Psalms 65:11,12 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Thou crownest the year with thy goodness Thou, by thy powerful goodness, dost enrich and adorn all the seasons of the year with their proper fruits and blessings. And thy paths Either, 1st, Thy clouds, (as the word מעגליךְ, is rendered in the Liturgy version,) upon which God is frequently said to walk or ride, and which drop fatness upon the earth; or the outgoings, or ways of the divine goodness. Wherever God goes, speaking after the manner of men, or works, he leaves the tokens of his mercy behind him, he dispenses rich and salutary blessings, and thus makes his paths to shine after him. Mudge renders this verse, Thou encirclest the year with thy richness, and the tracks of thy wheels drop fatness. God is considered, he thinks, in his chariot, riding round the earth, and from that chariot, that is, the clouds, everywhere distilling fatness, fertility, and increase. They God's paths, the clouds; drop upon the pastures of the wilderness And not only upon the pastures of the inhabited land. The deserts, which man takes no care of, and receives no profit from, yet are under the care of the divine providence; and the produce of them redounds to the glory of God, as the great Benefactor of the whole creation. For hereby they are furnished with food for wild beasts, which, being God's creatures, he thus takes care of and provides for. And the little hills He intends chiefly the hills of Canaan, which, for the generality of them, were but small, if compared with the great and high mountains which are in divers parts of the world. He mentions the hills, because, being most dry and parched with the sun, they most need, and are most benefited by the rain; rejoice on every side That is, all around, as being clothed with verdure, enamelled with flowers, and rendered fertile for the use of man and beasts. Nothing can be more elegant and poetical than the personifying of the hills, the pastures, and valleys in this and the following verse. But, indeed, as Dr. Delaney justly observes, this whole paragraph, from the 9th verse to the 13th, is “the most rapturous, truly poetic, and natural image of joy that imagination can form.” The reader of taste cannot but see this in any translation of it, however simple. “When the divine poet had seen the showers falling from heaven, and Jordan overflowing his banks, all the consequent blessings were that moment present to his quick, poetic sight, and he paints them accordingly.”