Psalms 148

The most distinctive feature which is common to all the writers in the Old Testament, and peculiar to no one age or portion of the literature, while the classical authors of Greece and Rome, as well as the writings of Confucius, and even the Hymns of the Veda, may be said in comparison to be entirely devoid of it, is an unswerving faith in God, and a confident and firm reliance and dependence upon His unfailing goodness and mercy. We may truly say that, beyond the limits of the Old Testament, and those writings which have come under its influence and imbibed its spirit there is nothing that bears any adequate analogy to this feature. Here these ancient writings stand pre-eminent and unique. And this fact alone, as characterizing the best specimens of the nation who produced such a literature is sufficient to stamp them as the covenant people of God. If the Almighty were to make a covenant with any nation, we might surely pronounce beforehand that this is how it would manifest itself. But this in the Jewish nation is how it did manifest itself, as witnessed by the national literature; and seeing that a like manifestation was made in no other people, the inference is inevitable—nay, forced upon us, that their poet was warranted in his joyous and grateful outburst, He hath not dealt so with any nation. Leathes.

There is not a moment of any day of our lives when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. It is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, nor in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire; but in the still small voice. It is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual, that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally; which are never wanting and never repeated; which are to be found always, yet each found but once; it is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given. Ruskin.

Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: Praise him in the heights.

2. Praise ye him, all his angels: Praise ye him, all his host.

3. Praise ye him, sun and moon: Praise him, all ye stars of light.

4. Praise him, ye heaven of heavens, And ye waters that be above the heavens.

5. Let them praise the name of the LORD: For he commanded, and they were created.

6. He hath also stablished them for ever and ever: He hath made a decree which shall not pass away.

7. Praise the LORD from the earth, Ye dragons, and all deeps:

8. Fire and hail, snow and vapour; Stormy wind, fulfilling his word:

9. Mountains and all hills; Fruitful trees and all cedars:

10. Beasts and all cattle; Creeping things and flying fowl:

11. Kings of the earth and all peoples; Princes and all judges of the earth:

12. Both young men and maidens; Old men and children:

13. Let them praise the name of the LORD; For his name alone is exalted: His glory is above the earth and heaven.

14. And he hath lifted up the horn of his people, The praise of all his saints; Even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him.

Let the Heavens and the Earth PRAISE JEHOVAH.

THIS Psalm abounds in the boldest personifications. It not only celebrates the Almighty rule of God over all the creatures He has made, but calls upon them all to utter His praise. De Witt.—The great Hallelujah chorus rises in this Psalm to a loftier strain, calling upon all that is in the heavens (other than God) and all that is upon the earth to unite in extolling the Great God with highest praises. With noticeable method and order vs. 1-6 group together the details of the upper, heavenly world; while vs. 7-14, in like manner, seize upon the salient points of this earthly sphere—first, the inanimate and the unintelligent orders; and lastly, the intelligent. C.

In this splendid anthem the Psalmist calls upon the whole creation, in its two great divisions (according to the Hebrew conception) of heaven and earth, to praise Jehovah. Things with and things without life, beings rational and irrational, are summoned to join the mighty chorus. The Psalm is an expression of the loftiest devotion, and embraces at the same time the most comprehensive view of the relation of the creature to the Creator. P.

In this Psalm the loftiest believing consciousness is united with the grandest possible view of the world. The Church appears here as the leader of the praising universe. It knows that its experiences have a central and universal significance for the collective life of creation; that the grace bestowed upon it is sufficient to transport all beings in heaven and on earth into joyous commotion. And it calls not only upon everything in heaven and on earth, that stands with it in fellowship of thought, of word, and of freedom, to praise God, but also upon sun, moon, and stars, water, earth, fire, and air, mountains, trees, and beasts; yea, even such phenomena of nature as hail, snow, and mist. D.

