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Selected Verse: Psalms 81:6 - Basic English
| Verse |
Translation |
Text |
| Ps 81:6 |
Basic English |
I took the weight from his back; his hands were made free from the baskets. |
| |
King James |
I removed his shoulder from the burden: his hands were delivered from the pots. |
Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse
| A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] |
| God's language alludes to the burdensome slavery of the Israelites. |
| Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834] |
I removed his shoulder from the burden - The burden which the people of Israel were called to hear in Egypt. The reference is undoubtedly to their burdens in making bricks, and conveying them to the place where they were to be used; and perhaps also to the fact that they were required to carry stone in building houses and towns for the Egyptians. Compare Exo 1:11-14; Exo 5:4-17. The meaning is, that he had saved them from these burdens, to wit, by delivering them from their hard bondage. The speaker here evidently is God. In the previous verse it is the people. Such a change of person is not uncommon in the Scriptures.
His hands were delivered from the pots - Margin, as in Hebrew, passed away. That is, they were separated from them, or made free. The word rendered pots usually has that signification. Job 41:20; Sa1 2:14; Ch2 35:13; but it may also mean a basket. Jer 24:2; Kg2 10:7. The latter is probably the meaning here. The allusion is to baskets which might have been used in carrying clay, or conveying the bricks after they were made: perhaps a kind of hamper that was swung over the shoulders, with clay or bricks in each - somewhat like the instrument used now by the Chinese in carrying tea - or like the neck-yoke which is employed in carrying sap where maple sugar is manufactured, or milk on dairy farms. There are many representations on Egyptian sculptures which would illustrate this. The idea is that of a burden, or task, and the allusion is to the deliverance that was accomplished by removing them to another land. |
| Commentary on the Old Testament, by Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch [1857-78] |
It is a gentle but profoundly earnest festival discourse which God the Redeemer addresses to His redeemed people. It begins, as one would expect in a Passover speech, with a reference to the סבלות of Egypt (Exo 1:11-14; Exo 5:4; Exo 6:6.), and to the duwd, the task-basket for the transport of the clay and of the bricks (Exo 1:14; Exo 5:7.).
(Note: In the Papyrus Leydensis i. 346 the Israelites are called the "Aperiu (עברים), who dragged along the stones for the great watch-tower of the city of Rameses," and in the Pap. Leyd. i. 349, according to Lauth, the "Aperiu, who dragged along the stones for the storehouse of the city of Rameses.")
Out of such distress did He free the poor people who cried for deliverance (Exo 2:23-25); He answered them בּסתר רעם, i.e., not (according to Psa 22:22; Isa 32:2): affording them protection against the storm, but (according to Psa 18:12; Psa 77:17.): out of the thunder-clouds in which He at the same time revealed and veiled Himself, casting down the enemies of Israel with His lightnings, which is intended to refer pre-eminently to the passage through the Red Sea (vid., Psa 77:19); and He proved them (אבחנך, with ŏ contracted from ō, cf. on Job 35:6) at the waters of Merbah, viz., whether they would trust Him further on after such glorious tokens of His power and loving-kindness. The name "Waters of Merı̂bah," which properly is borne only by Merı̂bath Kadesh, the place of the giving of water in the fortieth year (Num 20:13; Num 27:14; Deu 32:51; Deu 33:8), is here transferred to the place of the giving of water in the first year, which was named Massah u-Merı̂bah (Exo 17:7), as the remembrances of these two miracles, which took place under similar circumstances, in general blend together (vid., on Psa 95:8.). It is not now said that Israel did not act in response to the expectation of God, who had son wondrously verified Himself; the music, as Seal imports, here rises, and makes a long and forcible pause in what is being said. What now follows further, are, as the further progress of Psa 81:12 shows, the words of God addressed to the Israel of the desert, which at the same time with its faithfulness are brought to the remembrance of the Israel of the present. העיד בּ, as in Psa 50:7; Deu 8:19, to bear testimony that concerns him against any one. אם (according to the sense, o si, as in Psa 95:7, which is in many ways akin to this Psalm) properly opens a searching question which wishes that the thing asked may come about (whether thou wilt indeed give me a willing hearing?!). In Psa 81:10 the key-note of the revelation of the Law from Sinai is struck: the fundamental command which opens the decalogue demanded fidelity to Jahve and forbade idol-worship as the sin of sins. אל זר is an idol in opposition to the God of Israel as the true God; and אל נכר, a strange god in opposition to the true God as the God of Israel. To this one God Israel ought to yield itself all the more undividedly and heartily as it was more manifestly indebted entirely to Him, who in His condescension had chosen it, and in His wonder-working might had redeemed it (המּעלך, part. Hiph. with the eh elided, like הפּדך, Deu 13:6, and אכלך, from כּלּה, Exo 33:3); and how easy this submission ought to have been to it, since He desired nothing in return for the rich abundance of His good gifts, which satisfy and quicken body and soul, but only a wide-opened mouth, i.e., a believing longing, hungering for mercy and eager for salvation (Psa 119:131)! |
| Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible, by John Wesley [1754-65] |
| Pots - This word denotes all those vessels wherein they carried water, straw, lime, or bricks. |
7 And when the letter came to them, they took the king's sons and put them to death, all the seventy, and put their heads in baskets and sent them to him at Jezreel.
2 One basket had very good figs, like the figs which first come to growth: and the other basket had very bad figs, so bad that they were of no use for food.
