Psalms 67
Psalm 673 is short - only seven verses - but its reach is the whole world. It opens with words any worshipper in Israel would have recognized at once, an echo of the blessing the priests were commanded to speak over the people: God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us. Mercy, blessing, the shining of God's face - these are the great marks of His favor, the sense that the God of heaven has turned toward you and is for you. But the prayer does not stop where most of our prayers for blessing stop. It immediately names a reason that points away from the ones being blessed: That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations.
That little word - that - is the hinge of the whole psalm. The blessing is asked for, but not as an end in itself. It is asked for so that something larger may happen: so that God's way - His character, His justice, the path of His salvation - may be known upon earth, and His saving health may reach all nations. The favor poured out on one people is meant to overflow its banks until the whole earth is reached by it. And so the psalm breaks into a refrain it will sing twice, a summons that gathers in everyone: Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Not Israel only. All the people. The whole human family, drawn into one great chorus of praise to the God who saves.
From there the song widens further still. O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. The grounds for the nations' gladness is not merely mercy but justice - the assurance that the God who rules the world rules it rightly, fairly, with a hand that can be trusted. And then the closing harvest, where blessing and praise come full circle: Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. The prayer that began with bless us ends with all the ends of the earth - the blessing of one people opening out, at last, into the worship of the whole world. Hidden in that opening line, too, is a longing the gospel will answer by name: the shining face of God becoming a light to lighten the Gentiles.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 67:1-4 · To the chief Musician on Neginoth, A Psalm or SongThat Thy Way May Be Known
1God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us; Selah. 2That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. 3Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. 4O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Selah.
The psalm opens with words that would have sounded familiar to anyone standing in the worship of Israel, for they are an unmistakable echo of the blessing the priests were commanded to pronounce over the people: The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee (Num. 6:24-25). Here the worshippers take that blessing - once spoken over them by the priest - and pray it back to God for themselves: God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause his face to shine upon us. Three things are asked, and they belong together. Mercy - the favor of a God who need not be kind but chooses to be. Blessing - the good that God gives, the flourishing only He can grant. And the shining of his face - the most personal of all, the picture of God turning toward you with delight, the way a face lights up at the sight of someone loved. To ask for the shining of God's face is to ask for nothing less than His glad attention, His presence turned warmly your way. It is a prayer for the whole of God's favor, gathered into one breath.
And then comes the hinge of the entire psalm, the small word on which everything turns: That thy way may be known upon earth. That. So that. The blessing of verse 1 is not requested as an end in itself; it is requested for a purpose, and the purpose points outward, away from the ones being blessed. They ask to be blessed so that God's way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations. Pause over how rare and beautiful this is. The natural human instinct is to ask for blessing and stop there - to want the shining face of God on us and our own. But this prayer cannot rest until the blessing has done its larger work: making God known, not to one people, but upon earth, among all nations. God's way - the whole pattern of His character, His justice, His mercy, the road of His salvation - is meant to become visible to the watching world through the people He has favored. The blessing is a means; the knowledge of God among the nations is the end. Those who are blessed become, whether they intend it or not, a kind of window through which the world catches sight of what God is like.3
Out of that vision rises the refrain the psalm will sing twice, here and again at its center: Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. The repetition within the single verse is not mere poetic habit; it is an insistence, a widening, a door thrown open. First the people - then, as if that were not enough, all the people. Every nation, every tongue, every tribe of the earth, summoned into one chorus. And the next verse names why the nations themselves should be glad to come: O let the nations be glad and sing for joy: for thou shalt judge the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. The grounds for their gladness is striking. It is not first that God is merciful to them - though He is - but that He judges righteously and governs the world justly. There is deep relief in that for a world weary of crooked rulers and twisted justice: the God who governs the nations does so rightly, with a fairness that can be trusted absolutely. The nations are not summoned to praise a tyrant they must flatter, but a King whose rule is so just that to come under it is cause for joy.
Psalm 67:5-7All the Ends of the Earth
5Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. 6Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. 7God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.