It is but faintly and afar off that the ancient liturgies (except so far as they merely copied their originals) come up to the majesty and the wide compass of the Hebrew worship, such as it is indicated in the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm. Neither Ambrose, nor Gregory, nor the Greeks, have reached or approached this level. Feeble, indeed, is the tone of these anthems of the ancient Church; sophisticated or artificial is their style. Nor would it be possible—it has never yet seemed so—to Christianize the Hebrew anthems, retaining their power, their earth-like richness, and their manifold splendors—which are the very splendors and the true riches and the grandeur of God’s world—and withal attempered with expressions that touch to the quick the warmest human sympathies. As to the powers of sacred poetry, those powers were expanded to the full, and were quite expended too, by the Hebrew bards. What are modern hymns but so many laborious attempts to put in a new form that which, as it was done in the very best manner so many ages ago, can never be well done again, otherwise than in the way of a verbal repetition. I. T.

1. The thrice-repeated exhortation, “Praise . . . Praise . . . Praise,” in this verse is not merely imperative, nor only hortative, but it is an exultant hallelujah. Geier.

The call does not rise step by step from below upward, but begins forthwith from above in the highest and uttermost spheres of creation. The place from whence, above all, the praise is to resound, is the heavens; it is to resound in the heights—viz., the heights of heaven. D.

2. Praise ye Him, all His angels. Angels are first invoked, because they can praise God with humility, reverence, and purity. The highest are the humblest, the leaders of all created hosts are the most ready themselves to obey. Le Blanc.—They were already praising their Maker before the light of day, and they have never ceased their holy song. They praised Christ as God when they sang their Gloria in Excelsis at the incarnation, and they praised Him as man when they ministered to Him after His temptation and before His crucifixion. Lorinus.

These blessed spirits surround the throne of God with endless praise and adoration. Admitted, as pure creatures, to see His face, the mere presence of God, the mere nearness of perfect goodness and love doth cause them to prostrate themselves in worship, and pour out themselves to Him in sacred hymns. Praise and worship seem to be the natural gesture of unfallen creatures in the presence of their Creator. In the simple, exulting loyalty of beings created, yet excellent in strength, yielding themselves up in cheerful uprightness and gladness of duty to be filled with His Spirit, in the presence of whom they stand, such creatures seem to render to their Maker, as they are perfect in their kind, and the more in proportion as they are more perfect in their kind, the tribute of thankful praise. Moberly.

3,4. Let the sun, the fount of light, and warmth, and gladness, the greater light which rules the day, the visible emblem of the uncreated wisdom, the Light which lighteth every man, the centre round whom all our hopes and fears, our wants and prayers, our faith and love, are ever moving; let the moon, the lesser light which rules the night, the type of the Church, which giveth to the world the light she gains from the Sun of Righteousness; let the stars, so vast in their number, so lovely in their arrangement and their brightness, which God hath appointed in the heavens, even as He hath appointed His elect to shine forever and ever; let all the heavens with all their wonders and their worlds, the depths of space above, and the waters which are above the firmament, the images of God’s Holy Scripture and of the glorious and the mysteries contained therein—let these ever praise Him who made and blessed them in the beginning of the creation. Bargon.

4. This verse sublimely traverses the immensities which are the home of the most exalted dignities who wait on Deity, and then it descends to the firmament where the meteors flash forth, and where the heavens stoop to lift the clouds that aspire from earth. And the idea sustained is that all these vast realms, higher and lower, are one temple of unceasing praise. Venema. 5. Let them praise the name of the Lord; for He commanded, and they were created The name of Jehovah is written legibly upon His works, so that His power, wisdom, goodness, and other attributes are therein made manifest to thoughtful men, and thus His name is praised. The highest praise of God is to declare what He is. The Lord is to be extolled as creating all things that exist, and as doing so by the simple agency of His Word. He created by a command; what a power is this! Well may He expect those to praise Him who owe their being to Him. The voice which said, “Let them be,” now saith, “Let them praise.” 6. Submission to law is praise. Obedience is homage; order is harmony. In this respect the praise rendered to Jehovah from the “bodies celestial” is absolutely perfect. His almighty power upholds all things in their spheres, securing the march of stars and the flight of scraphs; and thus the music of the upper regions is never marred by discord. The eternal hymn is forever chanted; even the solemn silence of the spheres is a perpetual Psalm. S. 7-14. The call to praise Jehovah now turns in the second group of verses to the earth and everything that belongs to it in the widest compass. D. 7. The second great division of created things—that is, according to the Old Testament view, the earth. Sea-monsters, mentioned first, as at the bottom of the scale in creation, as in Gen. 1:21. P.

