Bible Commentaries

Greeting to Him Who Is Become Known in Righteousness and Salvation

This is the only Psalm which is inscribed מזמור without furtheraddition, whence it is called in B. Aboda Zara, 24b, מזמורא יתומא (theorphan Psalm). The Peshîto Syriac inscribes it De redemtione populi ex Aegyptothe “new song,” however, is not the song of Moses, but thecounterpart of this, cf. Revelation 15:3. There “the Lord reigneth”resounded for the first time, at the sea; here the completion of thebeginning there commenced is sung, viz., the final glory of the divinekingdom, which through judgment breaks through to its full reality. Thebeginning and end are taken from Psalm 96:1-13. Almost all that lies between istaken from the second part of Isaiah. This book of consolation for theexiles is become as it were a Castalian spring for the religious lyric.

Psalm 98:1 we have already read in Psalm 96:1. What follows in Psalm 98:1 is taken from Isaiah 52:10; Isaiah 63:5, cf. Psalm 98:7, Psalm 59:16, cf. Psalm 40:10. The primarypassage, Isaiah 52:10, shows that the Athnach of Psalm 98:2 is correctly placed. לעיני is the opposite of hearsay (cf. Arab. (l-(l) -(‛yn), from one'sown observation, opp. Arab. (l-(l) -(chbr), from the narrative of anotherperson). The dative לבית ישראל depends upon ויּזכּר, according to Psalm 106:45, cf. Luke 1:54.

The call in Psalm 98:4 demands some joyful manifestation of the mouth, whichcan be done in many ways; in Psalm 98:5 the union of song and the music ofstringed instruments, as of the Levites; and in Psalm 98:6 the sound of windinstruments, as of the priests. On Psalm 98:4 cf. Isaiah 44:23; Isaiah 49:13; Isaiah 52:9, togetherwith Isaiah 14:7 (inasmuch as פּצחוּ ורננוּ is equivalent to פּצחוּ רנּה). קול זמרה is found also in Isaiah 51:3.

Here, too, it is all an echo of the earlier language of Psalms and prophets:Psalm 98:7 = Psalm 96:11; Psalm 98:7 like Psalm 24:1; Psalm 98:8 after Isaiah 55:12 (where we find מחא כּף instead of the otherwise customary תּקע כּף, Psalm 47:2; or הכּה כּף, 2 Kings 11:12, is said ofthe trees of the field); Psalm 98:9 - Psalm 96:13, cf. Psalm 36:10 In the bringing in of nature toparticipate in the joy of mankind, the clapping rivers (נהרות) are original to this Psalm: the rivers cast up high waves, which flow intoone another like clapping hands;

(Note: Luther renders: “the water-floods exult” (frohlocken); and Eychman's Vocabularius predicantium explains plaudereby “to exult (frohlocken) for joy, to smite the hands together prae gaudiocf. Luther's version of Ezekiel 21:17.)

cf. Habakkuk 3:10, where the abyss of the sea lifts up its hands on high, i.e.,causes its waves to run mountain-high.