Ps. 81.13 (my people, my ways)

O that my people / would listen to me
that Israel / would walk in my ways. 

Momentary. In the entire psalm Israel’s rebellion consisted of a single verse (vs. 11), with God’s response being a single verse (vs. 12). Such an observation may seem striking given the fact that the psalm consists almost entirely of a sermon delivered by God imploring them to ‘listen’ to him. Yet what this fact reveals is that Israel’s rebellion (even though it was clearly a persistent one) is and can be engulfed by God’s readiness to bless them. Formally, their rebellion is minor. Thematically, their rebellion and ‘letting go’ are immediately followed by God’s aching imploring that “my people would listen to me.” Although God did “let them go”, his desire for their obedience never cooled. Nor would the power of his blessing be lessened if they would “just listen”. The ‘stubbornness’ of their hearts finds no mirror in God’s. 

Walking. Walking in God’s ways is a constant refrain in the psalms, indicating faithfulness to his commandments. However, here, the only command has been not to bow down to foreign/strange gods. Why include this here? I think the reason is that it serves as a contrast to the preceding verse when God “let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts.” The image is of their wandering off and away from God, of following their ‘own way’.  By contrast, ‘hearing God’ entails the entire movement of one’s being (one’s ‘heart’) down his way. There is no hiatus between reception (hearing) and movement (heart). Man’s ‘way’ indicates what he is ‘listening to’ (or, not listening to). 

My people, my ways. When the people enter into covenant with Yhwh they then become ‘his people’ and he becomes ‘their god’. The act of covenanting becomes the act by which they become kin to each other, with God as their ‘father’. Here, their covenantal ‘possession’ (my people) is matched by their covenantal ‘tethers’ (my ways). To become God’s people is to move into God’s ‘culture’, to become ‘one like him’. The ‘ways of god’ are the ‘air of that culture’; it is what one must breath.