8. Winter has glories all of its own—“hail, snow, and vapor, stormy wind, fulfilling His word,” who has appointed the seasons in their regular succession, and who has “marked the bounds that winter may not pass, and blunts its pointed fury.” Doubtless, in ways which we cannot fathom, the hail and snow and wintry storm do fulfil His Word. But there are also ways in which, by their immediate effects in these northern homes of ours, they do directly His great will in binding together more strongly those family ties which are of His own ordaining. Our northern winters make home dearer than ever, and the social intercourse at “our ain fireside” binds us one to another in the exercise of the sweet charities of the household. The home which God, rejoicing in the tender name of Father, has built up, brings us nearer to Himself. God, who loves to show Himself as the Head of the great family of heaven and earth, specially blesses whatever promotes family union. J. A. Camden.

The “stormy wind” is the swift messenger of God. The hurricane fulfils the Divine command. “Even the winds and the sea obey Him.” The words of this verse have special use; for men are exceedingly apt to ascribe the violence of tempests to blind chance. Geier. The law of storms is unquestionably that of providential good, just as truly as the law of fair weather. And many an instructive moral might we gather from the lessons of storms, besides our observance of the manner in which God produces, controls, and uses them. As He hath His way in the whirlwind and the storm, so He hath in all our trials, which are the storms and tempests of our mortal pilgrimage, and in which, or under which, or through the means of which, the character justly and carefully disciplined, grows more in grace and ripens faster for glory than in serene and shining weather. Cheever.

Nature’s swift changes from heat to cold, and from storm to calm, are but ever-recurring intimations that God fulfils His work in many different ways. One cannot but feel awe at the touch of the zephyr when he remembers that the same power which moves it also whirls the cyclone; and one can face fearlessly the cyclone when he feels in his heart that He who thunders in the whirlwind is the same God who whispers in the zephyr. Heat and cold and the “stormy wind, fulfilling His Word,” have each their place in God’s world of nature; and joy and sorrow, and the sudden stroke of unexpected calamity, have each their place in His world of grace. When the Psalmist contemplated these changes in nature, as evidencing Divine power, he could not refrain from calling upon others to join with him in praising the Lord for all His goodness to the children of men; and surely his must be unseeing eyes and an unfeeling heart who, looking upon God’s works in the kingdom of grace, does not praise God for the sorrow that strengthened, as well as the joy that cheered, and especially for those sudden strokes of chastisement which recalled the erring one from wandering in deceitful paths which lead down only to death. S. S. T.

9. The mountains and all hills, fruit-trees and all cedars. Not fruitful trees as distinguished from barren trees, but fruit-trees (literally, tree of fruit), as distinguished from forest-trees, here represented by the cedar, which is usually spoken of in Scripture as the noblest species, and therefore called the cedar of God. A.

Mountains and all hills. What voices have the hills! How solemn the sounds of the mountains from their sublime solitudes! The mountains thunder, and the hills re-echo; but they speak peace and send down plenty to the vales in running rivulets. Le Blanc.—It was, indeed, absolutely necessary that such eminences should be created, in order to fit the earth in any wise for human habitation; for without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become for the most part desert plain or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God’s working, to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment, are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture; first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to examine in their connected system the features of even the most ordinary mountain scenery without concluding that it has been prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and in the closest compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying the heart of man. But among the true mountains of the greater orders the Divine purpose of appeal at once to all the faculties of the human spirit becomes still more manifest. Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt in some degree the richness of the valleys at their feet; but the great mountains lift the lowlands on their sides. And whatever is lovely in the lowland scenery becomes lovelier in this change: the trees which grew heavily and stiffly from the level line of plain assume strange curves of strength and grace as they bend themselves against the mountain-side; they breathe more freely, and toss their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher, looking to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother tree; the flowers which on the arable plain fell before the plough, now find out for themselves unapproachable places where, year by year, they gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil; and the streams which in the level land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks now move in showers of silver, and are clothed with rainbows, and bring health and life wherever the glance of their waves can reach. Ruskin.

