NOTES for Psa 95

Printable version

¹O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

²Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.

³For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

⁴In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.

⁵The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

⁶O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.

⁷For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,

⁸Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

⁹When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.

¹⁰Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:

¹¹Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

One might say that this psalm too falls into two parts, one of which praises the greatness of the Lord while the second, as a warning to new generations, recalls their sins. Yet the song need not be divided into components, for all its words are interconnected.

The words “we are the people of His pasture” should be recognized as the connecting knot that gives the psalm its integrity. Biblical revelation contains no abstract philosophical notion that He is by Himself and we are by ourselves. No, He does not look upon us coldly; to Him we are neither dust nor a collection of elementary particles. If the Lord prevents us from entering the place to which He Himself wants to lead us, it means that for the moment our sins make us unable to enter it. Yet it is precisely because we are not inanimate bricks that can be used for building anywhere that He is demanding toward us.

In His demands we must see one of the most important manifestations of His love for us.

Other notes

For

¹O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

²Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.

³For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

⁴In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.

⁵The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

⁶O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.

⁷For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,

⁸Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

⁹When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.

¹⁰Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:

¹¹Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

The greatness of the God of whom the Bible tells us lies in the fact that He is real... Read more

The greatness of the God of whom the Bible tells us lies in the fact that He is real. It must have been difficult for the inhabitants of the ancient world, which seemed filled with a multitude of gods, to accept that God is one, that the Lord stands not above other, less powerful gods, but above the products of human hands and imagination.

But the One who is the sole Creator and King of the universe relates to the world's diversity differently from the rulers of separate elements worshiped by pagans. Pagan gods can wage war against one another, disrupting the unity of the world they govern and threatening to destroy it; they can help people, but in essence they do not love them and try to manipulate them. Paganism has gods of love, but it has no God who is Love.

Before the one Creator, however, the world appears as one Creation in which everything is interconnected. He alone can judge the world justly, for He alone sees the truth in all its fullness. And so the call to joy and gladness flows so naturally from the psalmist's lips.

For

¹O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

²Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.

³For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

⁴In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.

⁵The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

⁶O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.

⁷For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,

⁸Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:

⁹When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.

¹⁰Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:

¹¹Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

The song of praise that makes up Psalm 96 brings together two essential aspects of biblical spirituality. On the one... Read more

The song of praise that makes up Psalm 96 brings together two essential aspects of biblical spirituality. On the one hand, praise of the Lord is the fullest opposite of sin. If sin consists in rejecting God as Creator and Lord, in trying to arrange one's life independently, without God, praise, by contrast, is born in a heart that accepts the Creator's authority and trusts His love. Moreover, the gift of life that God bestows on a person can be received only in gratitude and in glorifying the One who is Life itself. This is why praise is closest to heavenly life and furthest from the wretched existence of hell.

On the other hand, praise in Psalm 96 is utterly concrete. The psalmist glorifies God not in general terms but in connection with the manifestation of His mercy in real life. The psalm stresses that the God of Israel is the true God, unlike the idols. The God of Israel is the Lord of all peoples, and everyone without exception is called to worship before His face. This means that He is ready to receive all people, and that He needs us all. Finally, not only all peoples but all creation as a whole is filled with the mercy of the Almighty, and this outpouring of mercy and righteousness belongs not only to the past and present: it is to grow and reach fulfilment in the future. Such glorification of the Lord matters for the person who turns to Him with this prayer of praise, because it alone can fill the human heart with joy and give meaning to that person's actual life.

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