Psalm Chapter 98

Psalm 98: The Victory Already Won

"O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done marvellous things." Notice the tense. Not "he will do" but "he hath done." The victory this psalm celebrates is not anticipated but accomplished — the right hand and the holy arm have already gotten the win. And yet the song is new. This is one of the great paradoxes of praise: we sing new songs about old mercies because the soul, rightly awake, discovers that no mercy is ever truly old. The psalmist, overwhelmed by this, summons every instrument he can think of — harp, trumpets, cornet — and then, still unsatisfied, conscripts nature itself. The sea roars. The floods clap their hands. The hills are joyful together. One gets the feeling that the whole material world has been waiting for permission to join in, and this psalm finally gives it. Creation, it turns out, has always known how to worship. It is we who keep forgetting.

00:00 A New Song for Marvellous Things
01:00 The Floods Clap Their Hands