Psalm 66

The offerings named here are expensive. A burnt offering was consumed entirely on the altar — nothing came back to the worshipper or the priest — and this man brings rams, bulls, and goats together. That is the scale of payment a household of means made when it had promised God something during a very bad year.

Tried as silver is tried describes real metallurgy. Ore went into a crucible with charcoal, air was forced in with bellows until the heat separated the metal, and the dross was skimmed off the top. The process was repeated, and the smith judged the result by whether the surface came up bright. Israel's hearers had smelled that furnace.

Men riding over our heads is a battlefield line. Chariots and cavalry ran down a broken formation, and the fallen were driven over. Going through fire and water pairs the burning of a captured town with the flooded crossing — and two verses earlier the psalm has already named the sea turned to dry land and the river crossed on foot, so the Exodus and the Jordan are standing behind the whole picture.

Halfway through, the psalm switches from we to I. That is not a seam in the text; it is how a thank offering worked. The congregation recited the nation's story, and then the man who had made the vow stood up and told his own while the meal was being eaten.