John Calvin Commentary Psalms 81:13

"Oh that my people would hearken unto me, That Israel would walk in my ways!" — Psalms 81:13 (ASV)

O if my people had listened to me! By the honorable designation God gives to the people of Israel, He more effectively exposes their shameful and disgraceful conduct. Their wickedness was doubly intensified by the fact that, although God called them to be His people, they were no different from those who were complete strangers to Him. Thus He complains through the prophet Isaiah,

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib:
but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider (Isaiah 1:3).

The Hebrew particle לו, lu, which I have translated O if! is not to be understood as expressing a condition, but a wish. Therefore God, I have no doubt, like a man weeping and lamenting, cries out, “Oh, the wretchedness of this people in deliberately refusing to have their best interests carefully provided for!”

He assumes the character of a father. Observing, after having tried every possible means for the restoration of His children, that their condition is completely hopeless, He uses the language of one saddened, so to speak, with sighing and groaning. This is not because He is subject to human passions, but because He cannot otherwise express the greatness of the love He bears toward us.

The Prophet seems to have borrowed this passage from the song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:29, where the stubbornness of the people is lamented in almost the same words: Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! He means implicitly to rebuke the Jews and to impress upon them that their own perversity was the only cause that kept them from enjoying great outward prosperity.

If it is objected that God utters this complaint in vain and without basis, since it was in His power to bend the stubborn wills of the people, and that, when He did not choose to do this, He had no reason to compare Himself to a man deeply grieved, I answer that He very properly uses this style of speaking for our sake, so that we may seek the source of our misery nowhere but in ourselves.

We must here beware of mixing things that are completely different—as different as heaven is from earth. God, in reaching down to us through His word and addressing His invitations to all people without exception, disappoints no one. All who sincerely come to Him are received and find from direct experience that they were not called in vain.

At the same time, we are to trace this difference—that the word enters the hearts of some, while others only hear its sound—to the source of God’s secret electing purpose. And yet there is no inconsistency in Him complaining, so to speak, with tears, of our foolishness when we do not obey Him.

In the invitations He addresses to us by the external word, He shows Himself to be a father; and why may He not also be understood as still representing Himself under the image of a father in using this form of complaint? In Ezekiel 18:32, He declares with the strictest truth, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, provided that in interpreting the passage, we honestly and calmly consider its full scope.

God has no pleasure in the death of a sinner. How so? Because He desires all people to turn to Him. But it is abundantly clear that people cannot turn to God by their own free will until He first changes their stony hearts into hearts of flesh. Indeed, this renovation, as Augustine wisely observes, is a work surpassing even creation itself.

Now, what prevents God from shaping the hearts of all people equally to submit to Him? Here, modesty and sober judgment must be exercised, so that instead of presuming to delve into His incomprehensible decrees, we may be content with the revelation of His will that He has given in His word.

There is the strongest reason for saying that He wills the salvation of those to whom that language is addressed: Come unto me, and be ye converted (Isaiah 21:12).

In the second part of the verse we are considering, we have defined what it is to hear God. To agree with what He says would not be enough, for hypocrites will immediately grant that whatever comes from His mouth is true and will pretend to listen just as a donkey might prick up its ears.

But the clause teaches us that we can only be said to truly hear God when we submit to His authority.