of the waters of life and salvation, render the hard, barren, worthless hearts of sinners fruitful in every good work, and change the face of nations more than the sun and rain change the face of nature. Wherever the Lord passes, by his preached gospel, attended by his Holy Spirit, his paths drop fatness, and numbers are taught to rejoice in and praise him. They will descend upon the pastures of the wilderness, all the earth shall hear and embrace the gospel, and bring forth abundantly the fruits of righteousness which are, through Jesus Christ, to the glory of the Father. Manifold and marvellous, O Lord, are thy works, whether of nature or of grace; surely in loving-kindness hast thou made them all.