Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host!Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens
and you waters above the heavens!Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for he commanded and they were created.
He established them forever and ever;
he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
Young men and women alike,
old and young together!Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for his name alone is exalted;
his glory is above earth and heaven.
He has raised up a horn for his people,
praise for all his faithful,
for the people of Israel who are close to him.
Praise the Lord!Psalm 148 (NRSVUE)
Psalm 148 invites its readers on a vast cosmological journey whose sole purpose is to observe and evoke praise.
Psalms of praise generally offer an invitation to participate in praise of God followed by reasons why such praise is warranted. This particular psalm invests most of its energy in an expansive invitation, followed by more succinct rationales for participation. The psalmist regards humankind from a Gods-eye view, as one community of praise among many.
Who is invited to praise God? The breadth of the psalmist’s guestlist is unmatched: angels, stars, weather, wind, mountains, trees, wild animals, cattle, birds, and, only then, dead last: humans. Is it an honor to be last, an echo of humankind as the ultimate work of the sixth day in Genesis 1? Or is it a relativizing move on the part of the poet, an invitation for humans to see themselves, and their relationship to the rest of created order, in an appropriately proportional manner? The way modern readers answer this question may depend in part on their commitments to postcolonial and ecological perspectives that resist interpretations used to justify human domination of humans and other inhabitants of earth.
The psalm’s first six verses locate the reader firmly in the upper echelons of the cosmos: the heavenly realm, the abode of divine beings and astral bodies. Frequently, the sun, moon, and stars were worshipped as deities in the Ancient Near East; in second temple Jewish literature, astral imagery is associated with angelic beings who inspire awe and serve at the deity’s command. Stars stand in for fallen angels in the allegorical Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85-90). Angels escort stars along their courses (1 Enoch 82). In biblical literature, heavenly bodies offer potential for connection between human and divine realms. In Deuteronomy 30:19, the heavens (and the earth) are summoned as witnesses to a covenant between humans and their deity, while the moon is called “an enduring witness in the skies” in Psalm 89:37. In Daniel 12:3, the righteous who have died are said to shine like stars.
The call to praise in Psalm 148 first invokes the heavenly beings with the greatest power and agency (“angels”), then moves on to heavenly bodies that are accessible to the human eye but still remote (“stars”), before pivoting to an element that exists both in the heavens and on the earth (“waters”). The movement of verses 2-4 echoes the priestly texts in Genesis 1:6-7 and 7:11 that envision the heavens as a physical dome whose purpose is to restrain (or release) the waters above. These occupants of the heavens – angels, lights, waters – are called upon to praise not with speech or song, but, somehow, by simply “being what they are as God’s creatures,” as Terence Fretheim writes (29).
In verses 5-6, the psalmist offers the first pair of reasons why the heavens should participate in praise of God: first, because God created everything, and second, because God’s torah (instruction) orders everything. God’s commanding words resulted in creation itself, an act which is ongoing and not limited to a one-time event. Though the NRSVue depicts God as “fixing the bounds” of the created order, Nancy deClaissé-Walford suggests a more accurate translation is that God “fixed the statutes” (311), one of the biblical synonyms for God’s torah instruction. In this way, God’s words at creation are inextricably linked to God’s torah for Israel, thus anticipating the increased focus on Israel’s particular identity as God’s covenant people at the psalm’s conclusion.
