Psalm 50

Asaph was one of the three chief musicians David set over the sanctuary music, and twelve psalms carry his name. His descendants served as singers for centuries; the returning exiles are listed as bringing back the sons of Asaph.

The psalm is built as a covenant lawsuit, a legal form Israel would have recognized instantly. Treaties in the ancient Near East called on gods, heaven, earth, mountains, and rivers to witness the agreement and to enforce it. Moses did the same when he set the covenant before Israel — "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you." So when this psalm says "he shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people," it is opening a case under a contract everyone present had signed.

The charge is not neglect of sacrifice — God says plainly he will not reprove them for that; their offerings have been continually before him. The charge is what they think the offerings are for. "Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" That question aims at the religion of the whole region. In Mesopotamia and Egypt the daily temple service literally fed and clothed the god's image, with meals set before it and removed; the gods of the flood story in the Babylonian epic are described as gathering like flies over a sacrifice because they had gone hungry.

"If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine." The cattle on a thousand hills line means the offering was never a supply run. What God asks for instead is thanksgiving and paid vows — and then the second half turns to men who recite the covenant while consorting with thieves and slandering their own brothers.