USB ~ Psalms 95

A Call to Praise and Obedience

1 Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD; cry out to the rock of our salvation. a

2 Let us come before him with a song of praise, joyfully sing out our psalms.

3 For the LORD is the great God, the great king over all gods, b

4 Whose hand holds the depths of the earth; who owns the tops of the mountains.

5 The sea and dry land belong to God, who made them, formed them by hand. c

6 Enter, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the LORD who made us.

7 For he is our God, we are the people he shepherds, the sheep in his hands. d

III Oh, that today you would hear his voice: e

8 Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the desert.†

9 There your ancestors tested me; they tried me though they had seen my works. f

10 Forty years I loathed that generation; I said: “This people’s heart goes astray; they do not know my ways.” g

11 Therefore I swore in my anger: “They shall never enter my rest.”†

Footnotes

†. Psalm 95 Twice the Psalm calls the people to praise and worship God (Ps 95:1-2, 6), the king of all creatures (Ps 95:3-5) and shepherd of the flock (Ps 95:7a, 7b). The last strophe warns the people to be more faithful than were their ancestors in the journey to the promised land (Ps 95:7c-11). This invitation to praise God regularly opens the Church’s official prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours.

†. 95:8 Meribah: lit., “contention”; the place where the Israelites quarreled with God. Massah: “testing,” the place where they put God to the trial, cf. Ex 17:7; Nm 20:13.

†. 95:11 My rest: the promised land as in Dt 12:9. Heb 4 applies the verse to the eternal rest of heaven.

95:1 Dt 32:15.
95:3 Ps 47:2; 135:5.
95:5 Ps 24:1-2.
95:7-11 Ps 81:8; 106:32; Heb 3:7-11, 15; 4:3, 5, 7.
95:7 Ps 23:1-3; 100:3; Mi 7:14.
95:9 Nm 14:22; 20:2-13; Dt 6:16; 33:8.
95:10 Ps 78:8; Nm 14:34; Dt 32:5.