Psalm 147:8

Psalm 147 is a hymn of praise in the last book of the Psalms, and it opens and closes with a call to praise the LORD. It was most likely sung after the return from exile in Babylon, when Jerusalem was being rebuilt. The psalm begins with the LORD who builds up Jerusalem, gathers the outcasts of Israel and heals the brokenhearted (Psalm 147:1–3), and the rebuilding of the city’s walls is told in Nehemiah 3.

The whole psalm moves back and forth between God’s power over creation and his tender care for the lowly. He counts the stars and calls them all by name (Psalm 147:4), his understanding is infinite (Psalm 147:5), and he lifts up the meek and casts the wicked down (Psalm 147:6). In these verses his care opens out from Israel to the sky, the hills and every creature that needs food, and then comes back to the people he delights in. Later he sends his snow, frost and ice (Psalm 147:16–17), and the psalm closes with the word he gave to Jacob alone (Psalm 147:19–20). A people who had come through weakness and exile could take heart that the God who rules the weather looks with favour on those who hope in him.

Verse 7 calls us to sing to the LORD and to make music to our God on the harp, and it names thanksgiving as the heart of the song. The word tôwdâh means confession or thanksgiving, and it is also the word for a thank offering and for a choir that gave thanks. It comes from yâdâh, a verb that pictures holding out the hand. In Israel a person who had received God’s help could bring a thank offering, and it was shared with feasting and praise. So the song this verse asks for is sung by people who know what God has done for them and say so before others.

The New Testament carries the same thought into the church’s worship. Hebrews calls believers to offer “the sacrifice of praise” to God continually, the fruit of lips that give thanks to his name (Hebrews 13:15). Psalm 100 says, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving” (Psalm 100:4–5), and Psalm 95 opens, “O come, let us sing unto the LORD” (Psalm 95:1–2).

The second line adds the harp. The verb for “sing praise”, zâmar, means to make music, often with instruments, and the kinnôwr is a stringed instrument, a lyre or harp, whose name comes from a root meaning to twang. It was played in the temple and in private devotion alike, and the musicians David set apart for the house of the LORD played harps among their instruments (1 Chronicles 25:6). Voice and strings are both given to God here, and the Psalms end with a call to praise him on every kind of instrument (Psalm 150). The church still sings to God in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with thankful hearts (Colossians 3:16).

The verse names God twice. “The LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s own covenant name, linked with hâyâh, “to be”. It speaks of the eternal, self-existent God who keeps his promises and stands alone as the one true God. “Our God” uses ʼĕlôhîym, the common Hebrew word for God, with “our” joined to it. The first is the name by which he made himself known to Israel, and the second says that this great God belongs to the people who sing to him.

Verse 8 carries on the sentence of verse 7, so each “who” is a reason to praise “our God”. God “covereth the heaven with clouds”. The verb kâçâh means to cover, and it is used of clothing as well as of hiding something, so the clouds are spread over the sky like a garment, by his hand and for his purpose. The clouds carry the rain, and the rain is what he “prepareth” for the earth. That verb, kûwn, means to set up, establish or make ready. Rain comes because God has made it ready for the land that needs it.

Then he “maketh grass to grow upon the mountains”. The verb tsâmach means to sprout, spring up or grow, châtsîyr is grass, and har is a mountain. The valleys were the fertile places, while the mountains were rocky and exposed. Grass on the mountains shows God’s care reaching the hard, high ground as well as the good soil, and that grass feeds the animals of the next verse.

For Israel this was the stuff of daily life. They farmed and kept flocks, and everything depended on rain coming at the right time and in the right amount. Rain was God’s blessing, and its failure brought drought and famine. The nations around them gave the storm and the field to gods of their own. The psalm gives clouds, rain and grass to the one LORD, who rules them all and is kind to the world he made.

Scripture says the same in many places. Psalm 104 sings at length of God’s provision for his creatures. Psalm 65 praises him for visiting the earth and watering it (Psalm 65:9–10). The LORD asks Job who causes it to rain on the wilderness where no man lives, so that the tender grass springs up (Job 38:25–27). After the flood God promised that seedtime and harvest would continue while the earth remains (Genesis 8:22), and Jesus said that the Father sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45).

This is God’s providence, his daily work of keeping and governing all that he made. Paul told the Athenians, “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The God who made the world also holds it up, and every shower on the hills is his work.

Verse 9 follows the grass to the creatures that eat it. “He giveth to the beast his food”. The verb nâthan is the ordinary word for giving, used very widely, and here it stands as a participle, “he is giving”, which describes what God does day after day. The food is lechem, bread or food. The beast is bᵉhêmâh, a word for a large four-footed animal, often used of animals as a group.

