John Calvin Commentary Psalms 66:10

"For thou, O God, hast proved us: Thou hast tried us, as silver is tried." — Psalms 66:10 (ASV)

For thou, O God! hast proved us: we may read, Though thou, O God! and so on, and then the passage comes in as a qualification of what came before, and is presented by the Psalmist to magnify the goodness of God, who had delivered them from such severe calamities.

But there is another purpose which I consider him to have in view, and this is the alleviation of the grief of God’s people, by setting before them the comfort suggested by the following words. When afflicted, it is very important that we should consider it as coming from God, and as expressly intended for our good.

It is in reference to this that the Psalmist speaks of their having been proved and tried. At the same time, while he refers to God’s testing his children in order to purge away their sin, as dross is expelled from silver by fire, he would also suggest that their patience had been tested.

The figure implies that their probation had been severe, for silver is cast repeatedly into the furnace. They express their thankfulness to God that, while tested by affliction, they had not been destroyed by it.

However, that their affliction was both varied and very severe appears not only from the metaphor but also from the whole context, where they speak of having been cast into the net, being reduced to straits, men riding over their heads, and of being brought through shipwreck and conflagration.

The expression, laying a restraint [or chain] upon their loins, is introduced as being stronger than the preceding one. It was not a net of thread that had been thrown over them; rather, they had been bound down with hard and unbreakable fetters. The following expression refers to men who had shamefully tyrannized over them and ridden them down like cattle.

Fire and water evidently mean complicated afflictions, and it is suggested that God had tested his people with every form of calamity. These are the two elements that contribute more than any other to sustain human life, but are equally powerful for destroying it. It is noticeable that the Psalmist speaks of all the cruelties they had most unjustly suffered from their enemies as an infliction of Divine punishment, and he would caution the Lord’s people against imagining that God was unaware of what they had endured, or too distracted by other things to pay attention to it.

In their condition, as described here, we see the general condition of the Church represented.

Consequently, when the Church is subjected to vicissitudes—cast from fire into water by a succession of trials—we may eventually realize that there is nothing new or strange in such events to cause us alarm.

The Hebrew word רויה, revayah, which I have translated as fruitful place, literally means a well-watered land. Here it is taken metaphorically for a condition of prosperity, with the people of God being represented as brought into a pleasant and fertile place where there is abundant pasturage. The truth conveyed is that God, although he visits his children with temporary and severe chastisements, will ultimately crown them with joy and prosperity.

It is a mistake to suppose that the allusion is entirely to their being settled in the land of Canaan, for the psalm refers not merely to the troubles they underwent in the wilderness but to the whole series of distresses to which they were subjected at different periods of their history.