Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Psalms · About this commentary
Let Everything That Has Breath
Psalms 150:1-6
1 Praise Yah! Praise God in his sanctuary! Praise him in his heavens for his acts of power! · WEB
Six verses, thirteen commands, one orchestra, and a last line that admits everyone who is breathing.
Praise Yah! Praise God in his sanctuary! Praise him in his heavens for his acts of power! Psalms 150:1.
Six verses to end a hundred and fifty, and the word praise occurs thirteen times in them. Nothing is requested, nothing is complained of, and nobody is described as an enemy. The collection that opened with a man deciding which road to walk closes with an instruction repeated until it is the only thing left.
The first verse gives the two places: the sanctuary, and the sky. Where God is worshiped, and where he lives.
Praise him for his mighty acts! Praise him according to his excellent greatness! Psalms 150:2.
The two reasons, and they are the only ones offered. What he has done, and what he is — and the second has no measure attached to it except his own.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet! Praise him with harp and lyre! Praise him with tambourine and dancing! Praise him with stringed instruments and flute! Praise him with loud cymbals! Praise him with resounding cymbals! Psalms 150:3–5.
The entire orchestra of the temple, named in four verses — wind, strings, and percussion, and the ram's horn that summoned people rather than entertaining them. Dancing is included without embarrassment, as it was in the psalm before.
The cymbals are mentioned twice and the second is louder. The psalm's last instrument is the one that cannot be played quietly.
Let everything that has breath praise Yah! Praise Yah! Psalms 150:6.
The last verse of the Psalter, and the qualification is the smallest one in Scripture. Not everything that is righteous, or that belongs to Israel, or that understands what is happening. Everything that breathes.
Breath is what was given at the beginning Genesis 2:7 and what departs at the end Psalms 146:4, and the collection has spent a hundred and forty-nine psalms on what happens in between — the fear, the slander, the illness, the exile, the failure, and the waiting. It closes by naming the one condition for joining in, and it is the condition of being alive at all.
The man in the eighty-eighth psalm qualifies. So does the one who could not stop weeping, and the one who admitted he was lost like a sheep after a hundred and seventy-five verses about loving the law.
settled What this mark means