Fruitful trees. Rather fruit-trees; the fruit-bearing tree being representative of one division of the vegetable world, planted and reared by man: the “cedars” of the other, which are (Psalm 104: 16) of God’s own plantation. So in v. 10 we have wild animals and domesticated animals. Aglen.—The praise of God is in the rustling voices of the trees. They fulfil His purpose in giving fruit to refresh, and shelter and shadow for a covert, and their murmur is the soft cadence that chants mercy and grace. Thus the trees of the wood redound to His glory. Le Blanc.

The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man or provision for his service: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, or lulling charm, and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground, mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean, clothing with variegated, everlasting films the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity. Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful and good for food, and for building, and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, become, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is assuredly wrong in both who does not love them, if his life has brought them in his way. Ruskin.

All cedars. Beautiful indeed is the pine forest in all seasons: in the freshness of spring, when the gnarled boughs are penetrated and mollified by the soft wind and the warm sun, and, thrilled with new life, burst out into fringes and tassels of the richest green and cones of the tenderest purple; beautiful in the sultry summer, when among its cool, dim shadows the cheated hours all day sing vespers, while the open landscape is palpitating in the scorching heat; beautiful in the sadness of autumn, when its unfading verdure stands out in striking relief amid changing scenes, that have no sympathy with anything earthly save sorrow and decay, and directs the thoughts to the imperishableness of the heavenly Paradise; beautiful exceedingly in the depth of winter, when the tiers of branches are covered with pure, unsullied wreaths of snow, sculptured by the wind into curves of exquisite grace. It is beautiful in calm, when the tree-tops scarce whisper to each other, and the twitter of the golden wren sounds loud in the expectant hush; it is more than beautiful in storm, when the wild fingers of the wind play the most mournful music on its great harp-strings, and its full diapason is sublime as the roar of the ocean on a rock-bound shore. It looks like a place made for worship, all its sentiments and associations seem of a sacred and solemn character. Nature, with folded hands, as Longfellow says, seems kneeling there in prayer. It certainly reminds us in various ways of the power, wisdom, and goodness of Him who thus spake by the mouth of His prophet: “I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the fir-tree, and the pine, and the box-tree together; that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.” Macmillan.

11-13. Every creature is full of the praise of God. The phenomena of nature—clouds, snow, rain, wind—are His messengers; the unchangeable laws, according to which the countless worlds above pursue their course, proclaim the glory of His omnipotent Word. In our own world, the animal and vegetable kingdoms, down to their lowest stages, bear the impress of the goodness and omnipotence of God, and are a song of praise upon His glorious attributes. But it belongs to man, above every creature, as the priest of nature, to give an audible expression to her universal praise; a service in which every rank, every age, and every generation have abundant cause for engaging. Anon.

12,13. The Psalms are Church songs, and all who belong to the Church are to sing them. “Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children; let them praise the name of the Lord.” The ripe believer who can triumph in the steadfast hope of God’s glory is to lend his voice to swell the song of the Church when she cries to God out of the depths; and the penitent, who is still sitting in darkness, is not to refrain his voice when the Church pours out in song her sense of God’s love. The whole Church has fellowship in the Psalms. W. Binnie.

Music is, beyond all other arts, the expression and vehicle of sympathy. No other art, no other mode of impression, equals music in its power to awaken a common feeling. The orator approaches it, but he deals chiefly with convictions; and conviction is a slow and hard path to feeling, while music makes a direct appeal. The united action of the full chorus and orchestra is a perfect transcript, down to the last and finest particular, of perfected human society. Music as an expression of feeling is a prophecy of that grander exercise of our nature for which we hope. It is the nature of feeling to express itself. Thought may stay behind silent lips; but when it becomes feeling, it runs to expression. Music is an illustration of this law of our emotions, and is the natural expression of deep feeling. History all along culminates in song. The summits of Jewish history from Miriam to David are vocal with Psalms. In some supernal sense, music will be the vocation of humanity when its full redemption is come. The summit of existence is feeling, the summit of character is sympathy, and music is the art-form that links them together. Music is the truest and most nearly adequate expression of the religious emotions, and so becomes prophetic of the destiny of man as a religious being. Music is creatively designed for religion, and not for anything else. It lends itself to almost every human feeling, down to the vilest, but always with suppression of its power. It is not until it is used for the expression of that wide range of feeling which we call religious that it discloses its full powers. Music is the art-path to God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Munger.