Ps. 81.9-10 (the fountain)

There should not be / among you / a strange god
and you should not / bow down / to a foreign god
I am Yhwh / your god
who brought you / out of the land of Egypt
open wide / your mouth / and I will fill it.

Yhwh, Israel's god. These are, without question, the central verses and heart of the psalm. These are the commands that, if followed, will unleash the blessings of God—that power that will not only immediately subdue Israel’s foes but silence them forever (vs. 14); and, that power that will also fill their mouths with ‘honey from the rock’ (vs. 16). This sense of profound blessing is also contained within the structure of these verses. A) no strange god; B) no foreign god C) I am your God; B1) I brought you out; A1) I will fill your mouths. What we see here is not an ‘empty command’ in A and B. Rather, when we see that they are countered by A1 and B1, what is ‘empty’ is the worship of foreign gods as compared to the prodigal fullness of worshipping Yhwh. And, standing at the source, fountain-like, is C: “I am Yhwh your God”. It is from this most foundational of all statements that the foreign gods are relativized and made empty and the prodigal blessing of Yhwh is encountered. There is a fruitful line of mediation on the Name that finds in it this fountain of all blessings. What is also important to see, in this line of the verse, is the fact that his name is immediately aligned with Israel: “I am Yhwh your god.” Yhwh-the-fountain is Israel’s god. He is the god-who-is-not-foreign (B). He is the god-who-is-not-strange (A) to them. His name is pronounced as the one who is covenanted to Israel. ‘Yhwh’, here, should not be removed from ‘Yhwh your God.’ We might say this: that to see (as in, perceive) Yhwh one must look at Israel. The Name cannot be severed from the partner to whom he has covenanted (wed) himself. She is not some idol, blocking a direct access to Yhwh. Rather, bride-like she reveals her bridegroom (what she reveals is important but not the focus here—she reveals in a way unlike anything else the covenantal nature of God; without Israel, this dialogic character of God would never be encountered; this is why the covenant is a type of theophany).

Opening the mouth. There are two observations to make about this blessing. The first is the fact that the ‘opening of the mouth’ is often associated with a victory shout over enemies. In this sense, God’s ‘filling’ of the mouth would relate to the later blessing of God’s giving immediate and total victory over Israel’s enemies (vs. 14). Further, the immediately preceding line refers to God’s exodus-power in delivering Israel from Egypt.  A second suggestion, however, is the fact that the concluding line speaks of ‘honey’ and the fact that the image seems to be relating to the provision of food. This observation needs to be kept in mind when we understand that these two lines are responding to the previous lines of not bowing down to foreign/strange gods. The point, I think, may be this: that their bowing down to foreign gods could have been the liturgical act whereby the foreign gods would bless them with produce (i.e., fertility gods). What Yhwh is saying, by contrast, is that he is the one who will feed them—who will provide them the blessing-power (fertile power) of these ‘foreign/strange’ gods. This may have additional support in the fact that after they leave Egypt Israel is miraculously fed (and given water) in the dessert, which would tie into the immediately preceding line and point forward to the abundant provision of ‘honey from a rock’ in the conclusion of the psalm.