Enter with Thanksgiving

v. 1A shout before the King, from every land

The Authorised Version’s two words, joyful noise, translate one Hebrew verb, הָרִיעוּ, the plural imperative of רוּעַ. Its noun is תְּרוּעָה, and the pair have a narrow range: a great shout from a crowd, or the blast of a trumpet that stands in for one. It is the shout of an army — “all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat” (Josh. 6:5). It is the alarm on the silver trumpets when Israel goes to war (Num. 10:9). And above all it is the noise a people makes when its king appears. When Saul was presented at Mizpeh, “all the people shouted, and said, God save the king” (1 Sam. 10:24), and the verb is this one. Balaam, hired to curse Israel, could only report what he heard from the camp: “the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them” (Num. 23:21).

That is why the Psalter’s joyful noise is at home in its kingship psalms. “O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. For the LORD most high is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth” (Ps. 47:1–2). “With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King” (Ps. 98:6). Psalm 98:4 opens with the same three Hebrew words as our verse, הָרִיעוּ לַיהוָה כָּל־הָאָרֶץ; the Authorised Version renders them all the earth there and all ye lands here, but the Hebrew does not change. The joy in joyful noise is supplied by the context, and the context is a coronation. Volume is not the point in itself. The point is that the King is present and his people can see him.

Then the address, and it is as wide as the Hebrew can make it: כָּל־הָאָרֶץ, all the earth. The first people summoned in this psalm are not Israelites. Every land is told to raise Israel’s shout to Israel’s God — which is the promise to Abraham, “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3), set to music. The Psalter keeps saying it. “All nations shall serve him” (Ps. 72:11) — the same verb as our verse 2. “All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name” (Ps. 86:9), which is Psalm 100:1–4 in a single line: the nations, the making, the coming, the name. And Psalm 46, which shares this psalm’s most important verb, ends the same way: “I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10).

The New Testament shows the shout finding its King. Zechariah gave the daughter of Jerusalem this very verb — “shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee” (Zech. 9:9) — and Matthew says the promise was kept when Jesus rode in on the ass, and the crowds cried “Hosanna to the son of David” (Matt. 21:4–9). Then the shout spreads to the nations. Paul gathers the Old Testament’s summons to the Gentiles into one paragraph, “that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy”, and among his texts is “Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud him, all ye people” (Rom. 15:9–11, quoting Ps. 117:1). The mercy the Gentiles glorify him for is the חֶסֶד of our verse 5. And John, at the end, sees the psalm’s first line fulfilled: “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb … And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9–10). That is a joyful noise unto the LORD, from all lands, before the King.

The Confession states the change of horizon in a parenthesis: the visible church “is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation as before under the law)” (WCF 25.2). Psalm 100 had already begun to sing past that confinement. And notice what kind of sentence verse 1 is. It is a command, and commands can be refused; but it is issued by the King to whom the Father has said, “Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance” (Ps. 2:8), and who sent his disciples to “teach all nations” because “all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18–19). The command will be obeyed. That is why the Catechism teaches children to pray “that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it” (WSC 102), and why the Thanksgiving set opens with a missionary verse.

v. 2Serve with gladness; come with singing

עִבְדוּ is from עָבַד, the ordinary verb for work. Its noun עֶבֶד is a servant or a slave; another noun from it, עֲבוֹדָה, is labour in the field and also the service of the sanctuary. One root covers the work of a field-hand and the worship of the tabernacle. And the whole Exodus is an argument about this verb. “The Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour” (Ex. 1:13). God’s demand to Pharaoh uses it again and again: “Let my son go, that he may serve me” (Ex. 4:23); “Let my people go, that they may serve me” (Ex. 8:1). The sign given to Moses at the bush is that “ye shall serve God upon this mountain” (Ex. 3:12). Israel was never offered freedom from service. It was offered a different master. When Psalm 100 tells every land to serve the LORD, it is offering the nations what it offered Israel at the sea: a change of masters.

The manner is בְּשִׂמְחָה, with gladness, and Deuteronomy shows why the phrase is not decoration. Among the covenant curses is this one: “Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things” (Deut. 28:47–48). The Hebrew of the first clause is our verse in the negative: did not serve the LORD with gladness. And notice the occasion of the failure — for the abundance of all things. The sin Deuteronomy names is joyless service at a full table, which ought to give a Thanksgiving lesson pause. Joyless service of a good master tells a lie about the master. The gladness is commanded because the master deserves it, and verse 5 will give the reasons.

