1Hallelujah.
praise Him in the vault of His power.
2Praise Him for His mighty acts,
praise Him as befits His abounding greatness.
3Praise Him with the ram’s horn’s blast,
praise Him with the lute and the lyre.
4Praise Him with timbrel and dance,
praise Him with strings and flute.
5Praise Him with sounding cymbals,
praise Him with crashing cymbals.
6Let all that has breath praise Jah.
Hallelujah!
PSALM 150 NOTES
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1. Hallelujah. The ancient editors, having chosen to represent the Book of Psalms as above all tehilim, songs of praise, by concluding the collection with six psalms of praise, now climactically set at the end this psalm that begins and ends with “hallelujah” (which of course means “praise God”) and repeats the verb halel, “praise,” in each verset of the poem for a pointed total of ten times, followed by a final repitition in the coda (verse 6), which is not a complete line of poetry.
His holy place, / . . . the vault of His power. There is a harmonious concordance between the “holy place”—the Temple below and the heavens above—both conceived as sites of God’s habitation.
3. the ram’s horn’s blast. The catalogue of musical instruments that begins with this phrase is another way in which this psalm is a fitting culmination to the entire collection. The psalms have prominently featured singing with orchestral accompaniment. Here at the very end, we have a grand roll call of the instruments—wind, strings, and percussion—that are used to create this music.
4. strings. The Hebrew minim is related to the Ugaritic mnm and also to the rabbinic nimim, both of which refer to strings. Though it could possibly be the name of a particular stringed instrument, the precise identification of which eludes us, it may well indicate the general class of stringed instruments.
flute. Although the term ʿugav has been applied to the organ in modern Hebrew, it probably is some sort of straight flute, as the archaeological evidence from Egypt suggests.
5. sounding cymbals, / . . . crashing cymbals. In all likelihood, these are not two different percussion instruments but two different sounds produced with the same instrument, the second louder or more penetrating than the first.
6. Let all that has breath praise Jah. Appropriately, the psalm and the book conclude on a note of universalism: not Israel alone but every living thing is exhorted to praise the God of all creation. From this grandly resonant conclusion, one can see how the Book of Psalms has spoken to people through the ages across the borders of nations, languages, and sectarian divisions.