Psalms 81:4,5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For this was a statute for Israel This is no human device, but a divine institution; God hath appointed and commanded this solemn feast to be announced and observed in this manner. This Namely, the blowing of trumpets; he ordained in Joseph Among the posterity of Joseph, namely, the people of Israel, as is evident both from the foregoing verse, where they are called Israel, and from the following words of this verse, where they are described by their coming out of Egypt, which was common to all the tribes of Israel, who are sometimes called by the name of Joseph. For a testimony For a law, often called a testimony; or, rather, for a witness and memorial of the glorious deliverance here referred to. When he That is, he who ordained, as was now said, namely, God; went out through the land of Egypt As a captain at the head, or on the behalf of his people, to execute his judgments upon that land; or, against that land, namely, to destroy it. Or, as many ancient and modern interpreters read it, out of the land. And so understood, this text signifies the time when this and the other feasts were instituted, namely, soon after their coming out of Egypt, even at Sinai. Where I heard, &c. That is, my progenitors heard, for all the successive generations of Israel make one body, and are sometimes spoken of as one person; a language which I understood not Either the language of God himself, speaking from heaven at Sinai, which was strange and terrible to them; or, rather, the Egyptian language, which at first was both very disagreeable and unknown to the Israelites, Genesis 42:23, and probably continued so for some considerable time, because they were much separated, both in place and conversation, from the Egyptians, through Joseph's pious and prudent appointment. This exposition of the passage is confirmed by Psalms 114:1, where this very thing is mentioned as an aggravation of their misery; and by other places of Scripture, where it is spoken of as a curse and calamity to be with a people of a strange language. See Deuteronomy 28:49; Jeremiah 5:15.