Holy Is He! – Psalm 99
Psalm 99
1 The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble!
He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
2 The Lord is great in Zion;
he is exalted over all the peoples.
3 Let them praise your great and awesome name!
Holy is he!
4 The King in his might loves justice.
You have established equity;
you have executed justice
and righteousness in Jacob.
5 Exalt the Lord our God;
worship at his footstool!
Holy is he!
6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
Samuel also was among those who called upon his name.
They called to the Lord, and he answered them.
7 In the pillar of the cloud he spoke to them;
they kept his testimonies
and the statute that he gave them.
8 O Lord our God, you answered them;
you were a forgiving God to them,
but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
9 Exalt the Lord our God,
and worship at his holy mountain;
for the Lord our God is holy!
NOTE: Today’s commentary is by Dr. Kevin Watson, who is coming to Tulsa to become the Director of Academic Growth and Formation at the Tulsa Extension Site for Asbury Theological Seminary, as well as joining our staff at Asbury Church as Scholar-in-Residence. I wrote a post announcing and explaining this move.-Andrew
Twice Psalm 99 declares: Holy is he! (v. 3 and 8)
Derek Kidner discusses the significance of God’s holiness:
Holy is a word to emphasize the distance between God and man: not only morally, as between the pure and the polluted, but in the realm of being, between the eternal and the creaturely. If the gulf has been bridged, as the paragraph above assures us that it has, it was done from the far side. The repeated cry, Holy is he! forbids us to take it casually.
The psalm ends:
Exalt the Lord our God,
and worship at his holy mountain;
for the Lord our God is holy!
Kidner again:
Holy is he! (3, 5), is not expanded and given warmth, to read (in its actual word-order) For holy is the Lord our God! The majesty is undiminished, but the last word is now given to intimacy. He is holy; he is also, against all our deserving, not ashamed to be called ours. Well may we worship.
What an indescribable gift that the Lord God almighty is our God!