In verse 7, the psalm’s purview shifts to the earthly realm. The meteorological elements are the first community called upon to praise God. Weather is a kind of liminal force originating in the heavens (Job 38:22 describes heavenly storehouses for hail and snow) but destined to become part of the earthly realm. The poem proceeds to take its readers on a tour of the earthly realm, moving from heights to depths. First, the psalmist calls upon the mountains and hills to praise. Mountains are liminal spaces, with Sinai, Horeb, and Zion as examples of the uppermost reaches of earth and places where contact with the divine is more possible or more likely. Next, “fruit trees and all cedars” are called upon, plant life which also stretches heavenward. Fruit trees evoke Genesis 1:11-12, while cedars are elsewhere affiliated with righteousness (Psalm 92:12) and the strength of enemy nations (Isaiah 2:13; Ezekiel 31:3). Nonhuman animals come next, both wild animals and domesticated ones, as well as “creeping things” and birds. Allusions to Genesis 1 continue, though slightly out of order, since birds are included in the work of day five, while wild animals, domesticated cattle, and beasts that creep on the ground are the work of day six, along with humankind.
In verse 11, the poem shifts focus to the human realm, once again starting with those in power: “kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth.” It is not only the kings of Israel or Judah who are called to praise; rather, every king and every nation are called to praise the psalmist’s deity. The next verse is especially democratizing, naming women as well as men, young people as well as elders.
The universal language of Psalm 148 can feel totalizing when read from a postcolonial perspective. The history of colonization demonstrates how dangerous it can be to claim that one’s own God is, in fact, everyone’s God. Such claims, especially when made by the most powerful, often result in coerced conversions and the denigration of the religious traditions and cultural values of the colonized. This danger feels especially potent when considering the reasons for praise given in verses 13-14: that the name of Israel’s God is the only name to be exalted, and that this God “has raised up a horn” for one people in particular. In the Bible, horns are symbols of authority and power (Psalm 89:24; Psalm 132:17; Zechariah 1:18). For the modern interpreter, such confidence may appear to truncate the more inclusive vision of earlier verses.
It is helpful to remember that among this psalm’s earliest readers, hearers, performers, and reciters were not the citizens of the most powerful empires, let alone their rulers. Rather, the psalmist was a citizen of a small nation, conquered multiple times, often struggling to maintain its identity. Among those who prayed these words were those who had been forcibly migrated. Among those who recited this call to praise were those negotiating survival in hostile contexts. Among the pray-ers of the psalm were (and are) those asking urgent questions about how to be faithful to their own religious commitments in the midst of contexts which were foreign to them and, at times, exerting pressure toward assimilation.
When read with this in mind, Psalm 148 vibrates with postcolonial potential, and its expansive call to praise can be read as resistance to the imperial demand for total obedience. The psalm thus rings out across the generations as a challenge to all kings of the earth, be they from Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, or modern states who insist on the loyalty of their subjects above all other commitments. This psalm issues a resounding “no” to totalizing demands from political entities throughout time, insisting that devotion belongs only to the source and creator of all that exists, not to any temporary human political power. It would be nonsensical to demand that stars, mountains, trees, and cattle pledge their allegiance to a human ruler; in the same way, humans should be careful not to join their voices in praise to anyone less deserving than their creator.
For twenty-first century readers, the psalm’s ecological claims might offer the most salient challenges. It is significant to claim that human agency in praising God is not any more or less important than the agency of other-than-human, nonverbal members of the natural world. How would it change our priorities, both within religious communities and as groups of citizens working for change, if we conceptualized human concern and human suffering as inextricably interconnected with the concerns and sufferings of the cosmos? How would it shape our political commitments if we expanded our definition of “praise” to include existing in peaceable harmony with the ecosystems that sustain us? How would it embolden our own speech and action if we looked to the heavens and the earth – to their landscapes and starscapes as well as their nonhuman inhabitants – as not only our siblings and companions in praise, but as our forebears and models?
In the end, Psalm 148 does not single out any one king or ruler for either praise or censure. Instead, kings, rulers, and princes are addressed anonymously, in groups of their peers, just like the mountains, the stars, the cattle, the young, and the elders. Poetically, this results in a prayer of profound order and symmetry. Rhetorically, this relativizes the human desire for individualized acclaim and honor. Alone, humans cannot enter into praise of God in the fullest sense: not as individuals, and not as a human community severed from other creaturely and cosmic communities of praise.