The refrain returns, word for word, at the very heart of the psalm: Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. A psalm of only seven verses gives this one line twice - once near the start, once near the end - and the repetition is the point. It frames everything between. Whatever else the psalm says about blessing and harvest and the justice of God, the thing it most wants is this: that all the people would praise Him. The doubled refrain works like the two hands of the psalm, reaching out on either side to gather the whole world into a single song. It is worth noticing that the great longing here is not that the nations would merely be saved, or merely be safe, but that they would praise - that the whole earth would find its voice and turn it toward God. Salvation, in the vision of this psalm, is not finally about the rescued; it is about the One who is worthy to be praised by all He has rescued. The end of the missions story is not a counted multitude but a singing one.
Now the song turns to harvest: Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. The little word then ties the harvest to everything that came before - when the nations are glad, when God's way is known, when praise rises from all the peoples, then the earth itself responds with fruitfulness. There is an old and deep connection in Scripture between the rightness of God's people before Him and the flourishing of the land beneath them; when worship is whole, creation answers with abundance. But the psalm is careful to keep the increase from becoming the point. It does not say then the earth shall yield her increase and stop, as though crops were the goal. It says the earth yields her increase, and God… shall bless us - the true gift is not the harvest but the God who gives it. And mark the tender phrase tucked into the middle: even our own God. Not God in the abstract, not merely the God who governs the nations from on high - our own God, the One who has bound Himself to His people in covenant, who belongs to them and to whom they belong. The whole wide vision of the nations never loosens that intimate grip: the God of all the earth is still, gladly, our own.
The psalm closes by repeating its central word one last time and then flinging the door as wide as it will go: God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. Twice in two verses the people say God shall bless us - but the blessing does not curve back to rest on them. It opens outward in the very next breath: and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. This is where the whole psalm has been traveling from its first line. It began with bless us; it ends with all the ends of the earth. The blessing asked for in verse 1 has done its appointed work, flowing through the blessed until it reaches the farthest edges of the world. And the response of the ends of the earth is to fear him - not to cower in terror, but to render that deep reverence and awe which is the right posture of every creature before its Maker, the beginning of all wisdom. The psalm thus ends with the whole earth gathered in worship: not one people praising God in one place, but the ends of the earth themselves bowed in reverence before the God who blesses. The prayer of seven short verses turns out to have been a prayer for the redemption of the world.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 67 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for barak (vv. 1, 6-7, “bless us”), for yeshu'ah (v. 2, the “saving health” among all nations), and for goyim (vv. 2, 4, “all nations”), and for the way the psalm leans on the priestly blessing of Numbers 6.
- Psalm 67 ↔ Genesis 12 · Galatians 3 · Luke 2 · Revelation 7Intertextual BibleTraces the verbal threads tying Psalm 67's thy saving health among all nations (v. 2) to the promise that in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed (Gen. 12:3) and its gospel fulfillment in Christ (Gal. 3:14), and its let all the people praise thee (vv. 3, 5) to the multitude of all nations before the throne (Rev. 7:9-10).
- Psalm 67 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 67 - the superscription on Neginoth (stringed instruments), the echo of the Aaronic blessing in verse 1, the sense of saving health as deliverance and well-being in verse 2, and the harvest imagery of the earth yield her increase in verse 6.
Where this echoes in Scripture
That Thy Way May Be Known
- Numbers 6:24-26The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee... and give thee peace.The priestly blessing echoed in verse 1 - mercy, blessing, and the shining face of God, prayed back to Him.
- Genesis 12:2-3I will bless thee... and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.The shape of the blessing in verse 1 - one people blessed so that all the families of the earth might be.
- Luke 2:30-32Mine eyes have seen thy salvation... a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.The shining face and saving health of verses 1-2 - the light through Israel that reaches all nations, come in Christ.
- Acts 28:28The salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it.The saving health (yeshu’ah) of verse 2 going out at last to all the nations the psalm longed for.
All the Ends of the Earth
- Revelation 7:9-10A great multitude... of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne... Salvation to our God.The refrain of verses 3 and 5 answered - all the people praising at last, every nation before the throne.
- Matthew 28:19-20Go ye therefore, and teach all nations... and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.The missions heart of the psalm - the saving health carried to all nations by Christ’s own command.
- Galatians 3:14That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.The blessing of verses 6-7 flowing to the nations - Abraham’s blessing reaching the Gentiles in Christ.
- Psalm 22:27All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.The close of verse 7 - all the ends of the earth turning to fear and worship the God who blesses.