This does not set Psalm 100 against Psalm 2, which uses the same verb: “Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Ps. 2:11). Psalm 2 speaks to rebel kings and names the fear first; Psalm 100 speaks to people coming through the gates and names the gladness. Hebrews keeps both: “let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Heb. 12:28), a chapter before the sacrifice of praise (Heb. 13:15). The English metrical tradition felt the pull between the two psalms in this very line, and the section on the Old Hundredth shows where.

Then come before his presence — בֹּאוּ לְפָנָיו, literally come to his face. The verb is the one verse 4 will use for entering the gates. In Israel before his face meant the sanctuary, the one place on earth where the LORD had put his name, and Psalm 95:2 uses the same face and the same word from the title: “Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving.” (The Psalm 27 lesson follows the face through David’s “Thy face, LORD, will I seek”, Ps. 27:8.) The service commanded here is not done at a distance, and it is not done alone; the imperative is plural.

And the crowd comes בִּרְנָנָה, with a ringing cry. The noun is rare — it turns up a handful of times, at Job 3:7 and 20:5, and as “joyful lips” in Psalm 63:5 — but its root, רנן, is the Psalter’s ordinary word for a glad shout of song. Psalm 95 opens with both of this psalm’s sound-words in one line: “O come, let us sing (נְרַנְּנָה) unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise (נָרִיעָה) to the rock of our salvation” (Ps. 95:1). The approach to God is sung. Paul assumes the same of the church: “teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16). The Westminster Directory opens its chapter on the subject without qualification: “It is the duty of Christians to praise God publickly, by singing of psalms together in the congregation, and also privately in the family.”

Notice how much the psalm has required before anyone has been told to give thanks. Noise, work, gladness, approach, song. Thanksgiving in Psalm 100 is not the first thing a people does. It is what it carries through the gates once it is already moving.

v. 4Enter with thanksgiving

The second half opens with the verb of verse 2, בֹּאוּ, and now the destination has a plan: שְׁעָרָיו, his gates, and חֲצֵרֹתָיו, his courts. The courts were as far as an ordinary worshipper went; the house itself was for the priests. But the courts were not a lesser place to the man who loved them: “a day in thy courts is better than a thousand” (Ps. 84:10). Psalm 96 pairs the courts with the very thing this verse carries in: “bring an offering, and come into his courts” (Ps. 96:8).

What is carried is בְּתוֹדָה, the title’s word. It can be read with thanksgiving, the song, or with a thank-offering, the sacrifice of Leviticus 7, and the Hebrew does not ask us to choose: Jeremiah’s restored city brings the offering and sings the song together (Jer. 33:11). Nehemiah gives a picture of the verse in motion. At the dedication of the rebuilt wall he appointed two great processional choirs — the Hebrew calls them simply thanksgivings, תּוֹדֹת — which went round the wall in opposite directions and met in the house of God (Neh. 12:31, 40). That is Psalm 100:4 in motion: a crowd coming through the gates with something in its hands and something in its mouth.

Beside it, בִּתְהִלָּה, with praise. The word gives the Psalter its Hebrew name, Tehillim, praises; it is what the LORD inhabits — “O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel” (Ps. 22:3). And there is a small symmetry here worth pointing out. Psalm 100 is the only psalm whose title names it a תּוֹדָה. Psalm 145 is the only psalm whose title names it a תְּהִלָּה — “David’s Psalm of praise”. The November set opens with the one and closes with the other, and verse 4 puts the two words side by side: gates with תּוֹדָה, courts with תְּהִלָּה. The Psalm 145 lesson picks up where this verse leaves off.

Then the last two commands, and both are aimed at a person. הוֹדוּ־לוֹ, give thanks to him, is the verb behind the title’s noun. בָּרֲכוּ שְׁמוֹ, bless his name, is the same command as Psalm 96:2, “Sing unto the LORD, bless his name.” To bless God is not to give him anything he lacks; “without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better” (Heb. 7:7). When God blesses us he gives. When we bless him we say well of him — out loud, by name — and the name is the one that verse 3 has just identified as God. Paul’s letters open by blessing him in return for blessing: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). The Psalm 103 lesson takes that word and turns it inward.

Who may enter?

Psalm 100 throws the gates open to every land. Other psalms stand at the same gates and ask a harder question: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart” (Ps. 24:3–4). Psalm 100 does not cancel that question. It presupposes that it has been answered. Psalm 118 shows how: “Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the LORD: This gate of the LORD, into which the righteous shall enter” (Ps. 118:19–20). A few lines later it sings of “the stone which the builders refused” (118:22), and our Lord took that line for himself (Matt. 21:42). He is the gate of the LORD and the righteous one who goes through it, and he goes through it for others: “I am the door” (John 10:9). Hebrews draws the consequence: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Heb. 10:19–20).

