1Hallelujah.
Praise the LORD from the heavens,
praise Him on the heights.
2Praise Him, all His messengers,
praise Him, all His armies.
3Praise Him, sun and moon,
praise Him, all you stars of light.
4Praise Him, utmost heavens,
and the waters above the heavens.
5Let them praise the LORD’s name,
for He commanded, and they were created.
6And He made them stand forever, for all time.
He set them a border that could not be crossed.
7Praise the LORD from the earth,
sea monsters and all you deeps.
8Fire and hail, snow and smoke,
storm wind that performs His command,
9the mountains and all the hills,
fruit trees and all the cedars,
10wild beasts and all the cattle,
crawling things and wingèd birds,
11kings of earth and all the nations,
princes and all leaders of earth,
12young men and also maidens,
elders together with lads.
13Let them praise the LORD’s name,
for His name alone is exalted.
His grandeur is over earth and the heavens.
14And may He raise up a horn for His people,
of the Israelites, the people near Him.
Hallelujah.
PSALM 148 NOTES
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1. Praise the LORD from the heavens. One of the most majestic of these six concluding psalms of praise, the poem expresses a grand cosmic vision, beginning with the heavens and the celestial beings, then moving down to the earth and to humankind, as all created things are enjoined to praise the Creator.
2. His messengers, / . . . His armies. The “messengers” (malʾakhim) are the “angels” of traditional translations—not to be thought of as winged figures with halos but as perfectly anthropomorphic beings whose function it is to carry out God’s sundry instructions and to serve as a celestial entourage to God the king. Though “armies,” when they are located in the heavens, usually are the stars, here they appear to be synonymous with “messengers,” the messengers conceived as God’s battalions.
3. sun and moon, / . . . stars. This marks the beginning of a poetic reprise of the creation story in Genesis 1. It continues with the “utmost heavens,” “the waters above the heavens,” “sea monsters,” “deeps,” and the “crawling things” and “wingèd birds” in the following verses (4–10).
4. utmost heavens. The literal sense is “the heavens of the heavens,” a characteristic Hebrew way of forming a superlative. This designation recurs elsewhere in biblical literature and indicates the uppermost reaches (or top level) of the heavens, above which it was thought that there were waters (which appear here in the second verset).
6. He set them a border that could not be crossed. Although the noun ḥoq in other contexts means “precept” or “law,” it can also mean “border” or “limit.” The cosmogonic setting here, with primordial waters held in check, strongly argues for the sense of “border.” Behind this image lies the old Canaanite myth of the conquest of a sea god, but it has been thoroughly integrated into a monotheistic conceptual framework. Thus, in the next line, “sea monsters” (taninim) and “deeps” (tehomot), both terms that are associated in Canaanite tradition with the cosmogonic adversaries of Baal, are called on to praise YHWH.
7. sea monsters. These are the taninim of Genesis 1:21.
deeps. This is the plural of tehom, the deep over which God’s breath hovers in Genesis 1.
8. smoke. The Hebrew qitor usually means “smoke,” though some scholars argue that here it has the sense of “fog.” It is hard to determine how fluid these meanings might have been, but qitor elsewhere is the product of burning.
11. leaders of earth. The Hebrew shoftim means either “judges” or “leaders,” but the parallel with “kings” makes the judicial sense less likely.
13. His grandeur is over earth and the heavens. This verse nicely recapitulates the movement of the entire poem.
14. And may He raise up a horn. Some scholars, with an eye to the cosmic perspective of the poem, think this verse of national blessing is an editorial addition, a kind of epilogue to the psalm proper. But it is possible that the poet felt that a brief prayer for the well-being of the people was an appropriate coda to the celebration of the cosmic God.
praise of all His faithful. The prefix le usually means “for” or “to,” but another common function is to indicate ownership (as on countless ostraca that archaeologists have found), and that is its likely sense here. The praise of God belongs to, is the proper obligation of, His faithful people. In any case, it should be noted that the psalm, which began with the verb “praise” (halel), concludes with the noun “praise” (tehilah).