﻿Psalms.
Chapter 81.
For the leader. On the gittith. Of Asaph. Sing aloud to God our strength, shout for joy to the God of Jacob. 
Raise a song, sound the timbrel, sweet lyre and harp. 
On the new moon blow the horn, at the full moon, the day of our festival. 
For this is a statute for Israel, a ruling of the God of Jacob, 
a witness he set up in Joseph, when he marched against Egypt’s land, where he heard an unknown voice say: 
‘I removed from your shoulder the burden, and freed your hands from the basket. 
At your call of distress I delivered you, from the thundercloud I answered you. At Meribah’s waters I tested you. Selah 
‘Listen, my people, to my warning, O Israel, if you would but listen! 
There must not be a strange god among you, you must bow to no foreign god. 
I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt. Open your mouth, that I fill it. 
‘But my people did not listen to my voice, Israel would have none of me. 
So to their own hard hearts I left them, to follow their own devices. 
O that my people would listen, that Israel would walk in my ways. 
Soon would I humble their enemies, and turn my hand on their foes. 
Those who hate the Lord would cringe before him in everlasting terror. 
But you would I feed with the richest wheat, and with honey from the rock to your heart’s desire.’ 
