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Psalm 96


O sing a new song to the Lord,
sing to the Lord all the earth.
O sing to the Lord, bless his name.

Proclaim his help day by day,
tell among the nations his glory
and his wonders among all the peoples.

The Lord is great and worthy of praise,
to be feared above all gods;
the gods of the heathens are naught.

It was the Lord who made the heavens,
his are majesty and state and power
and splendour in his holy place.

Give the Lord, you families of peoples,
give the Lord glory and power,
give the Lord the glory of his name.

Bring an offering and enter his courts,
worship the Lord in his temple.
O earth, tremble before him.

Proclaim to the nations: “God is King.”
The world he made firm in its place;
he will judge the peoples in fairness.

Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad,
let the sea and all within it thunder praise,
let the land and all it bears rejoice,
all the trees of the wood shout for joy

at the presence of the Lord for he comes,
he comes to rule the earth.
With justice he will rule the world,
he will judge the peoples with his truth.

Commentary

The background of this psalm, whose author is unknown, is the triumphal entry of the Ark into Jerusalem for the first time (see 1 Chronicles 16:23-33). King David arranged for the Ark to be taken to Jerusalem with great pomp and ceremony. God’s throne is now firmly fixed among His people, and they exult with joyful songs of praise to Him.

O sing a new song to the Lord,
sing to the Lord all the earth.
O sing to the Lord, bless his name.

Proclaim his help day by day,
tell among the nations his glory
and his wonders among all the peoples.

The Lord is great and worthy of praise,
to be feared above all gods;
the gods of the heathens are naught.

It was the Lord who made the heavens,
his are majesty and state and power
and splendour in his holy place.

Give the Lord, you families of peoples,
give the Lord glory and power,
give the Lord the glory of his name.

Bring an offering and enter his courts,
worship the Lord in his temple.
O earth, tremble before him.

Proclaim to the nations: “God is King.”
The world he made firm in its place;
he will judge the peoples in fairness.

Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad,
let the sea and all within it thunder praise,
let the land and all it bears rejoice,
all the trees of the wood shout for joy

at the presence of the Lord for he comes,
he comes to rule the earth.
With justice he will rule the world,
he will judge the peoples with his truth.
                                          (vv. 1-13).

The build-up of the repeated words “sing . . . O sing . . . proclaim” at the opening of the psalm illustrates the vigour of the people’s praise to God, and the almost irrepressible excitement at the prospect of the Lord’s arrival in their midst. When He comes He will find a community of praise and worship awaiting Him, as is His due. True praise to God is always a “new” song, for it comes from a loving heart responding in gratitude to Him for the wonders of salvation. It is always expressed with real feeling to match the freshness of God’s mercies, which are new every morning. Real praise also includes “all the earth” for we are aware of our unity with all creation. Praise is a proclamation of God’s glory, not in the sense of missionary activity, but of speaking out into all creation, and of joining all others who praise God. This includes the animal and plant kingdoms, who praise God by their lives (vv. 1-3).

Only the true God, who is creator and Lord of the universe, is worthy of our loving praise and our reverential awe. All the idols worshipped by the heathens are worthless. This was a great challenge to the ideas accepted among the peoples of that time. It is also a challenge to the people of our day not to give their time and attention to worthless materialism, and to the false cults that are rampant. The psalmist stops short of saying that the idols do not exist and are nothing in the true sense. The many people today who are caught on the treadmill of false cults likewise do not realize that their “nothing” is going nowhere! They are involved in a cult which has no worth, no value, for time or eternity. Only the true worship of God in spirit and in truth has value; only the true worshippers realize the majesty and glory of God revealed in His sanctuary. The earthly sanctuary was a copy of the heavenly one revealed by God Himself; its true worship was a preparation for the full revelation of redemption in
and through Christ, who, as the true Temple of God, surpassed in glory and dignity the old sanctuary (see Hebrews 8:5; John 1:14, 2:21) (vv. 4-6).

The threefold “sing” at the beginning of the psalm is now replaced by a threefold “give to the Lord”. It is not enough to sing and dance to the Lord. The worshippers must also bring gifts humbly to Him in reverential awe and fear, thus acknowledging His splendour and majesty. There is another reminder that all nations must so worship God, even though all true worship is given in the name of all peoples on the earth. This is an acknowledgement of the essential oneness of all mankind (vv. 7-9).

Reaching the climax of the psalm, we see the people respond to God’s presence with a combination of reverential fear and rapturous joy, which shows how deeply moved they were by the manifest greatness of God. They declare that God reigns over all the earth. Men may feel totally secure under His benign and just rule, where everyone is treated fairly, and God reveals His triumphant justice in His plan of salvation. God has everything under control, as everything in heaven and on earth comes under His righteous rule. And so we reach the ecstatic climax of the psalm, and also the central verse of the Psalter, when the people cry out to the heavens and the earth, to the sea and all it contains, to all plant life on earth, to thunder praise to God, and shout for joy. The cause of this great rejoicing is the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth, when God will reign as king, and the earth, at last, will have a just peace.

The prophetic message of this psalm should not be lost. The day eventually came for Israel, for the Church and the world, when the incarnate God, in the person of Jesus Christ, rode triumphantly into Jerusalem amid the joyful acclaim of the people. He took His throne in the Temple of God, declaring it to be His Father’s house (see John 1:13-25). The glory of God was now fully manifested in their midst, if only they had eyes to see. The glory was no longer hidden behind the veil in the Holy of Holies; it was right here in their midst, and they could touch Him, but none of them realized at that time that Jesus was the new Temple; that He was the Holy of Holies; that God was no longer distant from His people, for they all had access to His august majesty in the person of their mediator, Jesus, the Messiah. But they were blind, and most of them missed the glory of Israel after having waited thousands of years for it. When He came He was too ordinary! The problem with most of God’s people is that they have not
penetrated the mystery of the incarnation, and so they miss the significance of everything that God offers to them. How sad!

As the glory of Israel rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, in the same humble way that the Ark had entered Jerusalem so many years before, Jesus told the leaders that if they stopped the people from giving their due glory and praise to God the very stones would cry out, because all creation was waiting for the Son of Man to manifest Himself, and begin the release of the world from its landslide into decadence (see Luke 19:39-40; Romans 8:21f). The reason for His coming was to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, to initiate God’s rule over the nations. One day He will return amid the jubilant joy and celebration of His people to bring the final fulfilment of all God’s promises. Then He shall reign for ever as king of kings and lord of lords, surrounded by a chosen race, a people set apart to sing the praises of God in joyful thanksgiving (see 1 Peter 2:9).

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