Psalms 150

Psalms BLESSEDNESS AND PRAISEPsalm 1:1 - Psalm 1:2 . - Psalm 150:6 . The Psalter is the echo in devout hearts of the other portions of divine revelation. There are in it, indeed, further disclosures of God’s mind and purposes, but its especial characteristic is-the reflection of the light of God from brightened faces and believing hearts. As we hold it to be inspired, we cannot simply say that it is man’s response to God’s voice. But if the rest of Scripture may be called the speech of the Spirit of God to men, this book is the answer of the Spirit of God in men. These two verses which I venture to lay side by side present in a very remarkable way this characteristic. It is not by accident that they stand where they do, the first and last verses of the whole collection, enclosing all, as it were, within a golden ring, and bending round to meet each other. They are the summing up of the whole purpose and issue of God’s revelation to men. The first and second psalms echo the two main portions of the old revelation-the Law and the Prophets. The first of them is taken up with the celebration of the blessedness and fruitful, stable being of the man who loves the Law of the Lord, as contrasted with the rootless and barren life of the ungodly, who is like the chaff.

The second is occupied with the contemplation of the divine ‘decree’ by which the coming King is set in God’s ‘holy hill of Zion,’ and of the blessedness of ‘all they who put their trust in Him,’ as contrasted with the swift destruction that shall fall on the vain imaginations of the rebellious heathen and banded kings of earth. The words of our first text, then, may well stand at the beginning of the Psalter. They express the great purpose for which God has given His Law. They are the witness of human experience to the substantial, though partial, accomplishment of that purpose. They rise in buoyant triumph over that which is painful and apparently opposed to it; and in spite of sorrow and sin, proclaim the blessedness of the life which is rooted in the Law of the Lord. The last words of the book are as significant as its first. The closing psalms are one long call to praise-they probably date from the time of the restoration under Ezra and Nehemiah, when, as we know, ‘the service of song’ was carefully re-established, and the harps which had hung silent upon the willows by the rivers of Babylon woke again their ancient melodies. These psalms climb higher and higher in their rapturous call to all creatures, animate and inanimate, on earth and in heaven, to praise Him. The golden waves of music and song pour out ever faster and fuller.