Psalm 96:1-9 Commentary

In the mid-1970s when I was a boy, our congregation in Ada, Michigan, got a new minister who tended to begin worship services using Psalm 96:7-8 as his Call to Worship.   Over and over and more weeks than not I heard Rev. MacLeod say, “Ascribe to the Lord . . .” multiple times.  I did not know what “ascribe” meant and I may even have wondered if it was “a scribe to the Lord” and I had a hunch that had something to do with being a writer.

“Ascribe” is a good word, though I doubt we hear it or use it ourselves real often in our day-to-day conversations with people.  If you do use it, it strikes me that it may be more often in semi-negative contexts like when we say to someone, “I don’t mean to ascribe bad motives to that guy but . . .”  It seems like we don’t often ascribe good things to someone.  Or maybe some of us do.  In any event, in the Hebrew Psalter “ascribe” is always positive and it is almost always aimed at ascribing wonderful things to the God of Israel.  

Psalm 96 is an exuberant call to praise and worship Israel’s God, Yahweh.  Even in the verses that don’t use the word “ascribe,” that is pretty much what is being done anyway.  God is full of glory and light.  God has done marvelous deeds and brought about a much-needed salvation for God’s people.  God created everything and is so holy that even when we worship this God, we do so with a bit of trembling in the face of such glorious holiness and splendor and light.

Before Psalm 96 is finished, the whole of the non-human creation is pressed into service for still more worship of God.  The heavens, the earth, the seas, the fields, the trees and every creature that lives anywhere in all of those places join together to sing songs of joy to the Creator God.  As we’ve noted in other sermon commentaries in the past here on the CEP website, the psalms seem never to present the praise of the non-human creation as mere metaphor.  The implication is that when God looks upon all those things he made and when they do what they were intended to do, God hears it as a genuine song of praise every bit as wonderful to hear as when a choir made up of people lets loose with the “Hallelujah Chorus” or some other hymn or song or anthem.  

The Lectionary has made verses 10-13 optional (if that is what putting verses in parentheses is supposed to signal at least).  It’s not clear why but one wonders if it is due to some measure of shyness once the psalmist starts talking about God’s coming to judge the earth, the world, and the peoples living in the world.  Maybe judgment feels off-putting to some.  Perhaps the specter of God’s judging people seems to dampen the rest of the music in Psalm 96 and so perhaps it’s best to essentially avert our eyes and stop reading at verse 9.

But when I look around this world, it strikes me that there is a whole lot that is as a matter of fact in dire need of some judging.  There are now and have been historically individuals and political regimes that have fractured shalom, vandalized God’s creation, marginalized if not murdered precious people who had been created in the image of God.  If God is all of the things that Psalm 96 describes God to be, then how could God not feel the need to do some judging in the long run?  

This cosmos needs a holy God, not a lenient pushover of a God who can put up with and tolerate most anything.  This cosmos needs a righteous God who is the straight cosmic line against which all crookedness is detected and measured.  If in the long run and in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,” then all things that are not well and all things that in fact detract from wellness in all its forms need to be removed, judged as out of place.  The introduction of judgment near the end of Psalm 96 does not sully the rest of the psalm nor introduce a dark theme into an otherwise sunny song.  Rather such judgment is rooted in and stems from the rest of Psalm 96.

Psalm 96 calls on us to declare among the nations “The Lord reigns!”  That fact is why God will be in a position to judge in the end.  Of course, even those of us who believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ and that he is, as we say each time we recite the Apostles Creed, “seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,” we have to admit that there are days—lots of them it feels like at times—when this world does not look like it is being ruled by our God in Christ.  There is so much suffering, so much warfare, so much political corruption.  So while it is good to declare to the world “Our God Reigns!” sometimes we have to remind ourselves even in the fellowship of believers that this is true, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

Maybe that is a key thing we do in public worship in the church.  At the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, we often note that when many people think about worship, they focus on the expressive side of worship.  We sing.  We raise our hands in praise. We pray prayers of thanksgiving.  We express ourselves and our faith.  But we should never lose sight of the formative aspect of worship as well.  Thoughtfully planned worship services form us, shape us, remind us of the things we hold dear.  Worship reminds us that God really does reign and this then forms in us hope.  

That may sum up Psalm 96 pretty well too.  Singing these words, reading these words has a formative effect on our hearts and minds.  We are reminded who our great God in Christ is, what this God has done for us through the cross and the empty tomb, what our Jesus is doing right now having ascended to heaven.  We remember these things.  We express them but are simultaneously formed by them.  And that is a profoundly good thing.

Illustration Idea

Though we might not think about it very often, there is a distinction between giving thanks and giving praise.  Sometimes we assume thanks and praise are pretty much synonymous.  And the two acts do share much in common and here and there the lines between the two may even blur just a little.  But there is a distinction to be observed.

For instance, if you wrote a book that I read and really appreciated, I can come up to you, the author, and say, “Thank you for writing that book!  It clarified some things for me that I had long been confused about.  So thanks!”  That is a statement of thanksgiving and gratitude.  But if I get the chance to write a really positive review of the book and get it published in a well-known magazine, website, or Substack site, then I am going beyond personally thanking the author but am instead saying to ever wider circles of potential readers, “This is a great book that I commend to you.  Join me in praising this person for publishing such an important work!”  Or similarly people who are asked to write endorsement blurbs on the back cover of a book: those blurbs are saying, “This is a fine work for which the author deserves our praise.”  

Thanking someone can take place 1:1 just between two people.  Praising someone, however, is done in front of far more people with the desire that they join you in thanking the author and also picking up their book to read it for themselves.

There is some measure of thanksgiving in Psalm 96 but mostly this is a psalm of praise.  This song gets sung in front of all the nations of the earth to say, “Join me in praising the one true God of Israel!  I want to sing this God’s praises in front of you so you too will worship this God and also express your thanks.”   Thanks can be private.  Praise is invariably public.