1 Sing to Jehovah a new song,
His praise in the congregation of His favoured ones.
2 Let Israel rejoice in his Maker,
Let the children of Zion be glad in their King.
3 Let them praise His name in [the] dance,
With timbrel and lyre let them play to Him.
4 For Jehovah takes pleasure in His people,
He adorns the meek with salvation.
5 Let His favoured ones exult in glory,
Let them shout aloud on their beds--
6 The high praises of God in their throat,
And a two-edged sword in their hand;
7 To execute vengeance on the nations,
Chastisements on the peoples;
8 To bind their kings in chains
And their nobles in bonds of iron;
9 To execute on them the sentence written--
An honour is this to all His favoured ones.
Hallelujah!
In the preceding psalm Israel's restoration was connected with the
recognition by all creatures, and especially by the kings of the
earth and their people, of Jehovah's glory. This psalm presents the
converse thought, that the restored Israel becomes the executor of
judgments on those who will not join in the praise which rings from
Israel that it may be caught up by all. The two psalms are thus
closely connected. The circumstances of the Restoration accord with
the tone of both, as of the other members of this closing group.
The happy recipients of new mercy are, as in Psalms xcvi. and
xcviii., summoned to break into new songs. Winter silences the birds;
but spring, the new "life re-orient out of dust," is welcomed with
music from every budding tree.
Chiefly should God's praise sound out from "the congregation of His
favoured ones," the long-scattered captives who owe it to His favour
that they _are_ a congregation once more. The jubilant psalmist
delights in that name for Israel, and uses it thrice in his song.
He loves to set forth the various names, which each suggest some
sweet strong thought of what God is to the nation and the nation to
God--His favoured ones, Israel, the children of Zion, His people,
the afflicted. He heaps together synonyms expressive of rapturous
joy--rejoice, be glad, exult. He calls for expressions of triumphant
mirth in which limbs, instruments, and voices unite. He would have
the exuberant gladness well over into the hours of repose, and the
night be made musical with ringing shouts of joy. "Praise is better
than sleep," and the beds which had often been privy to silent tears
may well be witnesses of exultation that cannot be dumb.
The psalmist touches very lightly on the reason for this outburst of
praise, because he takes it for granted that so great and recent mercy
needed little mention. One verse (ver. 4) suffices to recall it. The
very absorption of the heart in its bliss may make it silent about the
bliss. The bride needs not to tell what makes her glad. Restored Israel
requires little reminder of its occasion for joy. But the brief mention
of it is very beautiful. It makes prominent, not so much the outward
fact, as the Divine pleasure in His people, of which the fact was
effect and indication. Their affliction had been the token that God's
complacency did not rest on them; their deliverance is the proof that
the sunlight of His face shines on them once more. His chastisements
rightly borne are ever precursors of deliverance, which adorns the meek
afflicted, giving "beauty for ashes." The qualification for receiving
Jehovah's help is meekness, and the effect of that help on the lowly
soul is to deck it with strange loveliness. Therefore God's favoured
ones may well exult in glory--_i.e._, on account of the glory with
which they are invested by His salvation.
The stern close of the psalm strikes a note which many ears feel
to be discordant, and which must be freely acknowledged to stand
on the same lower level as the imprecatory psalms, while, even
more distinctly than these, it is entirely free from any sentiment
of personal vengeance. The picture of God's people going forth to
battle, chanting His praises and swinging two-edged swords, shocks
Christian sentiment. It is not to be explained away as meaning the
spiritual conquest of the world with spiritual weapons. The psalmist
meant actual warfare and real iron fetters. But, while the form of
his anticipations belongs to the past and is entirely set aside
by the better light of Christianity, their substance is true for
ever. Those who have been adorned with Jehovah's salvation have
the subjugation of the world to God's rule committed to them. "The
weapons of our warfare are not carnal." There are stronger fetters
than those of iron, even "the cords of love" and "the bands of a man."
"The judgment written," which is to be executed by the militant
Israel on the nations, does not seem to have reference either to
the commandment to exterminate the Canaanites or to the punishments
threatened in many places of Scripture. It is better to take it as
denoting a judgment "fixed, settled, ... written thus by God Himself"
(Perowne). Ver. 9_b_ may be rendered (as Hupfeld does) "Honour [or,
majesty] is He to all His favoured ones," in the sense that God
manifests His majesty to them, or that He is the object of their
honouring; but the usual rendering is more in accordance with the
context and its high-strung martial ardour. "This"--namely, the whole
of the crusade just described--is laid upon all Jehovah's favoured
ones, by the fact of their participation in His salvation. They are
redeemed from bondage that they may be God's warriors. The honour and
obligation are universal.