Psalm 148:1

“Praise ye the LORD” stands for the Hebrew halelu Yah, the call the whole church knows as Hallelujah. Halelu is the plural command of the verb hâlal, so the call goes out to many voices at once. The verb at root means to be clear or to shine, and from there to make a show, to boast and to celebrate. It is glad, open praise that declares the worth of the one praised. Yâhh is the short form of Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God that the KJV prints as “the LORD”. It belongs to poetry and means the same as the full name, which Strong’s explains as “the self-Existent” or “the Eternal”. Both forms stand in this verse: the opening call uses the short name, and “Praise ye the LORD from the heavens” uses the full one.

Psalm 148 belongs to the last group of psalms in the Psalter, Psalms 146 to 150, which each open with this call, and Psalm 148 closes with it too. It moves in two parts. Verses 1–6 call on the heavens, and Psalm 148:7–14 turns to the earth: the creatures of the deep, fire and hail, snow and vapour and stormy wind, mountains, trees and beasts, and then kings and princes, young men and maidens, old men and children. It ends by declaring that the LORD is exalted above all creation and by speaking of his own people. The Psalter itself closes by calling everything that has breath to praise the LORD (Psalm 150:6).

The heavens come first. The word shâmayim is a plural noun for the sky, from a root meaning to be lofty. It takes in the air where clouds move and birds fly, the higher heavens where the sun and stars run their course, and beyond them the dwelling place of God and the angels who serve him. “The heights”, mârôwm, are the loftiest places of all. The second line says the first again in other words, in the way of Hebrew poetry, so that the call reaches every part of the upper creation.

Israel knew the heavens as the place where God dwells with his heavenly court. The nations around them gave the powers of the sky gods of their own, each ruling its part of nature. When the psalmist commands the heavens to praise the LORD, he declares that the LORD rules over all of it and that every power above us answers to him. Another psalm says the same of the sky’s silent witness: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1–6). Psalm 103 also ends by calling the angels and all God’s works to bless the LORD whose kingdom rules over all (Psalm 103:19–22), and Isaiah saw the seraphim before the throne crying that the whole earth is full of his glory (Isaiah 6:1–3).

Verse 2 turns from the places of the heavens to those who live there. The word for angel, malʼâk (plural malʼakhim), comes from a root meaning to send someone as a deputy, and it means a messenger. It can be used of human messengers, but here it means the spiritual beings God sends to carry his word and do his will. “Hosts”, tsâbâʼ, means an army or host, war or service, and the host of heaven. It is the word in God’s title “the LORD of hosts”, which Hannah uses when she prays at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:11). So the angels are God’s messengers, and the hosts are the same heavenly beings seen as a great ordered company under his command. In 1 Kings 22:19 the host of heaven stands before the LORD on his throne.

The word “all” stands in both lines. Every angel, whatever its rank or task, and the whole army of heaven are called to one work. The prayer in Nehemiah gives the same picture when it praises God for making “the heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host”, and says that the host of heaven worships him (Nehemiah 9:6). The angels were there at the beginning, when the sons of God shouted for joy at creation (Job 38:7). A multitude of the heavenly host praised God at the birth of Jesus, saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:13–14).

Verse 3 calls on the lights of the sky. The sun, shemesh, takes its name in Strong’s from a root meaning to be brilliant. The star, kôwkâb, means a star, and Strong’s notes that it is used figuratively of a prince. The phrase “stars of light” adds ʼôwr, which means illumination or a luminary, the light that the stars give. God gave the sun, moon and stars this work of lighting the sky on the fourth day of creation.

Many of Israel’s neighbours worshipped the sun, moon and stars as gods that shaped human lives. God had warned Israel against bowing down to them (Deuteronomy 4:19). This verse takes the very things the nations worshipped and tells them to worship the LORD. They are his creatures and the instruments of his design. Their steady cycles, by which people sowed and reaped, found their way and kept time, show the faithful order of the God who made them. God himself ties the sure return of day and night to his covenant (Jeremiah 33:20–21). Isaiah calls us to look up and see the same God at work: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth” (Isaiah 40:26).

Verse 4 reaches as high as words can go. “Heavens of heavens” is, word for word, “the heavens of the heavens”, a Hebrew way of saying the highest heavens, the way “holy of holies” means the holiest place. The phrase is often used of God’s own dwelling. Nehemiah 9:6 names “the heaven of heavens” among the things God made, so even the highest heaven is his creature.

