Psalm 95 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 95 (1928 BCP) (Venite, exultemus) is appointed at Morning Prayer on the Nineteenth Day in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Psalter. It begins with a public summons to thankful praise of the Creator and Shepherd, then turns to the warning of Israel in the wilderness. Worship means hearing God's voice to-day.

Prayer Book Text

O COME, let us sing unto the LORD; * let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
2 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; * and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.
3 For the LORD is a great God; * and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are all the corners of the earth; * and the strength of the hills is his also.
5 The sea is his, and he made it; * and his hands prepared the dry land.
6 O come, let us worship and fall down, * and kneel before the LORD our Maker.
7 For he is the Lord our God; * and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
8 To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts * as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness;
9 When your fathers tempted me, * proved me, and saw my works.
10 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, * It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways:
11 Unto whom I sware in my wrath, * that they should not enter into my rest.

The Psalm moves from praise (verses 1–5), through kneeling before the Maker and Shepherd (verses 6–7), to the wilderness warning (verses 8–11). Its 1928 placement makes that movement an opening act of corporate Morning Prayer, rather than an optional private meditation.

A Public Call to Thanksgiving

The plural imperatives—“let us sing,” “let us come,” and “let us worship”—make this a congregational summons. Calvin describes the Psalm's first movement as directed to the Church gathered for public praise:

This psalm is suited for the Sabbath, when we know that the religious assemblies were more particularly convened for the worship of God. It is not individuals among the godly whom he exhorts to celebrate the divine praises in private; he enjoins these to be offered up in the public meeting. By this he showed that the outward worship of God principally consisted in the sacrifice of praise, and not in dead ceremonies.

The point is not that posture, music, or ordered services are empty. Rather, the outward act must be the expression of thanksgiving before the God who receives it. Augustine distinguishes joy “in the Lord” from merely worldly excitement:

He calls us to a great banquet of joy, not one of this world, but in the Lord. ... What is it to rejoice aright? To rejoice in the Lord.

Thanksgiving is truthful acknowledgement that “the sea is his” and even the inaccessible places of land and sea are held by their Creator. Calvin takes the depths and hills as an assertion of providential rule:

When it is said, that the depths of the earth are in his hand, the meaning is, that it is ruled by his providence, and subject to his power.

Maker, Shepherd, and Worship

The reason for kneeling is not bare divine power: “He is the Lord our God; and we are the people of his pasture.” The Creator worshipped by the congregation has bound himself to a people and tends them as a shepherd. Calvin reads the three commands of verse 6 as a public, whole-person response to that grace:

The worship of God, which the Psalmist here speaks of, is assuredly a matter of such importance as to demand our whole strength; but we are to notice, that he particularly condescends upon one point, the paternal favor of God, evidenced in his exclusive adoption of the posterity of Abraham unto the hope of eternal life. ... The three words which are used imply that, to discharge their duty properly, the Lord’s people must present themselves a sacrifice to him publicly, with kneeling, and other marks of devotion.

Christian readers hear this shepherd language alongside Christ's own declaration:

I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.

This canonical reading does not replace the Psalm's original confession. Psalm 95 names the LORD as Israel's Maker and Shepherd; John identifies Jesus as the good shepherd who knows and gives himself for his sheep. The Church receives Israel's praise within that scriptural unity.

“To-day” and the Warning of Hebrews

The Psalm does not allow praise to become self-congratulation. The warning begins while the congregation is still called God's people: “To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Hebrews 3 quotes Psalm 95:7–11 and applies the wilderness generation's unbelief to the Church's present hearing:

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

The epistle warns baptized hearers against an “evil heart of unbelief” and calls them to exhort one another “while it is called To day” (Hebrews 3:12–13). The Venite's warning is therefore evangelical: God addresses a people he shepherds, and his grace summons a real response of faith and perseverance.

Augustine recognizes the Psalm's sharp change in emotional register and refuses to blunt it:

We began with exulting joy: but this Psalm has ended with great fear: Unto whom I swore in My wrath, that they should not enter into My rest. It is a great thing for God to speak: how much greater for Him to swear? ... Let no man say in his heart, His promise is true; His threat is false: as His promise is true, so is His threat sure.

Use in the Daily Office

At Morning Prayer on the Nineteenth Day, Psalm 95 trains the congregation to begin with thanksgiving and attentiveness. It gives voice to creation-wide praise, directs the body to kneel before the Maker, and then asks the searching question of the day: will God's people hear his voice now? Its final warning means the Church cannot sing its opening joy as though obedience were optional; that joy is an invitation to receive the Shepherd's word.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Morning Prayer (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 94 (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 96 (1928 BCP)