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Psalm 95

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

Let us sing for joy to Yahweh

1 Come, let us sing for joy to Yahweh; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; let us shout aloud to Him with songs. 3 For Yahweh is a great El, and a great King above all gods. 4 In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the heights of the mountains are His. 5 The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.

Let us worship and bow down

6 Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before Yahweh our Maker. 7 For He is our Elohim, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you hear His voice,

8 "Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your fathers tested Me; they tried Me, though they had seen My work. 10 For forty years I was grieved with that generation, and I said, 'They are a people who go astray in heart, and they have not known My ways.' 11 So I swore in My anger, 'They shall not enter My rest.'"

Notes

  • 95:1 The psalm has two movements: a call to praise and worship the King and Maker (verses 1-7a), and then, after "Today, if you hear His voice," Yahweh's own warning from the wilderness years (verses 7b-11), much like Psalm 81. "The Rock of our salvation" is the title of Deuteronomy 32:15, "the Rock of his salvation." The Hebrew has no title; the Greek adds "The praise of a song, of David," and Hebrews 4:7 likewise speaks of these words as spoken through David. In later Jewish practice the psalm opens the welcoming of the Shabbat on Friday evening.
  • 95:7 "The sheep of His hand" are the flock He leads and keeps Himself, as in "the sheep of Your pasture" (74:1; 79:13). "If you hear His voice" can also be read as a wish, "O that today you would listen to His voice!" (compare 81:8). Hebrews 3:7-4:11 quotes verses 7-11 from the Greek and builds on the word "Today": the call to listen and to enter is still open as long as it is called "Today" (Hebrews 3:13).
  • 95:8 Yahweh Himself now speaks. Massah means "testing" and Meribah "quarreling" (see the note at Exodus 17:7). At Rephidim Moses "called the name of the place Massah and Meribah" (Exodus 17:7), and near Kadesh "the waters of Meribah" were named again (Numbers 20:13). The Greek translates the two names as ordinary words, "as in the provocation, in the day of testing," and Hebrews 3:8 quotes it in that form.
  • 95:11 The oath is literally "if they enter My rest," the Hebrew form of a solemn "they shall not" (see the note at Numbers 14:23). "My rest" (menuchati) was first the land: Israel had not yet come "to the rest and to the inheritance which Yahweh your Elohim is giving you" (Deuteronomy 12:9), and that generation never entered it; later Zion is called His resting place (132:14). Hebrews 4:1-11 reasons that since Elohim still spoke of His rest through David, long after Joshua led Israel into the land, a Shabbat rest remains for the people of Elohim.

Psalm 94 · Psalm 96

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