John Calvin Commentary Psalms 105:11

"Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, The lot of your inheritance;" — Psalms 105:11 (ASV)

Saying, I will give thee the land of Canaan. As this was only a small portion of the blessings offered to the fathers, the prophet seems at first glance too much to limit the covenant of God, which extended even to the hope of an eternal inheritance. But he considered it enough to show, by the figure synecdoche, that a part of what God had promised to the fathers had received its complete fulfillment.

His purpose is to indicate that they did not possess the land of Canaan by any other right than because it was the legitimate inheritance of Abraham according to the covenant which God had made with him. If a man presents the promised pledge of a contract, he does not violate the contract.

When, therefore, the prophet proves by a visible symbol that God did not make a covenant with His servants in vain, and that He did not disappoint their hope, he does not take away or abolish the other blessings included in it. Rather, when the Israelites heard that they possessed the land of Canaan by right of inheritance, because they were the chosen people of God, it was appropriate for them to look beyond this, and to take a comprehensive view of all the privileges by which He had graciously distinguished them.

Therefore, it should be noted that when He partly fulfills His promises to us, we are base and ungrateful if this experience does not lead to the confirmation of our faith. Whenever He shows Himself to be a father to us, He undoubtedly seals on our hearts the power and efficacy of His word.

But if the land of Canaan should have led the children of Israel in their contemplation of heaven, since they knew that they had been brought into it on account of the covenant which God had made with them, then the consideration that He has given to us His Christ, in whom all the promises are yea and amen, (2 Corinthians 1:20), ought to have much greater weight with us.

When it is said, I will give thee the measuring line of Your inheritance, the change in number indicates that God made a covenant with all the people in general, though He spoke the words only to a few individuals, just as we have seen a little earlier that it was a decree or an everlasting law. The holy patriarchs were the first and principal persons into whose hands the promise was committed; but they did not embrace the grace which was offered to them as belonging only to themselves, but as what their posterity, in common with them, were to become sharers of.