Psalm 33:7

Psalm 33 is a hymn of praise for God’s people to sing together. It opens with a call to praise the LORD with a new song and skilful music (Psalm 33:1–3) and goes on to praise his uprightness, faithfulness and justice in all his works (Psalm 33:4–5). Verses 6 to 9 then give the deepest reason for that praise: he made everything there is. His power as Creator is the ground of his authority over all things, and the verses that follow carry that authority into history, where his counsel stands for ever while the plans of the nations fail (Psalm 33:10–11).

“The LORD” in verse 6 is Yᵉhôvâh, the name of Israel’s covenant God, which comes from the root “to be” and names him as the self-existent, eternal One. This God, who bound himself to Israel, made the heavens. The word for heavens, shâmayim, is a plural noun covering the whole expanse above the earth, from the sky we see to its farthest reaches. All of it was made “by the word of the LORD”. The Hebrew dâbâr is the ordinary word for a word or speech, and in other places it can also mean a matter or a thing. Here it is the word God spoke as a command, and the heavens came to be at his speaking.

The psalmist is singing about Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” and then “God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:1–3). The nations around Israel served gods of their own, and Israel’s God stands alone among them as the one who makes a world by his command, with ease and unopposed. The New Testament says the same: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3). Peter writes that “by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water” (2 Peter 3:5).

The second line widens the first: “and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” The word for host, tsâbâʼ, means an army or a host, and also war or service. It is used for the host of heaven, and it gives God his title “the LORD of hosts”. The host of the heavens is the stars and all that fills the sky, pictured as a vast company drawn up in order under the command of their Maker. It may take in the angels who belong to heaven as well, though the stars are the plainest sense here. Every one of them came from God, and so “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).

They came “by the breath of his mouth”. The word for breath, rûwach, comes from a root meaning to blow or breathe, and it can mean wind, breath or spirit. Joined to peh, mouth, it gives the picture of a single breath going out from God. A word is spoken on a breath, and the whole starry host came forth as easily as that.

From the sky the psalm turns to the sea: “He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses.” The KJV puts both verbs in the present tense, and the verse speaks of God’s continuing rule over the waters as well as the day he first gathered them. That day is in Genesis 1:9–10, when “God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear”. The verb in the psalm, kânaç, means to gather or collect, a purposeful act of bringing the waters together and keeping them within bounds.

The waters are gathered “as an heap”. The word nêd means a heap, a piled-up mass, and it is used of water. Its best-known use is at the Red Sea, where Moses sang that “the floods stood upright as an heap” (Exodus 15:8) when God parted the sea for Israel (Exodus 14). The same word describes the Jordan standing “upon an heap” when Israel crossed (Joshua 3:13, 3:16), and another psalm recalls that God “made the waters to stand as an heap” (Psalm 78:13). Water left to itself runs out and spreads, so a heap of water is water held where God wills. The word ties creation to Israel’s great deliverances, because the God who gathered the seas at the beginning is the God who stood them up for his people to pass through.

The second half of the verse goes down into the deep. “The depth” is tᵉhôwm, the deep, the vast mass of waters. The verb “layeth up” is nâthan, the common Hebrew word meaning to give, used very widely for to put or to set. God puts the deep “in storehouses”, ʼôwtsâr, a word for a treasure, or for a storehouse, treasury, armoury, granary or cellar. The picture is of a king’s storerooms. The deep belongs to God, and he keeps it where he has put it.

In Israel the sea stood for wild power that only the LORD could hold back, and Scripture shows him setting its limits. He shut up the sea with doors and said to it, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed” (Job 38:8–11). Wisdom recalls the time “when he gave to the sea his decree” (Proverbs 8:29), and through Jeremiah God speaks of the sand he placed “for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree” (Jeremiah 5:22). The flood of Genesis 7 and the parting of the Red Sea show the same God ruling the same waters. The God who made the seas is the God who keeps them in order.

After the heavens and the sea, the psalm turns to people: “Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.” “Let” gives a command in the third person, a summons addressed to the whole earth. The second line says the first again and makes it plainer, since “all the earth” means all who live on it, every inhabitant of the world. The God of Israel’s covenant is the Lord of every nation, and every person answers to the one who made them. Other psalms call to all the earth in the same way: “O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth” (Psalm 96:1), and “fear before him, all the earth” (Psalm 96:9). Through Isaiah God calls, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:22).

The verb for fear, yârêʼ, means to fear, and in its moral sense it means to revere. The fear of the LORD is deep reverence, respect and humble submission to his authority, holiness and power. It belongs with wisdom and obedience, and it leads to blessing: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10), and “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7).

“Stand in awe” translates gûwr. Strong’s gives it the sense of turning aside to lodge somewhere as a guest, and also of shrinking back in fear, as a person does in a strange place. Here it is awe before God, humble wonder and a trembling sense of his majesty and power.

Verse 9 gives the reason for verse 8, and its first word says so: “For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” The whole earth should fear the LORD because his word made it.

“Spake” is ʼâmar, the everyday Hebrew verb meaning to say, which can also mean to tell or to command. The power lies in the God who speaks. “And it was done” is, in Hebrew, simply wayyehî, “and it was”. The KJV prints “done” in italics, as it does with the words its translators supplied to make the English read well. The line echoes Genesis 1:3, “Let there be light: and there was light”, and the “and it was so” that follows God’s commands all through that chapter.

“Commanded” is tsâvâh, to command, to give a charge, to set an order in place. It is a firmer word than “spake”, and it shows that God’s works come from his deliberate will. “It stood fast” is ʻâmad, to stand. What God commanded took its place and stood there. So the second half of the verse goes further than the first, from speaking to commanding, and from coming to be to standing firm. The world God made is stable because his command set it in place.

What is true of his word in creation is true of all his words. Isaiah says, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8). The word that framed the worlds (Hebrews 11:3) is the same word that makes promises to his people, and it accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11).

The New Testament shows us who the word of the LORD is. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3). The Word, Logos in John’s Greek, is the eternal Son of God, so the word by which the heavens were made in verse 6 is the Son, through whom all things came to be (John 1:3). Paul names the things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, that were made by him (Colossians 1:16), and goes on, “all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16–17). The Son made the world and also holds it together, “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). That is why what God commanded still stands fast.

When the Son came in the flesh, he did what this psalm says of God. He rose in the boat and said to the sea, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39), and the wind and waves obeyed. The disciples “feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:39–41). The one who gathers the waters of verse 7 was in their boat, and the fear of verse 8 came upon them. He walked on the sea (Matthew 14:25), he cast out spirits with his word and healed all who were sick (Matthew 8:16), and he called Lazarus out of the grave with a loud voice (John 11:43–44). What he spoke came to be.

The same Word makes a new creation. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17), and at the end he says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). The awe that verse 8 asks of all the earth is given in heaven to the Lamb, as every creature in heaven, on earth and in the sea cries, “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever” (Revelation 5:12–13).

When you look up at the night sky, every star you see is there because God spoke. When you stand by the sea, its waters are held where he has put them. That is reason enough to fear him in the way this psalm means, with a reverence that bows to him and a wonder at his greatness.

It is also reason to trust him. The promises God makes to you in Scripture come from the same mouth that made the heavens, and what he commands stands fast. If his word could call the stars into being, it can carry out all that he has said about your life, and a life built on his word rests on the firmest ground there is. The God who orders the seas also governs your days with wisdom and love.