Albert Barnes Commentary Psalms 81:16

"He would feed them also with the finest of the wheat; And with honey out of the rock would I satisfy thee." — Psalms 81:16 (ASV)

He should have fed them also - He would have given them prosperity, and their land would have produced abundantly the necessities—even the luxuries—of life. This is in accordance with the usual promises of the Scriptures, that obedience to God will be followed by national temporal prosperity. See (Deuteronomy 32:13–14; 1 Timothy 4:8; Psalms 37:11). .

With the finest of the wheat - Margin, as in Hebrew, with the fat of wheat. The meaning is, the best of the wheat—as the words fat and fatness are often used to denote excellence and abundance (Genesis 27:28, 27:39; Job 36:16; Psalms 36:8; Psalms 63:5; Psalms 65:11).

And with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee - Palestine abounded with bees, and honey was a favorite article of food (Genesis 43:11; Deuteronomy 8:8; Deuteronomy 32:13; 1 Samuel 14:25–26; Isaiah 7:15; Ezekiel 16:13; Matthew 3:4). Much of that which was obtained was wild honey, deposited by the bees in the hollows of trees and, it would seem, in the caverns of the rocks. Much of it was also gathered from rocky regions, and this was regarded as the most delicate and valuable.

I do not know the cause of this, nor why honey in high and rocky countries should be more pure and white than that obtained from other places; but the whitest and most pure and delicate honey that I have ever seen I found at Chamouni in Switzerland. Dr. Thomson (Land and the Book, vol. ii. p. 362) says of the rocky region in the vicinity of Timnath, that “bees were so abundant in a wood at no great distance from this spot that the honey dropped down from the trees on the ground;” and that “he explored densely-wooded gorges in Hermon and in Southern Lebanon where wild bees are still found, both in trees and in the clefts of the rocks.”

The meaning here is plain: if Israel had been obedient to God, He would have blessed them with abundance—with the richest and most coveted productions of the field.

Pure religion—obedience to God, morality, temperance, purity, honesty, and industry, such as religion requires—are always eminently favorable to individual and national prosperity. And if a person or a nation desired to be most prosperous, most successful in the lawful and proper aims of individual or national existence, and happiest, nothing would contribute more to this than those virtues which piety enjoins and cultivates.

Individuals and nations, even regarding temporal prosperity, are most unwise, as well as most wicked, when they disregard the laws of God and turn away from the precepts and the spirit of religion.

It is true of nations, as it is of individuals, that Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, (1 Timothy 4:8).