“And to the young ravens which cry”. The Hebrew says “sons of the raven”, bên ʻôrêb, and the raven’s name is tied to its dark colour. The verb for their crying, qârâʼ, means to call out. The people who first sang this psalm knew the sound well: helpless young birds in the nest, calling loudly and over and over for food that must be brought to them. God hears that call and answers it.

The two lines take in the large animal and the small bird, and between them every creature God has made. His care is wide enough for all of them and close enough to hear one nest.

Verse 10 moves from the creatures God feeds to the strength people trust. “He delighteth not in the strength of the horse”. In the ancient world the horse was the great sign of military might. Egypt and Assyria were famous for their chariots and cavalry, and kings measured their strength by their horses. Israel was often outmatched by its neighbours and was tempted again and again to lean on alliances or its own armies. Isaiah pronounced, “Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help” (Isaiah 31:1), because they relied on Egypt’s horses and chariots.

The word for “delighteth”, châphêts, means to like, be pleased with or desire, the heart going out toward something. The word for “strength”, gᵉbûwrâh, means force, valor or might, and Scripture uses it of people, of nations, of God himself and even, as here, of a horse.

“He taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man”. From the army the verse turns to the single man, and his legs stand for speed, endurance and the strength to run, fight and labour. The verb râtsâh means to be pleased with, to accept or to look on with favour. Both lines say one thing. The strength that impresses people, whether a nation’s war horses or one man’s swift legs, leaves God’s pleasure untouched, and his delight goes elsewhere.

Other Scriptures say this plainly. “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7). “The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD” (Proverbs 21:31). And again, “An horse is a vain thing for safety” (Psalm 33:16–17).

Verse 11 names what God delights in, and it uses the same verb as the second line of verse 10, râtsâh. “The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him”. God looks on such people with favour and approval, and he enjoys them. The covenant name Yᵉhôvâh stands at the head of the verse.

“Them that fear him” translates yârêʼ, an adjective meaning fearing or reverent, the word for a person who fears God. Set beside hope in his mercy, this fear is reverent awe, a humble recognition of God’s majesty, power and holiness that leads a person to honour and obey him. Proverbs calls it the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10) and the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7).

“In those that hope in his mercy”. The word for mercy, cheçed, is God’s steadfast love, his lovingkindness and loyalty to his covenant, a love that holds firm when his people fail. To hope in it is to wait on God with confident expectation, resting on his faithful character for grace, forgiveness and help. Psalm 33 joins the same two groups of people: “Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy” (Psalm 33:18). Hebrews says the same of faith: “without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:6).

Verses 10 and 11 belong together. The strength people admire is passed over, and the reverence and hope of the weak are what please God. A people coming home from exile, few and weak, could hear in this that God’s favour was open to them in their weakness.

The God we praise in verse 7 is fully made known in Jesus Christ, the brightness of his glory (Hebrews 1:3). We sing our thanks for the redemption he has won as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and heaven’s praise is given to him that sits upon the throne and to the Lamb together (Revelation 5:13).

The clouds, rain and grass of verse 8 were made through the Son, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:16–17). The God who gives rain to the earth gives living water to the thirsty in Christ (John 4:10–14), and the God who feeds the beasts came in Christ as the bread of life (John 6:35). Jesus fed hungry crowds (Matthew 14:13–21) and came that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10), and the Father gave him out of love for the world (John 3:16).

Verse 10 is fulfilled in the way Jesus came. Zechariah foretold a king coming lowly and riding upon an ass (Zechariah 9:9), and Jesus entered Jerusalem in just that way (Matthew 21:5). His power was shown on the cross, which looked like weakness to the world, for “the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). Salvation comes by grace through faith, apart from our own strength and works (Ephesians 2:8–9).

Verse 11 is fulfilled in him as well. Jesus lived in perfect reverence before the Father and prayed in Gethsemane, “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). The Father said of him, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). He is full of grace and truth (John 1:14), and God’s mercy comes to us in him. Through him we fear God and hope in his mercy, and in him we share the Father’s pleasure.

These verses give us a God great enough to clothe the whole sky with cloud and near enough to hear a young raven call from its nest. The rain on the hills and the food in the nest are his daily work, and the thanks his people sing, with voice and with strings, are the answer they call for. He has also told us plainly what pleases him. His pleasure rests on reverence and hope, which the weakest of his people can bring, and his mercy is the thing they hope in. The psalm puts a harp in our hands and gives us every reason to play it.