1The LORD reigns—let earth exult,
2Cloud and dense fog around Him,
justice and judgment the base of His throne.
3Fire goes before Him
and all round burns His foes.
4His lightnings lit up the world;
the earth saw and quaked.
5Mountains melted like wax before the LORD,
before the Master of all the earth.
6The heavens told His justice,
and all peoples saw His glory.
7All idol worshippers are shamed,
who boast of the ungods.
8Zion heard and rejoiced,
because of Your judgments, LORD.
9For You, LORD, are most high over all the earth;
You are greatly exalted over all the gods.
10You who love the LORD, hate evil!
He guards the lives of His faithful.
From the hand of the wicked He saves them.
11Light is sown for the just,
and for the upright of heart there is joy.
12Rejoice, O you just, in the LORD,
and acclaim His holy name.
PSALM 97 NOTES
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1. The LORD reigns. These initial words signal another psalm in this series celebrating God’s kingship. All these poems are variations on a theme, using an abundance of set formulas. One difference between this psalm and the preceding ones is that there is no reference to God’s conquest of the primordial sea. Instead, deploying a different imagery that goes back to Canaanite mythology, the poet represents God surrounded by fire and hurling lightning bolts down on the world.
the many islands. The Hebrew ʾiyim always refers to remote regions.
2. Cloud and dense fog. These two overlapping elements, ʿanan and ʿarafel, traditionally surround God. Compare the occurrence of the same paired terms in Deuteronomy 4:11.
6. The heavens told His justice. This particular celebration of God’s kingship puts special emphasis not merely on God’s overwhelming power but on His bringing a reign of justice to humankind.
7. All gods bow down to Him. For the somewhat ambiguous background of formulations of this sort in this sequence of psalms, see the comments on 95:3 and 96:5. At least on the surface, this clause appears to be a flat contradiction of the two preceding versets, which speak of “idol worshippers” and “ungods.” (For an explanation of the Hebrew background to this latter term, see the note on 96:5). One must allow the possibility that the psalmist thought idol worship absurd, not because the idols were mere sticks and stones, as Deutero-Isaiah imagined them, but rather because they were images of deities who had no real power, who were totally subservient to the one supreme God, and therefore were not worthy of worship. In that case, ʾelilim, “ungods,” would mean something like “paltry pseudo-gods.”
8. Judah’s villages. The Hebrew banot has the literal sense of “daughters.” It could actually refer to exulting young women, but, given the poetic parallelism with “Zion”—that is, Jerusalem—it is more likely that the term here is used in its other sense of the outlying villages outside a city.
11. Light is sown for the just, / and for the upright of heart there is joy. In a resonant envelope structure, the poem that began in rejoicing ends in rejoicing. The delicate agricultural image of light sown—presumably, to bear refulgent fruit—is an elegant counterpoint to the fierce fire that burns up God’s enemies and to the lightning that makes the earth quake.