Today’s Passage: Psalm 150
These six verses are the last psalm in the book, and they come to us like a closing chord. In turn they tell us where to praise God, and why to praise Him, and with what to praise Him, and then they open onto the widest line in all the Psalter: everything that has breath. The place this psalm holds at the very end of the book is worth noticing, but the placement is not the meal. The psalm itself is the meal. Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
As you read, hold this: Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Context The book's last word
The last five psalms all open and close on the same word, Hallelujah, and this is the last of them. No author is named here, and no crisis is named either. The book simply ends the way it named itself at the beginning, as tehillim, praises.
Psalm 150:1-2 (BSB)
¹ Hallelujah! Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him in His mighty heavens. ² Praise Him for His mighty acts; praise Him for His excellent greatness.
The psalm calls for praise in two places at once: the sanctuary, where people gather, and the mighty heavens, where no one can follow. Near and far are held in a single breath. Then come two reasons as total as the places themselves, what He has done and who He is. This is not thanks for one rescue from last week but praise for the whole sweep of it, His mighty acts and His excellent greatness together.
Psalm 150:3-5 (BSB)
³ Praise Him with the sound of the horn; praise Him with the harp and lyre. ⁴ Praise Him with tambourine and dancing; praise Him with strings and flute. ⁵ Praise Him with clashing cymbals; praise Him with resounding cymbals.
Word study The list is the point
Horn and harp and lyre, tambourine and dancing, strings and flute, and two kinds of cymbals: this is a full inventory of the sounds Israel had. The point is not a liturgy to be copied note for note. The point is totality. Nothing that can make a sound is left off to the side.
Psalm 150:6 (BSB)
⁶ Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Hallelujah!
Study notes "Breath" — neshāmāh (Psalm 150:6)
Hebrew: נְשָׁמָה (neshāmāh), pronounced neh-shah-MAH. Strong’s H5397.
The same word Genesis uses when God breathes into the man He formed from dust.
"Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being." Genesis 2:7 (BSB)
The book’s last command reaches all the way back to that first breath. Everything that is still breathing the gift is now told to spend it on praise. First the instruments were named, and now breath itself is named, so that whatever lives is called to join in. The last word of the whole book is Hallelujah.
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.