The Sound of Praise
Psalm 100
Psalm 100. Into his courts
A song of thankful praise brings this group of homage-psalms (see on Ps. 93) up to an unclouded summit after their alternations of exuberance and awe. The title may link the psalm to the thank offering (so RSV), but since the word means in the first place thanksgiving, and is so used in verse 4, it is perhaps better to take it in its primary sense (cf. the introduction to Ps. 38).
Known as the Jubilate (‘O be joyful’), it is a psalm much used in liturgical worship; but William Kethe’s fine paraphrase, ‘All people that on earth do dwell’, has even wider currency wherever English is spoken. Finer still, but somewhat freer, is Isaac Watts’ version, ‘Before Jehovah’s aweful throne’.
1. The joyful noise is not the special contribution of the tone-deaf, still less of the convivial, but the equivalent in worship to the homage-shout or fanfare (98:6) to a king, as in 95:1 or the almost identical 66:1. This verse claims the world for God: it should be thought-provoking to sing. As a matter of accuracy, there is no special emphasis on diversity in the word translated the lands (as there is in, e.g., 96:7; 97:1b); here it is simply ‘the earth’, a single entity.
2. The command, Serve the Lord, is paralleled by Come into his presence, which is a reminder that an act of worship is well named a ‘service’. It is the first response we owe him—and not, in either sense of the word, the last. How far it reaches is shown in Romans 12:1, where nothing short of a living sacrifice counts as ‘worship’. This is the word which the Greek Old Testament used for a ‘service’ in the formal sense, in, e.g., Exodus 12:25f.; 13:5. But in Hebrew as in English, service is indivisible; it is a word which leaves no gap or choice between worship and work. (We find this confirmed, incidentally, in practice, in that praise and prayer go stale in isolation, and activity goes sterile.)
On worshipping with gladness and singing (the word implies singing out with no uncertain voice), see on 95:1; compare also the outbursts of delight in Isaiah 40ff. (e.g. 51:11), where these words or their Hebrew roots repeatedly convey the thrill of liberation. Along with this, however, there are perennial sources of praise, which the psalm now draws upon.
3. To know is to have firm ground underfoot, the prerequisite of praise (cf. 40:2f.), and this knowledge is ours by gift; indeed by command. In the brief space of this verse we are first reminded who God is (revealed by name, Yahweh [the Lord], a name richly annotated by his words and works); then whence and whose we are; and finally in how favoured a relation we stand to him.
The middle line of the verse, in the written text and the oldest versions, runs ‘… and not we ourselves’. Almost all modern translations, however, supported by Massoretic tradition and some MS(S) and versions, take it in the sense ‘and we are his’. The ambiguity arises from the Hebrew words for ‘not’ and ‘his’ (lōʾ and lô), which sound alike. Either of them would be appropriate here. But the Hebrew sentence continues more smoothly with the second option (his), as the AV’s need of two extra words in italics confesses. The RSV could have dispensed with these, letting the sentence run: ‘and we are his; his people, and the sheep …’.
4. The simplicity of this invitation may conceal the wonder of it, for the courts are truly his, not ours (as Isa. 1:12 had to remind the triflers), and his gates are shut to the unclean (Rev. 21:27). Yet not only his outer courts but the Holy of Holies itself are thrown open ‘by the new and living way’, and we are welcome. This in itself is cause enough for praise, and the final verse will have more to add.
5. If the psalm began by broadening our horizon, it ends by lengthening our view and expectation. (On the pairing of goodness and steadfast love, see on 23:6.) Breadth is nobly expressed in the first line of Watts’ verse quoted below, and length in the remaining lines, where ‘truth’ should be understood in its sense of faithfulness, as in RSV.
Wide as the world is Thy command,
Vast as eternity Thy love;
Firm as a rock Thy truth shall stand,
When rolling years shall cease to move.
Psalm 101. A king’s resolve
David’s name reappears with this psalm, whose only Davidic companion in this Fourth Book is Psalm 103. It should hardly need saying that the resolve made here to have no truck with evil men does not spring from pharisaic pride but from a king’s concern for a clean administration, honest from the top down.
How far he was to fall short of this in his own acts and in his appointments is told in 2 Samuel. But it was an inspired pattern, remaining to challenge him and his successors, among whom can be counted (with due adjustments) all who have the running of any enterprise and