“Waters”, mayim, is the ordinary word for water. “The waters that be above the heavens” take us back to the second day of creation, when God made the firmament and divided the waters under it from the waters above it (Genesis 1:6–8). The psalm calls on those upper waters by the name that Genesis 1 gives them. God set every part of the world in its place, including parts beyond our reach and our understanding, and every one of them is called to praise him.

Verse 5 gives the reason for everything in verses 1–4. “Let them praise the name of the LORD” gathers up all that has been called so far: the heavens and heights, the angels and hosts, the sun, moon and stars, the highest heavens and the waters above. The psalm goes on to widen the same call to the whole earth. The name of the LORD is who he has shown himself to be: his character, his works and his renown. To praise his name is to declare who he is.

The word “for”, kî, gives the reason, and the reason is creation itself. “Commanded” is tsâvâh, to appoint, to enjoin or to give a charge, the word of someone with full authority. “Created” is bârâʼ, the verb used in the Old Testament almost always with God as its subject when it speaks of creating, for his bringing into being what was not there before. The two verbs stand side by side, and what God commands comes to be. Genesis tells it the same way: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), and “God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Another psalm says, “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made” (Psalm 33:6), and “he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:9).

Everything in the heavens owes its being, its form and its work to God, so its very existence speaks his glory. This was the faith Israel confessed against the nations that served the sun and stars, and the psalm was likely sung or recited when God’s people gathered for worship. The God who called the heavens into being is the God they praised, and his creating word is the first ground of all praise.

Verse 6 goes on from making to keeping. “He hath also stablished them for ever and ever”: the verb ʻâmad means to stand, so God has made them stand in their places. “For ever and ever” joins ʻad, perpetuity, with ʻôwlâm, a word for lasting time, to say that the heavens endure as long as God appoints. The same God who called them into being holds them there.

“He hath made a decree” uses nâthan, to give, put or set, with chôq, something prescribed: a law, decree, custom, task, allotted portion or set limit. God has given the heavens their appointed order. “Which shall not pass” is lōʼ yaʻăbōr, from ʻâbar, to cross over or to pass. The word carries both senses at once: nothing in the heavens oversteps what God has set, and his decree never lapses. Its lasting force comes from the God who gave it.

God makes the same point elsewhere. The LORD has prepared his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over all (Psalm 103:19–22). He speaks of his covenant with day and night (Jeremiah 33:25), says of himself that he does not change (Malachi 3:6), and says his word is settled in heaven and his faithfulness lasts to all generations (Psalm 119:89–90). Isaiah sets his word against all that fades: “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8).

The New Testament tells us more about the word by which God commanded and the heavens were created. “All things were made by him” (John 1:3), says John of the Word who became flesh. Paul writes of Christ, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible... 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). That reaches up to the thrones and powers of heaven and the highest heavens of verse 4. Hebrews calls the Son “the brightness of his glory”, “upholding all things by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3). So when the heavens praise the God who made them and keeps them, they praise the Son through whom they came to be and in whom they hold together, and the decree of verse 6 is upheld by his word. He is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8), and God’s purpose is “that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:9–10).

The angels of verse 2 worship him. “Let all the angels of God worship him,” says Hebrews of the Son (Hebrews 1:6). The same heavenly host that sang at his birth now serves him as the risen and ascended Lord. In Revelation the worship of heaven gathers around the throne and the Lamb (Revelation 4, Revelation 5), where angels numbering “ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands” declare the Lamb who was slain worthy, and every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth and in the sea joins them (Revelation 5:11–14). Every knee will bow at the name of Jesus, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10–11).

Christ also brings heaven and earth together in one song. Through his cross God reconciles all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven (Colossians 1:20). Through Christ we have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18), and so our praise joins the praise of heaven. As the incarnate Son he lived the perfect obedience due to the Father and gave himself on the cross. He is the light of the world (John 8:12), the true light to which the sun and stars point. The God who spoke the heavens into being also makes those who are in Christ a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17).

These verses show us who God is. He is the LORD, the covenant God, worthy of praise from the highest places of his creation. He is the Maker of every angel and every star, the one whose word alone brought them into being, and the faithful God who holds them in their courses by a decree that does not pass. Nothing above us rivals him, and everything above us serves him.

They also show us where our own praise belongs. Angels praise him, the sun and stars praise him, and the psalm goes on to call kings and children, the young and the old, into the same song. When we say “Hallelujah”, we join a chorus that began in the heavens long before us and will end around the throne of the Lamb. And the decree of verse 6 gives us a steady place to stand: the God who keeps the sun in its course keeps his word to his people.