[Video] Psalm 65:16

Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will tell you what great things he hath done for my soul. (Psalm 65:16 DR)

We humans excel in many things that we shouldn’t excel in, and one of them is selective hearing, by which we tend to hear what we want to hear and not hear what we don’t want to hear. This is why two people can hear the same thing and end up hearing completely different things—sometimes even contradictory things—because their predispositions and biases and such filter the thing said to become the thing heard.

This is not always necessarily a pejorative thing, for we can train ourselves to hear certain things that we otherwise could not. A person who is classically trained in music can listen to a symphony and hear all the different parts and instruments and movements in a manner that someone untrained simply cannot. The musician will have a deeper hearing of the music because he knows music on a deeper and more sophisticated level, and thus the way in which the music is composed has greater meaning and depth. He can understand why the composer chose to do this rather than that, he can analyze how all the parts come together to form the whole and how successful that was.

He and the untrained person hear the same music, but at the same time hear something completely different.

After having spoken of the sacrifices that he will bring unto the Lord in payment of his vows, the Psalmist now once again turns his attention outward. There has been a movement in voice throughout this Psalm, in that the first few verses were directed outwards, enjoining the earth to give glory to God. The next section dealt with God’s greatness and His acts throughout history on behalf of His people and the Psalmist himself. The Psalmist then speaks in the first person about his vows and sacrifice.

We now come full circle as the Psalmist entreats his listeners to come and hear. He then adds an important qualification, in that those who are to come and hear are those that fear the Lord. They are those who will be told what great things He hath done for my soul. What is implied here is not that he will necessarily withhold his praise of the Lord to those who do not fear the Lord, but rather that only those who fear the Lord will have the capacity to hear those praises:

“Come ye, hear, and I will tell, all ye that fear God.” Let us come, let us hear, what he is going to tell, “Come ye, hear, and I will tell.” But to whom, “Come ye, and hear?” “All ye that fear God.” If God ye fear not, I will not tell. It is not possible that it be told to anywhere the fear of God is not. Let the fear of God open the ears, that there may be something to enter in, and a way whereby may enter in that which I am going to tell. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 21.)

The reason for this capacity or lack of capacity lies in this fear of the Lord, by which the soul is disposed to receive the things of heaven rather than the things of earth. St. Robert Bellarmine connects this to the saying in Proverbs that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” which itself implies that without this fear of the Lord there can be no beginning to acquiring wisdom. This wisdom, after all, has God Himself as its source, and thus only through the fear of the Lord can wisdom be sought and found. St. Augustine expounded on the quality of this fear earlier in this Psalm:

Say ye to God, How to be feared are Thy works! Wherefore to be feared and not to be loved? Hear another voice of a Psalm: Serve the Lord in fear, and exult unto Him with trembling. What means this? Hear the voice of the Apostle: With fear, he says, and trembling, work out your own salvation. Wherefore with fear and trembling? He has subjoined the reason: for God it is that works in you both to will and to work according to good will. If therefore God works in you, by the Grace of God you work well, not by your strength. Therefore if you rejoice, fear also: lest perchance that which was given to a humble man be taken away from a proud one. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 5.)

There is an excellent parallel here between these two passages. In the earlier passage there is the implication that the fear of the Lord is the means by which we proclaim to God His fearsome works, and now in this passage to hear of these works requires that self-same fear. Both the proclamation and the hearing arise from the same well-spring of the fear of the Lord, which St. Augustine insightfully connects with God’s grace working within the soul to both will and work. This gift of grace opens the mind and heart to comprehend heavenly things; we turn our eyes away from the things of this world towards the things of heaven and thus can hear the great things of the Lord:

But what is he going to tell? “How great things He hath done to my soul.” Behold, he would tell: but what is he going to tell? Is it perchance how widely the earth is spread, how much the sky is extended, and how many are the stars, and what are the changes of sun and of moon? This creation fulfills its course: but they have very curiously sought it out, the Creator thereof have not known. This thing hear, this thing receive, “O ye that fear God, how great things He hath done to my soul:” if ye will, to yours also. “How great things He hath done to my soul.” (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 65, 21.)

St. Augustine here observes that the worldly-minded man expects to hear worldly things, for his mind is oriented to this world and its loves and its pleasures. Thus, when the Psalmist speaks of telling of the great things that God has done, the worldly-minded man naturally expects to hear of things which are great in the worldly sense; that is, the dimensions of the world, the expanse of the heavens, etc. In his selective hearing the worldly-minded man misses the proverbial forest for the trees, for in focusing so much on the creation he ends up missing the Creator. St. Augustine here alludes to the first few passages of Wisdom chapter 13:

But all men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God: and who by these good things that are seen, could not understand him that is, neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman: But have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world. With whose beauty, if they, being delighted, took them to be gods: let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they: for the first author of beauty made all those things. Or if they admired their power and their effects, let them understand by them, that he that made them, is mightier than they: For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby. (Wisdom 13:1-5 DR)

St. Paul likewise takes up this theme from Wisdom 13 in his indictment of man’s ignorance of God:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable. Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things. (Romans 1:18-23 DR)

To come and hear is thus to respond in humility with faith to the gift of grace which enables that coming and hearing to be made efficacious within the soul. Only by cooperating with this grace can our ears be attuned to hear the heavenly symphony which plays all around us, and which we will miss if—in our pride—we keep our eyes fixed to this world and its goods and pleasures:

Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouth for food, or their eyes to see. (C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 13.)

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I grabbed this nice marbled texture image and brought it into After Effects, drew some masks on it following the contours of the marble veins, and then applied LoopFlow several times. I then applied Pixel Sorter Studio to an adjustment layer and animated the cycle.

Finally I placed in the text and added in some color correction and noise. Pretty simple, but fun.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: