Psalms 99–101: Knowing & Praising God

Christian Life, Compassion, God, Grace, Hope, Joy, Love, Mercy, Read the Bible in 2023Leave a comment

Read the Bible in 2023 ◊ Week 34: Wednesday

Yahweh reigns, let the peoples tremble;
He sits enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth quake!
Yahweh is great in Zion,
And He is exalted above all the peoples.
Let them praise Your great and awesome name;
Holy is He.
Psalm 99:1–3 LSB
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Wednesday’s Bible reading is Psalms 99–101. These are psalms of praise and thanksgiving. As I read them, I thought these were written by men who knew God, they understood:

He is just and righteous:

The strength of the King loves justice;
You have established equity;
You have done justice and righteousness in Jacob.
Psalm 99:4 LSB
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He hears His people and is forgiving and holy:

O Yahweh our God, You answered them;
You were a forgiving God to them,
And yet an avenger of their evil deeds.
Psalm 99:8 LSB
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He is a sovereign Creator and shepherd:

Know that Yahweh, He is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Psalm 100:3 LSB
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He is good and His lovingkindness and faithfulness endure forever:

For Yahweh is good;
His lovingkindness endures forever
And His faithfulness, generation unto generation.
Psalm 100:5 LSB
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Consider David’s response to God:

I will sing of lovingkindness and justice,
To You, O Yahweh, I will sing praises.
I will consider the way of the blameless.
When will You come to me?
I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart.
Psalm 101:1–2 LSB
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I was reminded of these words from Jeremiah after reading these psalms:

Thus says Yahweh, “Let not a wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast in his might; let not a rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am Yahweh who shows lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares Yahweh.
Jeremiah 9:23–24 LSB
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Although this passage from Jeremiah is a rebuke to those who boast of their own devices,1 they shine in a chapter that speaks of the coming judgment of God upon Judah. R. K. Harrison comments:

“Under such conditions of crisis the only rest which the wise can know is in the mercy (ḥeseḏ [lovingkindness]) and righteousness of God.”2

Knowing Him enables us to praise Him during all of our times, even in our conditions of crisis, even in those times. Not that we do not weep and know sorrow and grief, but as we grow in our understanding and knowledge of God, we learn to Know that Yahweh, He is God and to offer to Him our praise.

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For a brief overview of the structure and poetry of Psalms see my post, The Five Books of Psalms.
Silvesterzug Laterne: Bk muc. (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Kinnor: via Katapi Bible Resource Pages. Katapi Bible Resource cites the photo from the Haifa Music Museum in Israel. (Katapi links are broken). The same photo is, Picture Archive of the Bible, Caroline Masom, Pat Alexander, eds., Archeological Notes by Alan Millard, (Lion Publishing Corporation, Hertz, England, Batavia IL, Sutherland, Australia: 1987) 59. My copy of the first edition doesn’t have this information.
1John Calvin, “Jeremiah 9:23–24,” Commentary on Jeremiah and Lamentations, vol. 1. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom17.xix.xxv.html Retrieved 24 August 2011.
2R. K. Harrison, Jeremiah & Lamentations (Inter-Varsity Press, London: 1973) 92.

I’m using Michael Coley’s Bible reading plan (one page PDF to print) to read through the Bible in 2023. Each day my posts are on different books because he divides Bible readings into seven categories, one for each day of the week: Epistles, The Law, History, Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy and Gospels. There’s more information on his plan and other ones at Read the Bible in 2023.

Copyright ©2011–2023 Iwana Carpenter

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