So thanksgiving is not the price of admission. It is what a people carries in once it has been admitted. And the thank-offering has its New Testament form in the same letter: “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name” (Heb. 13:15). Every phrase of that verse belongs to Psalm 100:4: by him, the door; the sacrifice of praise, the תּוֹדָה; giving thanks to his name, verse 4b. Hosea had seen it coming: “Take with you words, and turn to the LORD: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips” (Hos. 14:2). The animal is gone. The thanks remains, and it is still an offering.

The courts of Psalm 100 were always meant for the nations: “mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people” (Isa. 56:7), as our Lord said while overturning the money-changers’ tables (Mark 11:15–17). And the gates of the last city stand open for the crowd verse 1 summoned: “they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it” (Rev. 21:26).

v. 5For the LORD is good

The commands stop. Verse 5 begins with כִּי, for, and says three things about God: he is good; his חֶסֶד is for ever; his אֱמוּנָה lasts from generation to generation. These are the grounds of the second half, as verse 3 was the ground of the first, and none of them depends on the year the congregation has had.

The first two clauses are among the most-sung lines in Israel’s worship, and the places where they were sung are worth a minute. David, appointing Levites “to thank and praise the LORD God of Israel” before the ark, gave them this line: “O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever” (1 Chr. 16:4, 34, 41). At the dedication of Solomon’s temple, when the singers and trumpeters lifted it up — “For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever” — “then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the LORD” (2 Chr. 5:13), and when fire fell on the sacrifice the people said it again (2 Chr. 7:3). When the foundation of the second temple was laid, “they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the LORD; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout” (Ezra 3:11) — and the shout there is תְּרוּעָה, verse 1’s word. Jeremiah promised it to the restored city along with the thank-offering (Jer. 33:11). The Psalter opens four psalms with it (Pss. 106:1; 107:1; 118:1; 136:1), and Psalm 136 makes the second half of it the refrain of every verse. Psalm 100:5 says it without the summons O give thanks, because verse 4 has just given the summons.

Good

טוֹב is the plainest word in the language for good, the word of the first chapter of the Bible: “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). Here it is said not of what God made but of God. “O taste and see that the LORD is good” (Ps. 34:8), and Peter writes to new Christians as people who “have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Pet. 2:3). “Thou art good, and doest good” (Ps. 119:68). Our Lord would not let the word be used lightly: “there is none good but one, that is, God” (Mark 10:18).

The Westminster Confession begins its chapter on worship from exactly this point, and the order is the order of Psalm 100. The light of nature shows “that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all, is good, and doth good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the might” (WCF 21.1). Lordship and goodness first; therefore the praise and the service. Verse 3 and verse 5 come before verse 2 and verse 4 in the logic, even though the psalm puts them after.

Mercy, for ever

חַסְדּוֹ, his mercy, is the covenant word: loyal, active, binding love, the love that keeps its promises. The Authorised Version translates it most often as mercy, and also as lovingkindness, kindness and goodness. It stands in the name God proclaimed to Moses, “abundant in goodness (חֶסֶד) and truth” (Ex. 34:6), and the word of Deuteronomy’s “keepeth covenant and mercy” (Deut. 7:9). It is לְעוֹלָם, for ever: a word of duration. The love does not lapse. Jeremiah, sitting in the ruins of Jerusalem, says it as plainly as anyone has: “It is of the LORD‘s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not” (Lam. 3:22). In Hebrew the first word of that verse is this one.

Truth, to all generations

אֱמוּנָתוֹ, AV his truth, is his faithfulness: the noun of אמן, the root that gives us amen. It is the quality of a thing you can lean on that does not give way. Moses sang of “a God of truth (אֵל אֱמוּנָה) and without iniquity” (Deut. 32:4). Jeremiah, one verse after the line above: “They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lam. 3:23). And Psalm 89 opens with the last two clauses of our verse in a single line: “I will sing of the mercies (חַסְדֵי) of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness (אֱמוּנָתְךָ) to all generations” (Ps. 89:1). The New Testament leans its whole weight here: “God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son” (1 Cor. 1:9); “If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13).

עַד־דֹּר וָדֹר, to generation and generation, is the reach of the name itself. At the bush God said, “this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Ex. 3:15), and verse 4 has just told us to bless that name. The psalm’s horizon is now complete. Verse 1 reached across space to every land; verse 5 reaches across time to every generation. The faithfulness that held for the people at the gates will hold for their great-grandchildren, which is why the Psalter keeps telling parents to hand it on: “shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD” (Ps. 78:4); “One generation shall praise thy works to another” (Ps. 145:4).

This is why the nations can be summoned in verse 1 and the gates opened in verse 4. The one who calls is good, his covenant love does not lapse, and what he has promised he will keep for as long as there are generations to keep it for.