The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 3: Psalms XC.-CL.Maclaren, Alexander
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 3: Psalms XC.-CL.
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
The third strophe builds on this supremacy of Jehovah, whose
dwelling-place is the seat of all things worthy to be admired,
the summons to all nations to render praise to Him. It is mainly
a variation of Psalm xxix. 1, 2, where the summons is addressed
to angels. Here "the families of the peoples" are called on to
ascribe to Jehovah "glory and strength," or "the glory of His name"
(_i.e._, of His character as revealed). The call presupposes a new
manifestation of His Kingship, as conspicuous and earth-shaking
as the thunder-storm of the original psalm. As in it the "sons of
God" were called to worship in priestly garb, so here, still more
emphatically, Gentile nations are invited to assume the priestly
office, to "take an offering and come into His courts." The issue
of Jehovah's manifestation of kingly sway will be that Israel's
prerogative of priestly access to Him will be extended to all men,
and that the lowly worship of earth will have characteristics which
assimilate it to that of the elder brethren who ever stand before
Him, and also characteristics which distinguish it from that, and
are necessary while the worshippers are housed in flesh. Material
offerings and places consecrated to worship belong to earth. The
"sons of God" above have them not, for they need them not.
The last strophe has four verses, instead of the normal three.
The psalmist's chief purpose in it is to extend his summons for
praise to the whole creation; but he cannot refrain from once more
ringing out the glad tidings for which praise is to be rendered. He
falls back in ver. 10 on Psalm xciii. 1, and Psalm ix. 8. In his
quotation from the former psalm, he brings more closely together the
thoughts of Jehovah's reign and the fixity of the world, whether
that is taken with a material reference, or as predicting the calm
perpetuity of the moral order established by His merciful rule and
equitable judgment. The thought that inanimate nature will share
in the joy of renovated humanity inspires many glowing prophetic
utterances, eminently those of Isaiah--as, _e.g._, Isa. xxxv. The
converse thought, that it shared in the consequences of man's sin, is
deeply stamped on the Genesis narrative. The same note is struck with
unhesitating force in Rom. viii., and elsewhere in the New Testament.
A poet invests Nature with the hues of his own emotions, but this
summons of the psalmist is more than poetry. How the transformation
is to be effected is not revealed, but the consuming fires will
refine, and at last man will have a dwelling-place where environment
will correspond to character, where the external will image the
inward state, where a new form of the material will be the perpetual
ally of the spiritual, and perfected manhood will walk in a "new
heaven and new earth, where dwelleth righteousness."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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