SUMMARY
All creationCreation, in biblical terms, is the universe as we know or perceive it. Genesis says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the book of Revelation (which speaks of end times) the author declares that God created all things and... More, from things in the heavens above to things on the earth below, is called to praise the Lord.
ANALYSIS
This is one of the great creation hymns of the PsalterThe psalter is a volume containing the book of Psalms (see Psalm). In the early Middle Ages psalters were popular and contained - in addition to the psalms - calendars, litanies of saints, and other devotional texts. More. Though in grammar it is made up almost completely of calls to praise in the imperative (“Praise!”) or jussive (“Let them praise!”), the extended call itself is heard already as praise.
The psalmA psalm is a song of praise. In the Old Testament 150 psalms comprise the psalter, although some of the psalms are laments and thanksgivings. In the New Testament early Christians gathered to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. More has two main parts, the first referring to the heavens (vv. 1-6), the second to the earth (vv. 7-14). It encompasses everything above and beneath; all creatures should and do praise the Lord.
The call to the heavens, the sun, the moon, and the stars to praise God reminds us (and them) that they are not themselves gods (unlike the notions of most of the ancient world). Though glorious and amazing, they are all creatures of God, whom God has established and whose boundaries God has fixed (v. 6). They praise God by doing what God has formed them to do, giving heat and light, marking the seasons, providing rain, contributing their own part to the goodness of God’s own cosmos (v. 3-4).
Things of earth, too, praise the Lord–not only cute and lovely things, but sea monsters, fire, snow, stormy winds, and wild animals. The psalm reminds us that everything is God’s, even those things that can be awesome and out of control. Even those things thought in the ancient world to represent chaos and evil (sea monsters, the deeps) are God’s. Though the Old Testament distinguishes between clean and uncleanIn Hebrew law many regulations warned against impurity. Unclean things were numerous and included leprosy, menstruating women, dead bodies, shell fish, and pigs. More animals for eating, “unclean” animals, too (like “creeping things,” v. 10), are part of God’s good creation and offer their own praise. Humans, too, are part of the same list, all of them. Not only Israel, God’s chosen ones, but “kings of the earth and all peoples” belong to God and praise God. How, when they would not even have known God’s name? In the same way that the sun and moon, the hills and the mountains, the fruit trees and flying birds do–by being what they were made to be and doing what they were made to do. Creation praised God by being creation, and it is good–all of it. Wind and snow can get out of control and cause damage; people can lose sight of their limits and do great harm–and then their praise is muted; but all of them were made with purpose and made for praise, and the psalm rejoices in that.
At the end, the psalm moves to Israel, to God’s faithful ones, who have their own unique role in praising God because they know God’s name; they are “close to him” and can tell God’s story (v. 14), another form of praise. But they can never separate themselves from other people or from the whole nonhuman creation; they can only join the praise it already gives forth.
