1 Praise Yah! Praise God in his sanctuary! Praise him in his heavens for his acts of power!
2 Praise him for his mighty acts! Praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Free Grace note
Where, why, and how much. The last psalm is all imperative. Thirteen times in six verses it says praise him. Verse 1 answers where: in his sanctuary on earth and in the expanse of his heavens, which is to say, everywhere worship happens, below and above, one choir. Verse 2 answers why, and gives two grounds that belong together: his mighty acts, what God has done, and his excellent greatness, who God is. Mature worship needs both. If we praise only His acts, worship goes silent in the seasons when we cannot trace His hand. If we praise only His greatness in the abstract, worship floats free of history and grows cold. The psalmist welds them: the God of the exodus and the return from exile is the God whose greatness stands whether or not we have seen a miracle this year. Praise Him for what He did; praise Him for who He is. The second will carry you when the first feels far away.
3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet! Praise him with harp and lyre!
4 Praise him with tambourine and dancing! Praise him with stringed instruments and flute!
5 Praise him with loud cymbals! Praise him with resounding cymbals!
6 Let everything that has breath praise Yah! Praise Yah!
Free Grace note
Every instrument, every breath. Verses 3 to 5 answer how: trumpet, harp and lyre, tambourine and dancing, strings and flute, and cymbals twice, loud ones and resounding ones. That is essentially the whole orchestra of ancient Israel, priestly instruments and folk instruments together, the temple and the village street in one band. Worship here is not restrained; it is full-bodied, skilled and unskilled, formal and festive at once. Then the final line answers who: let everything that has breath praise Yah. It is the perfect last word for the Psalter. One hundred and fifty psalms have wrestled through lament, guilt, doubt, enemies, sickness, and long silence, and the book does not end with an answer to every question. It ends with a summons to praise. The qualification is stripped to one thing: breath. If you are breathing, the invitation includes you, and the very breath you use to sing is His moment-by-moment gift. The story of the Psalms is that praise is where all the roads finally lead.
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