O come, let us sing unto the LORD. Other nations sing unto their gods, let us sing unto Jehovah. We love him, we admire him, we reverence him, let us express our feelings with the choicest sounds, using our noblest faculty for its noblest end.

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving. Here is probably a reference to the peculiar presence of God in the Holy of Holies above the mercy seat, and also to the glory which shone forth out of the cloud which rested above the tabernacle.

For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. No doubt the surrounding nations imagined Jehovah to be a merely local deity, the god of a small nation, and therefore one of the inferior deities; the psalmist utterly repudiates such an idea.

In his hand are the deep places of the earth. He is the God of the valleys and the hills, the caverns, and the peaks. Far down where the miners sink their shafts, deeper yet where lie the secret oceans by which springs are fed, and deepest of all in the unknown abyss where rage and flame the huge…

The sea is his. This was seen to be true at the Red Sea when the waters saw their God, and obediently stood aside to open a pathway for his people. It was not Edom's sea though it was red, nor Egypt's sea though it washed her shores.

Here the exhortation to worship is renewed and backed with a motive which, to Israel of old and to Christians now, is especially powerful; for both the Israel after the flesh and the Israel of faith may be described as the people of his pasture, and by both he is called "our God." O come, let us…

For he is our God. Here is the master reason for worship. Jehovah has entered into covenant with us, and from all the world beside has chosen us to be his own elect. If others refuse him homage, we at least will render it cheerfully.

Harden not your heart. If ye will hear, learn to fear also. The sea and the land obey him, do not prove more obstinate than they! "Yield to his love who round you now The bands of a man would east." We cannot soften our hearts, but we can harden them, and the consequences will be fatal.

When your fathers tempted me. As far as they could do so they tempted God to change his usual way, and to do their sinful bidding, and though he cannot be tempted of evil, and will never yield to wicked requests, yet their intent was the same, and their guilt was none the less.

Forty years long was I grieved with this generation. The impression upon the divine mind is most vivid; he sees them before him now, and calls them "this generation." He does not leave his prophets to upbraid the sin, but himself utters the complaint and declares that he was grieved, nauseated, and…

Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest. There can be no rest to an unbelieving heart. If manna and miracles could not satisfy Israel, neither would they have been content with the land which flowed with milk and honey.

O come, let us sing unto the Lord, etc. The first verse of the Psalm begins the invitation unto praise and exultation. It is a song of three parts, and every part (like Jacob's part of the sheep) brings forth twins; each a double string, as it were, in the music of this praise, finely twisted of…

Let us come before his presence. Hebrew, prevent his face, be there with the first. "Let us go speedily ...I will go also", Zec 8:21. Let praise wait for God in Sion, Ps 65:1.—John Trapp. (second clause). Let us chant aloud to him the measured lay.

He that hath a mind to praise God, shall not want matter of praise, as they who come before princes do, who for want of true grounds of praise in them, do give them flattering words; for the Lord is a great God, for power and preeminence, for strength and continuance.—David Dickson.

In his hand. The dominion of God is founded upon his preservation of things. "The Lord is a great King above all gods." Why? In his hand are the deep places of the earth. While his hand holds, his hand hath a dominion over them.

The sea is his. When God himself makes an oration in defence of his sovereignty, Job 38:1 his chief arguments are drawn from creation: "The Lord is a great King above all gods. The sea is his, and he made it." And so the apostle in his sermon to the Athenians.

You hold it a good rule in worldly business, not to say to your servants, "O come", arise ye, go ye; but, Let us come, let us go, let us arise. Now shall the children of this world be wiser in their generation than the children of light? Do we commend this course in mundane affairs, and neglect it…

We are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. See how elegantly he hath transposed the order of the words, and as it were not given its own attribute to each word; that we may understand these very same to be "the sheep", who are also "the people." He said not, the sheep of his…

Harden not your hearts. An old man, one day taking a child on his knee, entreated him to seek God now—to pray to him, and to love him; when the child, looking up at him, asked, "But why do not you seek God?" The old man, deeply affected, answered, "I would, child; but my heart is hard—my heart is…

Your fathers tempted me. Though God cannot be tempted with evil he may justly be said to be tempted whenever men, by being dissatisfied with his dealings, virtually ask that he will alter those dealings, and proceed in a way more congenial to their feelings.

O the desperate presumption of man, that he should offend his Maker forty years! O the patience and longsuffering of his Maker, that he should allow him forty years to offend in! Sin begins in the heart, by its desires wandering and going astray after forbidden objects; whence follows inattention…

The word swearing is very significant, and seems to import these two things. First, the certainty of the sentence here pronounced. Every word of God both is, and must be truth; but ratified by an oath, it is truth with an advantage. It is signed irrevocable.