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50. Psalm 50

¹ The Mighty One, God, the LORD,
   speaks and summons the earth
   from the rising of the sun to where it sets.
² From Zion, perfect in beauty,
   God shines forth.
³ Our God comes
   and will not be silent;
a fire devours before him,
   and around him a tempest rages.
⁴ He summons the heavens above,
   and the earth, that he may judge his people:
⁵ “Gather to me this consecrated people,
   who made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”
⁶ And the heavens proclaim his righteousness,
   for he is a God of justice. With a different word division of the Hebrew; Masoretic Text for God himself is judge The Hebrew has Selah (a word of uncertain meaning) here.

    ⁷ “Listen, my people, and I will speak;
   I will testify against you, Israel:
   I am God, your God.
⁸ I bring no charges against you concerning your sacrifices
   or concerning your burnt offerings, which are ever before me.
⁹ I have no need of a bull from your stall
   or of goats from your pens,
¹⁰ for every animal of the forest is mine,
   and the cattle on a thousand hills.
¹¹ I know every bird in the mountains,
   and the insects in the fields are mine.
¹² If I were hungry I would not tell you,
   for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
¹³ Do I eat the flesh of bulls
   or drink the blood of goats?

    ¹⁴ “Sacrifice thank offerings to God,
   fulfill your vows to the Most High,
¹⁵ and call on me in the day of trouble;
   I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”

¹⁶ But to the wicked person, God says:

   “What right have you to recite my laws
   or take my covenant on your lips?
¹⁷ You hate my instruction
   and cast my words behind you.
¹⁸ When you see a thief, you join with him;
   you throw in your lot with adulterers.
¹⁹ You use your mouth for evil
   and harness your tongue to deceit.
²⁰ You sit and testify against your brother
   and slander your own mother’s son.
²¹ When you did these things and I kept silent,
   you thought I was exactly Or thought the ‘I AM’ was like you.
But I now arraign you
   and set my accusations before you.

    ²² “Consider this, you who forget God,
   or I will tear you to pieces, with no one to rescue you:
²³ Those who sacrifice thank offerings honor me,
   and to the blameless Probable reading of the original Hebrew text; the meaning of the Masoretic Text for this phrase is uncertain. I will show my salvation.”

9 I will take no calf out thy house Two reasons are given in this and the succeeding verses to prove that he cannot set any value upon sacrifices. The first is, that supposing him to depend upon these, he needs not to be indebted for them to man, having all the fullness of the earth at his command; and the second, that he requires neither food nor drink as we do for the support of our infirm natures. Upon the first of these he insists in the ninth and three following verses, where he adverts to his own boundless possessions, that he may show his absolute independence of human offerings. He then points at the wide distinction betwixt himself and man, the latter being dependent for a frail subsistence upon meat and drink, while he is the self-existent One, and communicates life to all beside. There may be nothing new in the truths here laid down by the Psalmist; but, considering the strong propensity we have by nature to form our estimate of God from ourselves, and to degenerate into a carnal worship, they convey a lesson by no means unnecessary, and which contains profound wisdom, that man can never benefit God by any of his services, as we have seen in Psalm 16:2, “My goodness extendeth not unto thee.” In the second place, God says that he does not require any thing for his own us but that, as he is sufficient in his own perfection, he has consulted the good of man in all that he has enjoined. We have a passage in Isaiah to a similar effect,

“The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me, and where is the place of my rest? For all these things hath mine hand made.” — (Isaiah 66:1, 2,)

In these words

God asserts his absolute independence; for while the world had a beginning, he himself was from eternity. From this it follows, that as he subsisted when there was nothing without him which could contribute to his fullness, he must have in himself a glorious all-sufficiency.