Later text
There must be no strange god among you, nor shall you bow to a foreign god. I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
There must be no strange god among you, nor shall you bow to a foreign god. I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.
Earlier text
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
Psalm 81:9 prohibits bowing to foreign gods — "nor shall you bow to a foreign god" (וְלֹא־תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לְאֵל נֵכָר) — echoing the second commandment's prohibition in Deuteronomy 5:9: "You shall not bow down to them or worship them" (לֹא־תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לָהֶם). The shared verb הִשְׁתַּחֲוָה (hishtachavah, "to bow down/worship") connects the psalm's liturgical warning with the Decalogue's formal prohibition. The psalm places this Sinai commandment in the context of a festival celebration, embedding covenant law within worship as a regular reminder that the feasts themselves belong exclusively to the God who brought Israel from Egypt. Deuteronomy 5:9 grounds this prohibition in God's self-description as "a jealous God" (אֵל קַנָּא, El qanna'), the divine jealousy that underlies the psalm's demand for exclusive worship.