Psalm 96:2

Note

Psalm 96 calls the whole earth to sing a new song. Three times it says "sing," and then the song turns into news. Read in the Greek Old Testament, the command in this verse is the very verb the New Testament uses for preaching the gospel.

The psalm opens, "Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth" (Psalm 96:1). In this verse the singing becomes blessing and announcing, and the next verse carries it outward: "Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples" (Psalm 96:3). The reason is a confession about the gods: "For all the gods of the nations are idols, but it is the LORD who made the heavens" (Psalm 96:5). The psalm even sums up the message to be carried in one line: "Declare among the nations: “The LORD reigns!”" (Psalm 96:10). And it ends with heaven, earth, sea and trees rejoicing, "for He is coming— He is coming to judge the earth" (Psalm 96:13). The same psalm appears, almost word for word, in the song David gave the Levites on the day the ark came into Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 16:23).

"Proclaim" is basar (בָּשַׂר), a piel imperative in the masculine plural, baseru, and its object is "His salvation," yeshuato. The noun yeshuah comes from the verb yasha, to save, and the Hebrew name of Jesus, Yeshua (a form of Joshua), grows from the same root. The angel's words to Joseph turn on it: "you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). "Day after day" is in Hebrew ‘from day to day.’

The Septuagint renders the line εὐαγγελίζεσθε ἡμέραν ἐξ ἡμέρας τὸ σωτήριον αὐτοῦ, ‘announce the good news of His salvation from day to day.’ Here euangelizomai stands as a command laid on the whole earth. When the apostles went out to the nations with the gospel, they were doing what this psalm had long ago told all the earth to do.

The English versions hardly differ here: the BSB and the LSV say "proclaim His salvation," the KJV "shew forth his salvation from day to day," as in the same song in Chronicles. The Korean ones differ more. The 흠정역 has 전할지어다 here as in Chronicles; the 개역한글 uses an older word, 선파할지어다, ‘spread it abroad,’ though in the same song in Chronicles it chose 선포할지어다. One translation giving one Hebrew verb two Korean words in one song shows that no single word holds all of basar.

Wesley reads the psalm's occasion boldly: "Upon this new and great occasion, not the removal of the ark, but the coming of the Messiah" Wesley. He knows Chronicles sets the same song on the day the ark came home, and still hears in the "new song" something greater. Matthew Henry agrees: when Christ had been received into glory, "His apostles and evangelists showed forth his salvation among the heathen, his wonders among all people" Matthew Henry.

In this psalm the news of salvation ends as the news of a King coming to judge. Yet before His coming the fields do not tremble; "all the trees of the forest will sing for joy" (Psalm 96:12). It is good news to the whole earth that the One who comes "will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness" (Psalm 96:13). That is the news this psalm asks to be told every day.