Ps. 81.15-16 (responding to the response)

Those that hate Yhwh / would submit to him
and their time / would be over forever 
Also / he would feed his Israel / from the best wheat
and with honey / from the rock / I would satisfy you. 

The impulse. It seems important to note how this final portion of the psalm begins the drama of redemption. It begins with Israel’s response: her hearing and her walking in Yhwh’s ways. From that response, God now responds in deliverance, justice and blessing. It is a type of call – response – response. God’s response to Israel’s faithfulness is world-altering. In the previous verse God’s response involved his subduing Israel’s enemies. Here, it involves the submission of all of Yhwh’s enemies to him. This is a profound statement. That Israel’s faithfulness initiates the submission of Yhwh’s enemies. She becomes the portal through which Yhwh will re-order the world around himself. Israel’s faithful response to Yhwh is, in a very real sense, the foundation of the world. When she is ‘let go’, allowed to follow her ‘stubborn heart’, Yhwh’s enemies and Israel’s become the world’s overlords. This becomes their ‘time’. The ‘foundations of the world’ shake when Israel ceases to response to Yhwh. Yet, as we have said throughout, that is not the focus but the premise of this portion of the psalm. The focus, rather, is on the utterly astonishing power that is unleashed in response to Israel’s faithfulness to Yhwh. There is a clear sense that what follows her obedience is awe inspiring. It is excessive: it is immediate (“Straightaway”); it is total (their “time would be over forever”); and it is abundant (“best of wheat”; “honey from a rock”). 

Judgment and blessing. The ‘excessive’ nature of the response is not merely in regard to the blessing. It is important to note how the reordering of the world underneath the rule of Yhwh is just as profound and ‘excessive’ as the blessings that follow. It is not the case that the only ‘prodigal’ power in these verses is as to Israel’s provision of ‘finest wheat’ and ‘honey from a rock’. Rather, Israel would have been in just as much awe at the fact of the world’s submission to Yhwh and seen in it just as profound a display of Yhwh’s authority as when he lavishes his blessings on them (indeed, in a deeper sense, these are all moments in Yhwh’s blessing).  This is the vision of beauty as the coincidence of form and freedom, of ordering and of prodigality, all envisioned within the covenantal love of Yhwh for his people.