Psalm 98:1

Psalm 98 belongs to a group of psalms, Psalms 93 and 95–99, that celebrate the LORD reigning as King over all creation. These psalms call the whole earth to worship, recall how God has delivered his people, and look ahead to his coming to judge in righteousness. Psalm 98 shares its themes of God’s kingship and universal praise with Psalm 96 and Psalm 97. Our three verses tell what the King has done. The rest of the psalm calls the sea, the floods and the hills to rejoice before him, “for he cometh to judge the earth” (Psalm 98:7–9).

The psalm names no occasion. It may come from the years after the exile, when Israel had seen God bring his people home from Babylon, and its words fit that deliverance well. Wherever it was first sung, its subject is the LORD himself.

Kings among the nations round about Israel boasted of their battles and the extent of their lands. Each nation served its own gods, and a war between peoples was often taken as a contest between those gods. Into that world this psalm declares that the LORD’s salvation has been shown “in the sight of the heathen”. He is the King of every nation, and he establishes his reign by his own saving acts of mercy and truth.

The word for new, châdâsh, means new or fresh: something recently made, or something different from what came before. A new song is fresh praise for a fresh work of God, and the psalm gives that work as its reason at once: “for he hath done marvellous things”. It can be a newly written song, and above all it is a song that answers what God has newly done.

Scripture calls for a new song again and again, and most often where God has just saved. “Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise” (Psalm 33:3). Psalm 96 opens with the very words of this verse (Psalm 96:1), and Isaiah widens the call to the whole world: “Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth” (Isaiah 42:10). One whom God has delivered says, “he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God” (Psalm 40:3), so the new song is the testimony of the rescued. At the end of the Bible the redeemed sing a new song to the Lamb (Revelation 5:9). Each fresh act of redemption brings fresh praise.

The “marvellous things” translate pâlâʼ, a word meaning to be distinct, to be difficult, or to be wonderful. God’s marvellous things are deeds that stand apart from all others, too hard for anyone but him, and they fill those who see them with awe. They run through the whole of Scripture, from creation to the Exodus and the making of Israel, and on to the coming of Christ, and they show his power, his wisdom and his faithfulness to what he has promised.

“His right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory” tells us who won and by what strength: the LORD alone, by his own power. The word yâmîyn means the right hand or the right side, and because the right hand lies to the south for someone facing east, it can also mean the south. In Israel the right hand stood for strength, authority and honour, so the LORD’s right hand is his power at work, the hand by which he judges, saves and wins. His arm is called holy, because all that he does in power he does in holiness and justice, and his victory brings him glory.

Israel had sung of this hand before. At the Red Sea Moses and the people sang, “Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy” (Exodus 15:6). Moses later reminded them that “the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm” (Deuteronomy 5:15). Another psalm says of the land Israel received, “For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them: but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance” (Psalm 44:3). And Isaiah says that when the LORD saw there was no man to intercede, “his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him” (Isaiah 59:16). That is the same pairing of arm, salvation and righteousness that runs through these three verses.

So the victory belongs to God from first to last. His people receive it, trust him for it and sing about it.

“The LORD hath made known his salvation” uses yâdaʻ, the common verb “to know”, in a form that means to cause others to know: to declare, to publish, to make a thing plain. God takes the first step. He brings his saving work out where people can see and recognise it, because he wants it known.

The word for salvation, yᵉshûwʻâh, means something saved, and so deliverance, aid, victory and welfare: rescue from enemies, danger or distress, and the well-being that follows. The same word is used of rescue that comes through people, as when Jonathan “hath wrought this great salvation in Israel”, and Scripture traces every such rescue back to the LORD. Here the psalm calls it “his salvation”, because the victory of verse 1 was his own.

