Psalms

PSALM 95*

A Call to Praise and Obedience

I

1Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD;

cry out to the rock of our salvation.a

2Let us come before him with a song of praise,

joyfully sing out our psalms.

3For the LORD is the great God,

the great king over all gods,b

4Whose hand holds the depths of the earth;

who owns the tops of the mountains.

5The sea and dry land belong to God,

who made them, formed them by hand.c

II

6Enter, let us bow down in worship;

let us kneel before the LORD who made us.

7For he is our God,

we are the people he shepherds,

the sheep in his hands.d

III

Oh, that today you would hear his voice:e

8Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,

as on the day of Massah in the desert.*

9There your ancestors tested me;

they tried me though they had seen my works.f

10Forty years I loathed that generation;

I said: “This people’s heart goes astray;

they do not know my ways.”g

11Therefore I swore in my anger:

“They shall never enter my rest.”*

* [Psalm 95] Twice the Psalm calls the people to praise and worship God (Ps 95:12, 6), the king of all creatures (Ps 95:35) and shepherd of the flock (Ps 95:7a, 7b). The last strophe warns the people to be more faithful than were their ancestors in the journey to the promised land (Ps 95:7c11). This invitation to praise God regularly opens the Church’s official prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours.

* [95:8] Meribah: lit., “contention”; the place where the Israelites quarreled with God. Massah: “testing,” the place where they put God to the trial, cf. Ex 17:7; Nm 20:13.

* [95:11] My rest: the promised land as in Dt 12:9. Heb 4 applies the verse to the eternal rest of heaven.

a. [95:1] Dt 32:15.

b. [95:3] Ps 47:2; 135:5.

c. [95:5] Ps 24:12.

d. [95:711] Ps 81:8; 106:32; Heb 3:711, 15; 4:3, 5, 7.

e. [95:7] Ps 23:13; 100:3; Mi 7:14.

f. [95:9] Nm 14:22; 20:213; Dt 6:16; 33:8.

g. [95:10] Ps 78:8; Nm 14:34; Dt 32:5.

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