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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 148:7 - 148:7
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The call to the praise of Jahve is now turned, in the second group of verses, to the earth and everything belonging to it in the widest extent. Here too מִן־הָאָרֶץ, like מִן־הַשָּׁמַיִם, Psa 148:1, is intended of the place whence the praise is to resound, and not according to Psa 10:18 of earthly beings. The call is addressed in the first instance to the sea-monsters or dragons (Psa 74:13), i.e., as Pindar (Nem. iii. 23f.) expresses it, θῆρας ἐν πελάγεΐ ὑπερο'χους, and to the surging mass of waters (תְּהֹמֹות) above and within the earth. Then to four phenomena of nature, coming down from heaven and ascending heavenwards, which are so arranged in Psa 148:8, after the model of the chiasmus (crosswise position), that fire and smoke (קִטֹור), more especially of the mountains (Exo 19:18), hail and snow stand in reciprocal relation; and to the storm-wind (רוּחַ סְעָרָה, an appositional construction, as in Psa 107:25), which, beside a seeming freeness and untractableness, performs God's word. What is said of this last applies also to the fire, etc.; all these phenomena of nature are messengers and servants of God, Psa 104:4, cf. Psa 103:20. When the poet wishes that they all may join in concert with the rest of the creatures to the praise of God, he excepts the fact that they frequently become destructive powers executing judicial punishment, and only has before his mind their (more especially to the inhabitant of Palestine, to whom the opportunity of seeing hail, snow, and ice was more rare than with us, imposing) grandeur and their relatedness to the whole of creation, which is destined to glorify God and to be itself glorified. He next passes over to the mountains towering towards the skies and to all the heights of earth; to the fruit-trees, and to the cedars, the kings among the trees of the forest; to the wild beasts, which are called חַחַיָּה because they represent the most active and powerful life in the animal world, and to all quadrupeds, which, more particularly the four-footed domestic animals, are called בְּהֵמָה; to the creeping things (רֶמֶשׂ) which cleave to the ground as they move along; and to the birds, which are named with the descriptive epithet winged (צִפֹּור כָּנָף as in Deu 4:17, cf. Gen 7:14; Eze 39:17, instead of עֹוף כָּנָף, Gen 1:21). And just as the call in Ps 103 finds its centre of gravity, so to speak, at last in the soul of man, so here it is addressed finally to humanity, and that, because mankind lives in nations and is comprehended under the law of a state commonwealth, in the first instance to its heads: the kings of the earth, i.e., those who rule over the earth by countries, to the princes and all who have the administration of justice and are possessed of supreme power on the earth, then to men of both sexes and of every age.
All the beings mentioned from Psa 148:1 onwards are to praise the Name of Jahve; for His Name, He (the God of this Name) alone (Isa 2:11; Psa 72:18) is נִשְׂגָּב, so high that no name reaches up to Him, not even from afar; His glory (His glorious self-attestation) extends over earth and heaven (vid., Psa 8:2). כִּי, without our being able and obliged to decide which, introduces the matter and the ground of the praise; and the fact that the desire of the poet comprehends in יְהַלֲלוּ all the beings mentioned is seen from his saying “earth and heaven,” as he glances back from the nearer things mentioned to those mentioned farther off (cf. Gen 2:4). In Psa 148:14 the statement of the object and of the ground of the praise is continued. The motive from which the call to all creatures to Hallelujah proceeds, viz., the new mercy which God has shown towards His people, is also the final ground of the Hallelujah which is to sound forth; for the church of God on earth is the central-point of the universe, the aim of the history of the world, and the glorifying of this church is the turning-point for the transformation of the world. It is not to be rendered: He hath exalted the horn of His people, any more than in Psa 132:17 : I will make the horn of David to shoot forth. The horn in both instances is one such as the person named does not already possess, but which is given him (different from Psa 89:18, Psa 89:25; Psa 92:11, and frequently). The Israel of the Exile had lost its horn, i.e., its comeliness and its defensive and offensive power. God has now given it a horn again, and that a high one, i.e., has helped Israel to attain again an independence among the nations that commands respect. In Ps 132, where the horn is an object of the promise, we might directly understand by it the Branch (Zemach). Here, where the poet speaks out of his own present age, this is at least not the meaning which he associates with the words. What now follows is an apposition to וַיָּרֶם קֶרֶן לְעַמֹּו: He has raised up a horn for His people - praise (we say: to the praise of; cf. the New Testament εἰς ἔπαινον) to all His saints, the children of Israel, the people who stand near Him. Others, as Hengstenberg, take תְּהִלָּה as a second object, but we cannot say הֵרִים תְּהִלָּה. Israel is called עַם קְרֹבֹו, the people of His near = of His nearness or vicinity (Köster), as Jerusalem is called in Ecc 8:10 מְקֹום קָדֹושׁ instead of קֹדֶשׁ מְקֹום (Ew. §287, a, b). It might also be said, according to Lev 10:3, עַם קְרֹבָיו, the nation of those who are near to Him (as the Targum renders it). In both instances עַם is the governing noun, as, too, surely גֶּבֶר is in גֶּבֶר עֲמִיתִי ni, Zec 13:7, which need not signify, by going back to the abstract primary signification of עמית, a man of my near fellowship, but can also signify a man of my neighbour, i.e., my nearest man, according to Ew. loc. cit. (cf. above on Psa 145:10). As a rule, the principal form of עם is pointed עָם; and it is all the more unnecessary, with Olshausen and Hupfeld, to take the construction as adjectival for עם קרוב לו. It might, with Hitzig after Aben-Ezra, be more readily regarded as appositional (to a people, His near, i.e., standing near to Him). We have here an example of the genitival subordination, which is very extensive in Hebrew, instead of an appositional co-ordination: populo propinqui sui, in connection with which propinqui may be referred back to propinquum = propinquitas, but also to propinquus (literally: a people of the kind of one that is near to Him). Thus is Israel styled in Deu 4:7. In the consciousness of the dignity which lies in this name, the nation of the God of the history of salvation comes forward in this Psalm as the leader (choragus) of all creatures, and strikes up a Hallelujah that is to be followed by heaven and earth.