Psalm 145:1-8 Commentary

Recently as I read the first 8 verses of Psalm 145, I found myself oddly enough wondering what is the antecedent for all the “they” references in especially verses 4-7.  On the one level it is almost certainly the case that the “they” refers back to the next generation.  One generation commends God’s works to the next generation and then they—that next generation—tell of God’s mighty acts, they speak of God’s glorious majesty, they tell of God’s awesome works, they celebrate God’s abundant goodness.  Interspersed throughout are references back to the psalmist himself: I will meditate on God’s wonderful works, I will proclaim your great deeds.  So the next generation carries on the legacy of praising God and trumpeting God’s goodness and splendor and the poet of Psalm 145 says he will join right in.

But then I also wondered if there could be a double entendre kind of thing with those “they” references.  Yes, it is probably the next generation but could it also be that it’s the mighty acts and the glorious majesty and the awesome works that tell and speak and celebrate?  Is the “they” the works themselves?  Or could it be both?  Might it be that what the next generation and the psalmist himself do is actually kind of an echo of the praise and proclamation that the works of creation do, that God’s deeds of salvation do?

It would not be the first time in the psalms that the creation and God’s historical deeds are said to have a voice of their own.  Think of Psalm 19 that overtly says that the stars above and the sun above day by day and night by night proclaim God’s glory.  Or think of those other psalms and prophetic passages that picture the trees of the field as clapping their hands.  Or those places where the command to praise God is given not just to people old and young, to rulers and kings and queens but that praise imperative comes with equal force to clouds, wind, rain, snow, hail, sea creatures, and all wildlife on the planet.  They all have something to say too.

In Scripture the physical creation has its own voice and for those with ears to hear it, there is a praise chorus going on around us at all times.  Some of us grew up knowing the song “This Is My Father’s World.”  There is this great line in that song that says, “All nature sings, and ‘round me rings the music of the spheres.”  Well, that song was written in 1901 long before we had the sophisticated radio telescopes we have today.  But as it turns out, the “spheres” out there in space really do produce their own music (stunningly enough).  Listen to this compilation clip of what powerful radio telescopes have heard when pointing their antennae at specific nebulae or cloud formations made up of interstellar dust.  It is utterly remarkable.  The cosmos is singing!

Now somebody whose Hebrew is far better than mine may look at Psalm 145 and see that the “they” doing all the praising and commending and celebrating really are people and not the works of creation and salvation that prompt the chorus of praise from one generation to the next.  But since the Hebrew Psalter really does depict creation as singing its own kind of song, it could be kind of both senses.  I like it anyway!

But of course for any generation to do what Psalm 145 commends, we have to be aware of the wonders that surround us every day.  And sadly enough, oftentimes we probably aren’t.  Whether Psalm 145 really is depicting God’s mighty works of creation as themselves doing some singing, they are singing and so it’s our vocation to listen and to celebrate what we hear.  But how well are we listening?  It’s hard to hear “the music of the spheres” or the praise that can get whipped up by a chorus of Sandhill Cranes (their calls can be heard up to 2 miles away!) if we spend our days with our ears plugged up by earbuds playing podcasts and such.  It’s difficult to gasp out a few words of heartfelt praise to God over the sight of some great wonder in the skies when we have our eyes down on our various phones and other screens almost all the time.

In a book on the creation I wrote years ago, I noted how some people behave in National Parks.  They cruise through scenic drives going about as fast as they can and never stop at turnouts, much less get out into the woods or onto the mountainsides to hike or even just take a walk.  Instead they reduce the beauty and splendor of the park to what some call a “windshield experience.”  They never leave the car.

We are today far too impressed with the LED crystal clarity of the latest smart TVs or with the incredibly realistic graphics of the latest video game than we are with the real-life crystal clarity of sunsets over oceans or the sight of the brilliant blue wings of an Indigo Bunting.  And while technology can be seen as a gift of God too and as cultural artifacts of a sort, really, the sharpness of your TV’s picture rarely if ever elicits a song of praise to God.

“Every day I will praise you and extol your name forever” the psalmist writes in verse 2.  But to do that, we need to be paying attention every day to the wonders and the works of God that are all around us.  We need to rehearse for ourselves the wonders of the Gospel and of the grace by which God in Christ Jesus our Lord saves us.  We cannot give our salvation only fleeting glimpses one day or so a week when we manage to attend a church service or something.  

Sometimes when we read psalms with words to the effect “every day your praise is on my lips, O God,” we think that sounds a little over the top.  But maybe if we could cultivate greater awareness of the divine splendors and gifts in which we are sunk neck-deep many days, such constant pouring forth of praise might not seem so odd or far-fetched or merely aspirational as we think.

Illustration Idea

Ever since first reading it, I have savored something Richard Lischer wrote in his book, The End of Words.  

“Generations ago, G. K. Chesterton was promoting the gospel to an industrial age that conceived of the world as a self-sustaining machine. In a delightful passage in Orthodoxy Chesterton insists that even if life does proceed with a predictable pattern, that does not mean that God is not active as a creator:

‘It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen . . . in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grownup people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy.’”