Psalm 33 - Praise from Upright is Beauteous

The heading, "through David a Song, a Psalm", comes from DSS. LXX has "through David". MT has no heading.

I love this psalm. My favorite part is the last 3 verses, culminating in a crying out prayer to the Lord.

This psalm is written entirely in the plural, especially vv 18-22.

v1 - The 1st 3 verses of this psalm tell us how it should be sung.

v2 - "His" is literally, "the LORD's".

v3 - It is not that the Lord cannot hear us, but that it is natural for great exultation to express itself in the loudest manner. Men shout at the sight of their kings: shall we offer no loud hosannahs to the Son of David? - C. H. Spurgeon

v4 - Verses 4-5 gives the reasons for singing this psalm in the way described in the 1st 3 verses. These 4 reasons are expounded on in the rest of the psalm:

because of the Lord's upright words (vv 6, 8-9)

because of His faithful works (vv 7, 10-12, 16-17, 20-21)

because He loves righteousness and judgment (vv 13-15)

because the earth is full of His mercy. (vv 18-19, 22)

His faithful works are expressed very well by the hymn, "Great is Thy Faithfulness". Stanza 2 of that hymn says:

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,

Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

We praise the Lord not just because He is all powerful, but mainly because we realize what kind of Person He is as seen by His word and works.

v5 - "His mercy" is literally "the LORD's mercy".

This psalm is about the Lord's righteous judgment and His mercy. It is wonderful that both of these go together.

v6 -"His breath" is literally "the breath of His mouth"

"stars" is literally "all their hosts."

v7 - "waters" is literally "waters of the sea".

Waters of the sea" and "the deep" are negative. The Lord gathered the waters together in Gen 1:9-10 in order to create the dry land. He keeps the deep in storehouses so that it does not flood the earth again.

v8- "world" is literally "inhabitants of the world".

v9 - This is an awesome reason to fear and stand in awe of the LORD and His word.

v10 - As in the ancient time, the popular thought of the age is against God's word and His people. The thought of the age will be prevailing for a time, but the Lord will bring it to nought. Those of us who live in countries where we have the right to vote should vote against such thought and counsels. God's people should be the salt of the earth.

As the Lord held back the waters of the sea from flooding the earth in v7, so he restrains the nations from accomplishing their thoughts.

v11 - "forever more" is literally "to generation and generation."

The Lord does not change His thoughts and counsels to go along with the current morality of the age. His word remains true.

He also helps His people as He did of old.

v12 - The Lord's choosing is forever unchangeable according to the previous verse.

v15 - I translated yachad literally as "together" as do YLT and the Stone Tanach. I think the meaning is that God created all human hearts to need one another. This goes along with the whole psalm being corporate.

LXX translates it as "alone". This could mean that LXX saw the Hebrew word yachid (an extra letter yod compared to yachad) instead of yachad. If yachid is the correct text, then the meaning would be that God created each heart individually. I don't think that is correct though because "their heart" is singular.

There is no DSS witness for this text.

v18 - This verse reminds us that the Lord is watching us to protect us and also that He sees everything that we do and think. We are important to Him. This continues the thought of the previous psalm (Ps 32:8).

This is also expressed so well in that great hymn, "Great is Thy Faithfulness":

Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;

v19 lit. to preserve their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.

v22 - I like that this prayer is not only dependent on God, but also according to our hope (Mat 9:29; etc).

9/28/2013 Steve Miller created