The second half of the verse says the first again in other words, as Hebrew poetry often does. “His righteousness hath he openly shewed” uses gâlâh, to uncover, reveal or make bare. God has drawn back the covering, and what stands in plain view is his righteousness. Setting salvation beside righteousness shows that they are two sides of one work. God’s righteousness here is his justice in action, setting things right, bringing deliverance, and keeping faith with his covenant and with all he has made. He saves righteously, and he judges justly. Isaiah uses the same picture when he says that the LORD has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations (Isaiah 52:10), and Paul says that in the gospel “is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith” (Romans 1:17).

The verb zâkar means to remember. People ask whether this means God had forgotten. When Scripture says that God remembers, it means he acts on what he has promised, and here his remembering is seen in the salvation he has brought. His people may have waited long, but he kept every word.

What God remembered is his “mercy and his truth”. Mercy is cheçed: kindness, favour, a good deed done, and above all the steadfast love and loyal commitment that the KJV often calls lovingkindness. Truth is ʼĕmûwnâh: firmness and security, and so fidelity and faithfulness, the steadiness that makes his promises sure. Together they are the two pillars of his covenant, his love for his people and his reliability in keeping it. When the LORD proclaimed his name to Moses, he called himself “abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands” (Exodus 34:6–7). John says of the Word made flesh that he was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

“The house of Israel” is the whole nation, the household (bayith) of Jacob’s descendants, with whom God made his covenant and to whom he promised blessing. The name Yisrâʼêl is formed from a word meaning to prevail or have power and from El, God, and it was given to Jacob when he had power with God.

The verse turns from Israel to the whole world. “All the ends of the earth” joins ʼepheç, an end or the farthest edge, with ʼerets, the earth or land, so the phrase takes in every nation and every people to the farthest places. They “have seen”, râʼâh, the ordinary verb for seeing with the eyes, and what they have seen is “the salvation of our God”. The word for God, ʼĕlôhîym, is plural in form and takes a singular verb when it names the true God, a plural of majesty. Israel calls him “our God”, and the whole earth sees what he has done for them.

Here is how God’s faithfulness to Israel and his salvation for the world fit together. He chose Israel for the sake of all peoples. His mercy and truth toward them, in the deliverance from Egypt, his care in the wilderness, the gift of the land and their restoration, were done in public as a testimony to his power and character, so that the nations would see and come to know the one true God. Israel was to be a light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6), and the salvation that came through Israel would reach every nation. Paul says that through Israel’s fall “salvation is come unto the Gentiles” (Romans 11:11–12).

The marvellous things of verse 1 reach their height in Jesus Christ: his coming in the flesh, his perfect life, his death on the cross and his resurrection. By them God’s right hand and holy arm won the victory over sin, death and the powers of darkness. Christ, “having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). He “obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12), and the risen Lord says, “I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18). So the new song is sung to the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:9).

The salvation God made known is Christ himself, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and the righteousness he openly showed is revealed in “Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). At the cross God shows that he is “just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:26), so his salvation and his righteousness meet in one act, as verse 2 sets them side by side. In Christ the mercy and truth that God remembered toward Israel took flesh.

When the old man Simeon held the infant Jesus in the temple, he used this psalm’s language: “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Luke 2:30–32). The salvation of Israel’s God, seen first in Israel, is now for every people. Christ “hath broken down the middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:14). He sends his witnesses “unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8), and the end of the story is a great multitude “of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” crying, “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9–10). That is the ends of the earth seeing the salvation of our God.

The victory in these verses was won by God’s right hand, so we can rest on it. Whatever we face, in our own lives or in the world, salvation belongs to the LORD, and his arm is as strong and holy now as at the Red Sea and the empty tomb. Our part is to trust him and to praise him for what he has done.

A new song comes from seeing God’s marvellous things afresh. When you remember how he has kept his mercy and his truth toward you, as he did toward Israel, the praise that follows is your own new song, and it joins one that began long before you.

These verses also widen our view. God shows his salvation before the nations and means the ends of the earth to see it, so the gospel is for every people, near and far. When we tell others what God has done in Christ, pray for those who have yet to hear it, and live in a way that reflects his righteousness, we take part in the very thing this psalm celebrates.