Psalm 81:12

So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(12) Lust.—Rather, stubbornness, or perversity, from root meaning “to twist.”

Benson Commentary

Psalm 81:12. So I gave them up, &c. — Upon their obstinate and oft-repeated acts of disobedience, and their rejection of my grace and mercy offered to them, I withdrew all the restraints of my providence, and my Holy Spirit and grace from them, and wholly left them to follow their own vain and foolish imaginations, and wicked lusts. And they walked in their own counsels — The consequence of my thus giving them up to their own depraved inclinations was, that they practised all those things, both in common conversation and in religious worship, which were most agreeable, not to my commands or counsels, but to their own fancies and lusts, as appeared in the affair of the golden calf, and many other things.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

81:8-16 We cannot look for too little from the creature, nor too much from the Creator. We may have enough from God, if we pray for it in faith. All the wickedness of the world is owing to man's wilfulness. People are not religious, because they will not be so. God is not the Author of their sin, he leaves them to the lusts of their own hearts, and the counsels of their own heads; if they do not well, the blame must be upon themselves. The Lord is unwilling that any should perish. What enemies sinners are to themselves! It is sin that makes our troubles long, and our salvation slow. Upon the same conditions of faith and obedience, do Christians hold those spiritual and eternal good things, which the pleasant fields and fertile hills of Canaan showed forth. Christ is the Bread of life; he is the Rock of salvation, and his promises are as honey to pious minds. But those who reject him as their Lord and Master, must also lose him as their Saviour and their reward.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust - Margin, as in Hebrew, to the hardness of their own hearts. Literally, "I sent them, or I dismissed them, to the hardness of their hearts." I suffered them to have what, in the hardness of their hearts they desired, or what their hard and rebellious hearts prompted them to desire: I indulged them in their wishes. I gave them what they asked, and left them to themselves to work out the problem about success and happiness in their own way - to let them see what must be the result of forsaking the true God. The world - and the church too - has been often suffered to make this experiment.

And they walked in their own counsels - As they thought wise and best. Compare Acts 7:42; Acts 14:16; Romans 1:24; Psalm 78:26-37.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

11, 12. They failed, and He gave them up to their own desires and hardness of heart (De 29:18; Pr 1:30; Ro 11:25).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Upon their obstinate and oft-repeated rebellions and rejections of my grace and mercy offered to them, I withdrew all the restraints of my providence, and my Holy Spirit, and grace from them, and wholly left them to follow their own vain and foolish imaginations and wicked lusts.

They walked in their own counsels; they practised those things, both in common conversation and in religious worship, which were most agreeable, not to my commands or counsels, but to their own fancies and inclinations, as appeared in the golden calf and many other things.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust,.... Sometimes God gave them up, when they sinned, into the hands of the Moabites, or Ammonites, or Philistines, or other neighbouring nations, for their chastisement; but to be delivered up unto their own hearts' lust is worse than that; nay, than to be delivered to Satan: salvation may be the consequence of that, but damnation of this; and yet it is a righteous judgment; for as men like not to retain God in their knowledge, it is but just with him to give them up to vile affections, to a reprobate mind, to do things not convenient, Romans 1:24 there is nothing men are more desirous of than to have their hearts' lusts; and there is no greater judgment can befall them than to be left to the power of them, which must unavoidably issue in their ruin here and hereafter: and they walked in their own counsels; which were bad; after the imagination of their own evil hearts, and not after the counsels and directions of God in his word, and by his servants.

Geneva Study Bible

So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

12. So I let them go after the stubbornness of their heart,

That they might walk in their own counsels. (R.V.).

God punishes men by leaving them to their own self-willed courses of action, which prove their ruin. Cp. Job 8:4; Proverbs 1:30 ff.; Romans 1:24 ff.; 2 Thessalonians 2:10 ff. ‘Stubbornness’ is a favourite word with Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:24, &c.), occurring elsewhere only in Deuteronomy 29:19.

