Psalms 148

Psalms 148:1-14

The full praise of heaven and earth.

1. The full praise of heaven and earth is now invoked, beginning with heaven. There is no hint of the human praises which will resound in heaven; except we find it in the blank place left at the commencement, where indeed our place is, and of which the expression “in the heights” may well remind us. God is going to show even to principalities and powers in heavenly places the exceeding riches of His grace and His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus,who are blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:7, Ephesians 1:3). How it should affect our souls to realize that in us the value of the work of Christ is to find fullest expression; as those who are, as angels cannot be, members of Christ Himself, and His joint-heirs. What “joy unspeakable and full of glory” must it awaken in every heart taught by the Holy Ghost to enter beforehand into the place prepared for us, and what worship should not our hearts and lives already pour forth, as we think of it. Then come the glorious ranks of angels, the constant ministers of God’s blessed will, the “hosts” that range themselves constantly in their appointed places, in intelligent sympathy with the commands they execute. Then we descend to sun and moon and stars, the material things which, however, by that very fact enter into the sphere of what is visible to us, and become symbols and witnesses of higher things. In the fourth place we find, according to most, not a further descent, but the contrary; and in this way the “waters that are above the heavens” are considered to be some immense unknown reservoir of waters which lies beyond the firmament. “The Scriptures, from the first page to the last,” says Delitzsch, “acknowledge the existence of celestial waters, to which the rain-waters stand in the relation; as it were, of a finger-post pointing upwards (Genesis 1:7).” But the “waters above the firmament” of the fourth day are simply those stored up in the clouds, and can be nothing else; and the connection here, with the general descent in the address otherwise, would make one suppose, what the numerical structure would seem to confirm, that only the earth-heavens are intended in the verse. The use of the expression “heaven of heavens,” however, is a difficulty of which I have no explanation; and the truth may lie in another direction. The reason for praise is given in the next verses. By Jehovah’s word they were created, and they abide before Him in the place His decree has allotted to them, impossible to be traversed or to fail.
2. We have now the lower sphere of earth, in which the call for praise is as universal. Here we begin with what is strangest and least known; the monsters and the deeps (to which, I suppose, they belong). We have next the contrary and conflicting products of the atmosphere: fire, which, as electricity, is associated with hail; snow, which soon becomes vapor; the stormy wind, which, though it may seem in revolt from established order, none the less does perfectly the will of God. The mountains and hills, on the other hand, are types of solidity; while the trees for the first time introduce us to organized things. We have next fleshly life, -higher, and, in proportion; frailer; and then responsible man; and in his various characters of responsibility. Finally, here, too, the defined places in which they are set in relation to one another, and their time-limits on either hand.
3. All these are called to praise; for Jehovah’s Name is exalted, and He exalts the people that are brought near to Him. Israel are, upon earth, this special people.