Psalm 65:12

EXPOSITION

Verse 12. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness. Not alone where man is found do the showers descend, but away in the lone places, where only wild animals have their haunt, there the bountiful Lord makes the refreshing rain to drop. Ten thousand oases smile while the Lord of mercy passes by. The birds of the air, the wild goats, and the fleet stags rejoice as they drink from the pools, new filled from heaven. The most lonely and solitary souls God will visit in love.

And the little hills rejoice on every side. On all hands the eminences are girt with gladness. Soon they languish under the effects of drought, but after a season of rain they laugh again with verdure.

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 12. The wilderness. By desert, or wilderness, the reader is not always to understand a country altogether barren and unfruitful, but such only as is rarely or never sown or cultivated; which, though it yields no crops of corn or fruit, yet affords herbage more or less for the grazing of cattle, with fountains or rills of water, though more sparingly interspersed than in other places. Thomas Shaw (1692-1751).

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 9-13. A Harvest Sermon.

1. The general goodness of God, Visiting the earth
   in rotation of seasons: "Seed time and harvest," etc.
   
2. The greatness of his resources: The river of
   God, which is full of water; not like Elijah's
   brook, which dried up.
   
3. The variety of his benefactions: Corn; Water;
   Blessest the springing thereof, etc.
   
4. The perpetuity of his blessings; Crownest the
   year. E. G. G.

Verse 12. (first clause).

1. Our dwelling place: the wilderness.
   
2. Our spiritual provision: pastures.
   
3. Our heavenly refreshment: they drop.

Verse 12. Causes for joy for small churches. God remembers them, establishes and increases them, feeds them and revives them, etc.