Most editions both of the Bible and of the Prayer Book wrongly print hearts’ for heart’s. See Scrivener, Auth. Ed. of Engl. Bible, p. 152, and Earle, Psalter of 1539, p. 313.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 12. - So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust. God's Spirit will not always strive with men (Genesis 6:3). After a time, if they persist in evil courses and disobedience to his commands, he "gives them up," withdraws from them, leaves them to themselves, to the "lust," or rather "stubbornness" of their own hearts - to their own perverse wills and imaginations. And they walked in their own counsels (comp. Jeremiah 7:24). This result is inevitable. If God no longer guides their thoughts and enlightens their understandings, they can but follow their own foolish counsels, and the result cannot but be disastrous. Psalm 81:12

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The Passover discourse now takes a sorrowful and awful turn: Israel's disobedience and self-will frustrated the gracious purpose of the commandments and promises of its God. "My people" and "Israel" alternate as in the complaint in Isaiah 1:3. לא־אבה followed by the dative, as in Deuteronomy 13:9 ([8], ου ̓ συνθελήσεις αὐτῷ). Then God made their sin their punishment, by giving them over judicially (שׁלּח as in Job 8:4) into the obduracy of their heart, which rudely shuts itself up against His mercy (from שׁרר, Aramaic שׁרר, Arabic sarra, to make firm equals to cheer, make glad), so that they went on (cf. on the sequence of tense, Psalm 61:8) in their, i.e., their own, egotistical, God-estranged determinations; the suffix is thus accented, as e.g., in Isaiah 65:2, cf. the borrowed passage Jeremiah 7:24, and the same phrase in Micah 6:16. And now, because this state of unfaithfulness in comparison with God's faithfulness has remained essentially the same even to to-day, the exalted Orator of the festival passes over forthwith to the generation of the present, and that, as is in accordance with the cheerful character of the feast, in a charmingly alluring manner. Whether we take לוּ in the signification of si (followed by the participle, as in 2 Samuel 18:12), or like אם above in Psalm 81:9 as expressing a wish, o si (if but!), Psalm 81:15. at any rate have the relation of the apodosis to it. From כּמעט (for a little, easily) it may be conjectured that the relation of Israel at that time to the nations did not correspond to the dignity of the nation of God which is called to subdue and rule the world in the strength of God. השׁיב signifies in this passage only to turn, not: to again lay upon. The meaning is, that He would turn the hand which is now chastening His people against those by whom He is chastening them (cf. on the usual meaning of the phrase, Isaiah 1:25; Amos 1:8; Jeremiah 6:9; Ezekiel 38:12). The promise in Psalm 81:16 relates to Israel and all the members of the nation. The haters of Jahve would be compelled reluctantly to submit themselves to Him, and their time would endure for ever. "Time" is equivalent to duration, and in this instance with the collateral notion of Prosperity, as elsewhere (Isaiah 13:22) of the term of punishment. One now expects that it should continue with ואאכילהוּ, in the tone of a promise. The Psalm, however, closes with an historical statement. For ויּאכילהו cannot signify et cibaret eum; it ought to be pronounced ויאכילהו. The pointing, like the lxx, Syriac, and Vulgate, takes v. 17a (cf. Deuteronomy 32:13.) as a retrospect, and apparently rightly so. For even the Asaphic Psalm 77 and 78 break off with historical pictures. V. 17b is, accordingly, also to be taken as retrospective. The words of the poet in conclusion once more change into the words of God. The closing word runs אשׂבּיעך, as in Psalm 50:8, Deuteronomy 4:31, and (with the exception of the futt. Hiph. of Lamed He verbs ending with ekka) usually. The Babylonian system of pointing nowhere recognises the suffix-form ekka. If the Israel of the present would hearken to the Lawgiver of Sinai, says v. 17, then would He renew to it the miraculous gifts of the time of the redemption under Moses.