Battle hymn of God’s people
This world’s warfare deals out death and destruction. By contrast, Yahveh crowns the humble with life, while those who resist his love end up in bondage, excluded from the irrepressible joy of God’s song.
1 Praise Yahveh!
Sing Yahveh a new song
his praise in the assembly of the committed.
2 Let Israel rejoice in its maker
Zion’s children celebrate their king.
3 Let them praise his name in dance
making music to him with tambourine and lyre
4 because Yahveh delights in his people
and crowns the humble with victory.
5 Let the committed celebrate their glory
singing for joy from their beds.
6 With ecstatic praise of God in their mouths
and a two-edged sword in their hands
7 to execute vengeance on the nations
and punishment on the peoples
8 to bind their kings in shackles
all their power brokers in iron chains
9 enacting the sentence written against them.
This is the glory of all those devoted to God.
Praise Yahveh!
Next to last among the Psalter’s five concluding praise psalms, this psalm calls God’s devoted people to sing a new song celebrating his epoch-making victory. By delivering his people—crowning them with victory over their oppressors—their maker, defender, redeemer, and king proves how much he delights in them. And God’s humble people celebrate with song and dance, like the Israelites freed from Egyptian slavery long before.
Many find the militarism of this psalm’s second part jarring: joyful praise and a lethal sword. However, God makes only the “humble” or “meek”—those Jesus later said would inherit the earth—his warriors. They seek God’s honor by fulfilling the prophet’s oracle against rebel nations. This is his people’s glory since they triumph alongside their divine king and know his irrepressible joy.
This psalm adds complexity to the Psalter in two ways. First, its judgment for kings and peoples contrasts with Psalm 148’s call for both to join in celebrating God’s greatness. Second, it presents God’s triumphing over the nations through his people, not through his anointed king, as Psalm 2 has it. Yet this psalm combines with Psalm 2 to frame the Psalter as a whole. Thus, we’re given two unresolved paradoxes, which doubtless left post-exilic Jews wondering just how God’s kingdom would come.
You came to defeat evil, Jesus, as both God’s humble servant and conquering king. And you call me to fight as you fought, with weapons unlike those the world wields, yet weapons so powerful they can demolish enemy strongholds. I glory in your victory and in your calling me to share in it. Amen.
During your free moments today, meditate on these words:
Yahveh delights in his people
and crowns the humble with victory.
