John Calvin Commentary Psalms 65:5

"By terrible things thou wilt answer us in righteousness, Oh God of our salvation, Thou that art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, And of them that are afar off upon the sea:" — Psalms 65:5 (ASV)

Terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer to us. He proceeds to illustrate, although in a somewhat different form, the same point of the blessedness of those who are admitted into the temple of God and nourished in His house. He declares that God would answer His people by miracles or fearful signs, displaying His power, as if he had said, in deliverances as wonderful as those which He performed for their fathers when they went out of Egypt.

It is in no common or ordinary manner that God has preserved His Church, but with terrible majesty. It is well that this should be known, and the people of God taught to sustain their hopes in the most apparently desperate exigencies.

The Psalmist speaks of the deliverances of God as specially enjoyed by the Jewish nation, but adds that He was the hope of the ends of the earth, even to the world’s remotest extremities. Hence it follows that the grace of God was to be extended to the Gentiles.