The last five psalms of the Psalter each begin and end with the same word, "Hallelujah," two Hebrew words fused into one breath, halal, praise, and Yah, the shortened name of the LORD. After a hundred and forty-five psalms of lament, petition, and argument, the book stops arguing. Psalm 148 is where the sound gets biggest. It summons the whole created order, first the heavens, 3"Praise him, sun and moon," and then the earth, sea creatures and stormy wind, mountains and cedars, wild animals and cattle, kings and children, until every category of creature the psalmist can name has a line in the song. He cannot bear to leave anything out.
Most of what the list names cannot speak. The mountains praise by being mountains, and the cedars by being cedars, and the stormy wind 8"fulfilling his word" does what it was told. Creation praises its Maker wordlessly, simply by being what it is, to the full. That is a startling thing for a poem to claim. It means a cedar, a whale, and a star are already doing what the psalm asks.
The creatures in the list that can put the praise into words are the ones easiest to leave silent. The rest of the choir displays what we can say aloud. That is the small, specific dignity underneath Psalm 148's long roll call. We are the ones who can tell the mountains what they are for.
Psalm 149 draws the circle in, on purpose, to the church's own gathered life. 2"Let Israel be glad in his Maker," with dancing and tambourine and lyre, in the assembly of the godly. Praise here is something a gathered people does together, out loud. Paul later says that singing God's praise together is part of how the church is built up, the word of Christ dwelling richly in a people through the songs they sing to one another (Colossians 3:16).
Then Psalm 150, the last word of the whole book, drops every remaining argument and simply calls for everything, trumpet, lute, harp, tambourine, strings, pipe, and cymbals, and finally the command for everything that has breath to praise the LORD. The Hebrew word for breath is the word Genesis uses for what God breathed into the man he formed from dust, the breath that turned dust into a living soul. The last command of the Psalter reaches back to the first gift of Genesis. The breath keeping you alive right now was given, in the end, for this.
The book earns the right to end in unqualified praise only because it passed through a hundred and forty-five psalms that did not flinch from grief. Praise that skips that honesty is not yet the praise this book is teaching. And read after the resurrection, this vision is a preview. Revelation shows the same scene enlarged, every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth ascribing worth to the Lamb who was slain and has redeemed people from every tribe. He gathers the cedar's wordless praise and the child's spoken praise into one song that does not end.
Go outside today and look at one created thing. It has been praising its Maker the whole time without a word, and you are the one who can say why.
Prayer
Father, everything you made praises you by being what you made it to be, the mountains and the cedars and the wind that does your word. Thank you that you gave us words to say it aloud. Forgive the praise we have kept silent, and the praise that skipped honest lament. Let the breath still in us be reason enough to say hallelujah. In the name of the Lamb who was slain, amen.