Commentary - Psalm 33:1-3

Bird's-eye view

This psalm is an anonymous hymn of praise, a call to worship that grounds our joy in the objective reality of who God is and what He has done. It is a summons for the covenant people to respond to their God, and to do so in a particular way: with joy, with skill, with volume, and with newness. The psalm moves from the summons to worship (vv. 1-3) to the reasons for that worship, which are found in the character of God's Word and His work (vv. 4-9), His sovereign counsel over the nations (vv. 10-12), and His providential care for His people (vv. 13-22). The opening verses establish the foundation for everything that follows. Worship is not a grim duty, but a joyful response. It is not a sloppy, sentimental affair, but a skillful, robust offering. And it is not for everyone indiscriminately; it is the peculiar activity of the righteous, the upright, for whom praise is fitting and beautiful.

The logic is straightforward: God is the Creator and sovereign Lord, whose word is right and whose work is faithful. Therefore, those who are rightly related to Him, the righteous, are called to praise Him. This praise is to be vocal and instrumental, marked by excellence and exuberance. It is a "new song," which means it is a song born out of God's ever-new acts of salvation and deliverance in history, culminating in the great act of salvation in Jesus Christ. This is not praise rooted in our subjective feelings, but in the objective glory and goodness of God.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 33 follows directly after Psalm 32, which is a penitential psalm celebrating the profound blessing of forgiveness. The transition is significant. Having dealt with sin through confession and having received God's pardon (Ps 32:1-5), the forgiven man is now free to do what he was created to do: offer joyful praise. The man whose sin is covered is the very man who can now "sing for joy." This psalm, then, is the corporate expression of the joy that was described individually in Psalm 32. It broadens the focus from personal forgiveness to the universal sovereignty and creative power of God. It is a purely praise-focused psalm with no lament or petition. It stands as a great example of a hymn, a song of declarative praise that calls the whole community to celebrate the character and works of Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel.

Key Issues

The Grammar of Gladness

There is a right way to do things. There is a grammar to reality, and when we get it right, the result is beauty, or as the psalmist puts it, it is "becoming." When a righteous man praises God, it is like a well-formed sentence. It makes sense. It fits. It is appropriate to the nature of things. An unrighteous man praising God is a contradiction in terms, like a grammatical error. A righteous man who is silent is also a problem; it is an incomplete thought. This psalm begins by setting the grammar of gladness straight. The subject is the righteous. The verb is praise. The object is Yahweh. And the result is something beautiful, fitting, and comely. The modern church has often forgotten this grammar. We have tried to make praise fitting for the unrighteous, which results in sentimentalism. Or we have allowed the righteous to become mute, which results in dead orthodoxy. This psalm calls us back to the basic syntax of the Christian life: God is glorious, and therefore His upright people should joyfully say so, and do so with excellence.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Sing for joy in Yahweh, O righteous ones; Praise is becoming to the upright.

The psalm opens with a command, an imperative. Joy is not an optional extra for the Christian; it is a central duty. But notice the location of this joy: in Yahweh. Our joy is not to be found in our circumstances, our feelings, or our accomplishments, but in the Lord Himself. The ones commanded to do this are the righteous ones. This is not a call to the world at large, but to the covenant community. Who are the righteous? In the ultimate sense, they are those who have been declared righteous in Christ. They are those whose sins have been forgiven, as described in the previous psalm. Justification is the necessary prerequisite for worship. Then the psalmist gives the reason for this command: Praise is becoming to the upright. The word for "becoming" or "comely" means that it is fitting, appropriate, beautiful. When an upright man praises God, reality is lining up. It is as it should be. A crooked man offering praise is an ugly sight, a clanging cymbal. But for the one whose heart is straight with God, praise is the most beautiful and natural thing in the world. It adorns him.

2 Give thanks to Yahweh with the lyre; Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings.

The praise that is commanded is not a silent, internal affair. It is to be expressed audibly and musically. The psalmist specifies two instruments here, the lyre and the ten-stringed harp. This is a flat refutation of any kind of pietism that is suspicious of instruments in worship. God created the world with texture, with wood and gut and resonance, and He is pleased when we use those created things to make a joyful noise to Him. This is not just about making noise, however. These were instruments that required skill and practice. Worship is to be offered with our substance, with our craft. We are to give thanks, to confess His goodness, with the lyre. We are to sing praises, to make music to Him, with the harp. The physical act of playing an instrument is an act of worship, a submission of the body and the mind to the task of glorifying God.

3 Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a loud shout.

Here we have three further instructions on the manner of our worship. First, it is to be a new song. This does not mean we must discard all the old hymns. Rather, it means our praise must never become a stale, rote recitation. God's mercies are new every morning, and His acts of deliverance in the lives of His people are constant. The "new song" is the song of the redeemed, the song that can only be sung on this side of a fresh act of God's grace. Ultimately, the new song is the song of the new covenant, the song we sing because of the finished work of Christ. Second, we are to play skillfully. There is no virtue in sloppy, amateurish worship. Excellence in our music is a form of reverence. Whether you are a trained musician or a simple congregant singing in the pew, you are to offer God your best. Skill honors God; laziness does not. Third, it is to be done with a loud shout. The Hebrew word here is teruah, a battle cry, a shout of triumph. This is not the quiet, demure, "indoor voice" kind of worship that has characterized so much of the Western church. This is robust, full-throated, masculine joy. It is the sound of a victorious people celebrating their King. It is loud because our God is a great God and He has won a great victory.

Application

These first three verses are a potent corrective to much of what passes for worship in our day. First, they remind us that worship is for the righteous. The first order of business is not to make the unbeliever comfortable, but for the redeemed to offer fitting praise to their God. The front door to the worship service is repentance and faith. If you are not right with God through Christ, then your first act of worship is to cry out for mercy, not to sing songs of praise.

Second, this passage calls us to a worship that is objective. We sing for joy in Yahweh. Our praise is grounded in His character and His works, which the rest of the psalm goes on to describe. This protects us from the swamp of subjectivism, where worship becomes about manufacturing a certain kind of feeling. The feeling is the result of the truth, not the goal in itself.

Finally, this is a call to excellence and exuberance. We should take our music seriously. We should strive for skill. We should not be afraid of volume and passion. Our worship should sound like the celebration of a great victory, not the murmuring of a defeated people. We are to play skillfully and shout for joy because our God, the maker of heaven and earth, has made us His people and is our help and our shield. Let the upright, then, do what is becoming to them, and let them praise the Lord.