Psalm 65:10

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

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) Thou waterest . . . settlest.—Better, by watering . . . settling.

Ridges . . . furrows.—These terms would be better transposed since by “settling” (literally, pressing down) is meant the softening of the ridges of earth between the furrows. The LXX. and Vulgate have “multiply its shoots.”

Showers.—Literally, multitudes (of drops).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly - Or rather, its furrows, for so the Hebrew word properly means. Job 31:38; Job 39:10. The allusion is to the furrows made by the plow, which are filled with water by the rains.

Thou settlest the furrows thereof - Or rather, thou beatest down the ridges thereof. Literally, thou makest them to descend. That is, The rain - falling on them - beats them down, so that the ground becomes level.

Thou makest it soft with showers - Margin, thou dissolvest it. The idea is, to soften, to loosen, to make the soil light and open. All farmers know that this is necessary, and that it cannot be done without water.

Thou blessest the springing thereof - Or, what springs from it; the vegetation. Thou dost bless it by causing it to grow luxuriantly, thus producing an abundant harvest.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

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

river of God—His exhaustless resources.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Thou settlest, to wit, in that condition which is fit for fruit. Or, thou bringest down; for the rain dissolves the high and hard clods of earth. When all is done, the fruitfulness of the earth must not be ascribed to the rain or sun, or any second causes, but to thy blessing alone.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly,.... Kimchi calls them the eminences of the earth, the little hills, the higher parts of ploughed land; those which lie between furrow and furrow seem to be meant, which being watered with rain become lower, and are made fruitful: these may denote such as are lifted up with their own imaginary purity and righteousness; and who, when the grace of God takes hold upon them, are humbled, and confess themselves the chief of sinners and the least of saints, renounce their own righteousness, and submit to Christ's;

thou settlest the furrows thereof; or "thou causest the rain to descend into the furrows thereof" (p); which fills them, and makes them fruitful; and may design humble souls, whom the Lord fills with his good things, and makes them fruitful in every good work;

thou makest it soft with showers; which through drought is become like iron and brass, and, without large and heavy showers, as the word (q) used signifies, and these repeated, it is so hard, that no impressions can be made upon it, nor anything spring out of it; and such is the hard heart of man, which God only can make soft by the means of his word, through the energy of his Spirit, and the efficacy of his grace; which coming in great abundance, like large showers of rain, removes the hardness of the heart, makes it susceptible of divine impressions, and of receiving the seed of the word, whereby it becomes fruitful;

thou blessest the springing thereof; the tender blade, when it first peeps out of the earth; this the Lord nourishes and cherishes; he preserves it from the nipping frosts, by covering it with snow; he waters it with the dews of heaven, and warms it with the beams of the sun; he causes it to grow, and brings it to perfection: so the Lord takes great notice of the springing and buddings forth of grace, of the first acts and exercises of it in young converts, and takes care of them; and as he will not hurt them himself, nor break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax; so he takes care that others should not; see Sol 6:11; he gives them more grace, and strengthens what they have; causes it to grow, and brings it on to perfection. The word here used is the same by which Christ, the branch, is expressed, Zechariah 3:8; and as the Lord has blessed him with the blessings of goodness, so he blesses all the branches which are in him, John 15:4, Ephesians 1:3.

(p) "descendere facis pluviam in sulcos ejus", Vatablus. (q) "guttis grandioribus", Piscator.

Geneva Study Bible

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

(k) By this description he shows that all the order of nature is a testimony of God's love toward us, who causes all creatures to serve our need.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. Saturating its furrows, levelling its ridges:

Thou softenest it with showers, thou blessest its springing growth.

The poet looks back upon the ‘early rain’ of autumn and winter (Nov.–Feb.), which had prepared the ground for the seed and fostered its growth. It had been abundant, and now (Psalm 65:11 ff) he gazes upon crops of unusual promise ripening for the harvest.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; rather, the furrows (Hengstenberg, Kay, Cheyne, Revised Version). Thou settlest the furrows thereof; rather, thou smoothest down its ridges. So covering up the grain, and bringing the rough ploughed land to a comparatively smooth surface. Thou makest it soft with showers: thou blessest the springing thereof. The whole ground being softened with warm showers, the springing of the blade begins under God's blessing. Psalm 65:10

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

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.