{h} Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me;

(h) He condemns all assemblies where the people are not attentive to hear God's voice, and to give obedience to the same.

Wesley's Notes

81:8 Testify - This God did presently after he brought them from Meribah, even at Sinai.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

8. (Compare Ps 50:7). The reproof follows to Ps 81:12.

if thou wilt hearken-He then propounds the terms of His covenant: they should worship Him alone, who (Ps 81:10) had delivered them, and would still confer all needed blessings.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

81:8-16 We cannot look for too little from the creature, nor too much from the Creator. We may have enough from God, if we pray for it in faith. All the wickedness of the world is owing to man's wilfulness. People are not religious, because they will not be so. God is not the Author of their sin, he leaves them to the lusts of their own hearts, and the counsels of their own heads; if they do not well, the blame must be upon themselves. The Lord is unwilling that any should perish. What enemies sinners are to themselves! It is sin that makes our troubles long, and our salvation slow. Upon the same conditions of faith and obedience, do Christians hold those spiritual and eternal good things, which the pleasant fields and fertile hills of Canaan showed forth. Christ is the Bread of life; he is the Rock of salvation, and his promises are as honey to pious minds. But those who reject him as their Lord and Master, must also lose him as their Saviour and their reward.