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Psalm 95:6-8
New Catholic Bible
Psalm 95:6-8
New Catholic Bible
6 Come forth! Let us bow down to worship him;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.[a]
7 For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds,[b]
the flock he protects.
If only you would listen to his voice today:
8 “Harden not your hearts as you did at Meribah,[c]
as on the day of Massah in the wilderness.
Footnotes
- Psalm 95:6 Worship is a concrete expression of the people’s devotion to their God. The reason for it is made clear by its placement between the Lord’s universal kingship (vv. 3-5) and his covenant love for his people (v. 7).
- Psalm 95:7 As the “Maker” of his people (v. 6) because he has brought them into being as his covenant people (see Deut 32:6, 15, 18; Isa 44:2; 54:5), the Lord is also their shepherd, and they are the people he shepherds (see Pss 23:1; 79:13; 100:3; Jer 23:1; 25:36; Ezek 34:21; Jn 10:11-14). If only you would listen to his voice today: see Ps 81:8, 13; Ex 19:5; beginning with these words, verses 7-11 are cited in Heb 3:7-11.
- Psalm 95:8 Meribah: this word means “quarreling” and is the name of the place during the journey in the wilderness where the Israelites “sought to tempt” (v. 9) the Lord; Massah: this word means “testing” and is the name of the place where they tested the Lord (see Ex 17:7; Num 20:13). Scholars assign the first episode to a place near and to the southwest of Sinai and the second to a place near Kadesh-barnea in southern Palestine.