13 And the Passover lamb was cooked over the fire, as it says in the law; and the holy offerings were cooked in pots and basins and vessels, and taken quickly to all the people.
14 This he put into the pot, and everything which came up on the hook the priest took for himself. This they did in Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there.
20 Smoke comes out of his nose, like a pot boiling on the fire.
4 And the king of Egypt said to them, Why do you, Moses and Aaron, take the people away from their work? get back to your work.
5 And Pharaoh said, Truly, the people of the land are increasing in number, and you are keeping them back from their work.
6 The same day Pharaoh gave orders to the overseers and those who were responsible for the work, saying,
7 Give these men no more dry stems for their brick-making as you have been doing; let them go and get the material for themselves.
8 But see that they make the same number of bricks as before, and no less: for they have no love for work; and so they are crying out and saying, Let us go and make an offering to our God.
9 Give the men harder work, and see that they do it; let them not give attention to false words.
10 And the overseers of the people and their responsible men went out and said to the people, Pharaoh says, I will give you no more dry stems.
11 Go yourselves and get dry stems wherever you are able; for your work is not to be any less.
12 So the people were sent in all directions through the land of Egypt to get dry grass for stems.
13 And the overseers went on driving them and saying, Do your full day's work as before when there were dry stems for you.
14 And the responsible men of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's overseers had put over them, were given blows, and they said to them, Why have you not done your regular work, in making bricks as before?
15 Then the responsible men of the children of Israel came to Pharaoh, protesting and saying, Why are you acting in this way to your servants?
16 They give us no dry stems and they say to us, Make bricks: and they give your servants blows; but it is your people who are in the wrong.
17 But he said, You have no love for work: that is why you say, Let us go and make an offering to the Lord.
11 So they put overseers of forced work over them, in order to make their strength less by the weight of their work. And they made store-towns for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raamses.
12 But the more cruel they were to them, the more their number increased, till all the land was full of them. And the children of Israel were hated by the Egyptians.
13 And they gave the children of Israel even harder work to do:
14 And made their lives bitter with hard work, making building-material and bricks, and doing all sorts of work in the fields under the hardest conditions.
131 My mouth was open wide, waiting with great desire for your teachings.
3 Go up to that land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, for you are a stiff-necked people, for fear that I send destruction on you while you are on the way.
6 If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife of your heart, or the friend who is as dear to you as your life, working on you secretly says to you, Let us go and give worship to other gods, strange to you and to your fathers;
10 I am the Lord your God, who took you up from the land of Egypt: let your mouth be open wide, so that I may give you food.
7 For he is our God; and we are the people to whom he gives food, and the sheep of his flock. Today, if you would only give ear to his voice!
19 And it is certain that if at any time you are turned away from the Lord your God, and go after other gods, to be their servants and to give them worship, destruction will overtake you.
7 Give ear, O my people, to my words; O Israel, I will be a witness against you; I am God, even your God.
12 So I gave them up to the desires of their hearts; that they might go after their evil purposes.
8 Let not your hearts be hard, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the waste land;
7 And he gave that place the name Massah and Meribah, because the children of Israel were angry, and because they put the Lord to the test, saying, Is the Lord with us or not?
8 And of Levi he said, Give your Thummim to Levi and let the Urim be with your loved one, whom you put to the test at Massah, with whom you were angry at the waters of Meribah;
51 Because of your sin against me before the children of Israel at the waters of Meribath Kadesh in the waste land of Zin; because you did not keep my name holy among the children of Israel.
14 Because in the waste land of Zin, when the people were angry, you and he went against my word and did not keep my name holy before their eyes, at the waters. (These are the waters of Meribah in Kadesh in the waste land of Zin.)
13 These are the waters of Meribah; because the children of Israel went against the Lord, and they saw that he was holy among them.
6 If you have done wrong, is he any the worse for it? and if your sins are great in number, what is it to him?
19 Your way was in the sea, and your road in the great waters; there was no knowledge of your footsteps.
17 The clouds sent out water; the skies gave out a sound; truly, your arrows went far and wide.
12 Before his shining light his dark clouds went past, raining ice and fire.
2 And a man will be as a safe place from the wind, and a cover from the storm; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shade of a great rock in a waste land.
22 I will give the knowledge of your name to my brothers: I will give you praise among the people.
23 Now after a long time the king of Egypt came to his end: and the children of Israel were crying in their grief under the weight of their work, and their cry for help came to the ears of God.
24 And at the sound of their weeping the agreement which God had made with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob came to his mind.
25 And God's eyes were turned to the children of Israel and he gave them the knowledge of himself.
7 Give these men no more dry stems for their brick-making as you have been doing; let them go and get the material for themselves.
14 And made their lives bitter with hard work, making building-material and bricks, and doing all sorts of work in the fields under the hardest conditions.
6 Say then to the children of Israel, I am Yahweh, and I will take you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians, and make you safe from their power, and will make you free by the strength of my arm after great punishments.
4 And the king of Egypt said to them, Why do you, Moses and Aaron, take the people away from their work? get back to your work.
11 So they put overseers of forced work over them, in order to make their strength less by the weight of their work. And they made store-towns for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raamses.
12 But the more cruel they were to them, the more their number increased, till all the land was full of them. And the children of Israel were hated by the Egyptians.
13 And they gave the children of Israel even harder work to do:
14 And made their lives bitter with hard work, making building-material and bricks, and doing all sorts of work in the fields under the hardest conditions.