Week 22 Psalms 146-150
146 147 148 149 and 150 all have the same opening line: Praise the Lord.
Each time the expression is used my bible has a footnote that says “Praise the Lord” (in the Hebrew language) is Hallelu Yah. I looked up hallelujah in an English language dictionary and it said: praise the Lord.
Praise means approval. Affirmation. Commendation. Applause. If I go to a concert and it’s terrific I stand up and clap. I approve. I praise the performers.
When it comes to praising the Lord it seems like the same general idea applies. The Lord performs…and I can approve of the performance by Hallelujah-ing the Lord. If I wanted to I could stand. Shout. Applaud. Raise my hands in salute.
I did a quick re-reading exercise…scanning the psalms and counting-up things that the Lord did (what his praiseworthy actions were). There were quite a few of them. In 59-verses there were 41 actions the Lord could be commended for (for instance he determines the number of stars).
But in the process I also found something I wasn’t looking for: praiseworthy things that weren’t performance-related. They were praise-approvals of the Lord for what he was like…his qualities…his character-traits. I found 8-items describing what the Lord was like (for instance praise him for his surpassing greatness).
Anyway it was a pure numbers exercise. A follow-up idea might be to create two lists: a) the Lord’s actions and b) the Lord’s qualities.
Note: quotes from Psalms 145:21 147:4 150:2 (NIV)