Psalm 98 belongs to a small cluster of psalms, 47, 93, and 95 through 99, built around one announcement, that the LORD reigns. Whatever setting it was first sung in, what the psalm gives us is a standing announcement, sung whenever the community gathers, that the LORD is king now and always has been.
The opening call is 1"Oh sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things!" Elsewhere in Scripture a new song follows a fresh act of God's saving power (Psalm 33; Psalm 40; Isaiah 42; Revelation 5). Something in particular has just happened. This psalm also sits right after Psalm 95, which ends with a generation warned and judged for its unbelief in the wilderness. The new song of Psalm 98, on the heels of that hard word, is praise from people who have reckoned honestly with how badly they and their ancestors failed, and who sing anyway because God's own righteousness secured the victory.
1"His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him." The image echoes the Song of Moses, "Your right hand, O LORD, glorious in power" (Exodus 15:6), and ties this psalm's vision of salvation back to the exodus. The salvation is his own doing. 3"He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God." What he did for one people has become visible to all of them.
From there the circle widens twice. First to all the earth, summoned with lyre, trumpet, and horn, instruments loud and public enough to lift a whole congregation and not simply to accompany quiet private devotion. 4"Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth." Then to creation itself. 7"Let the sea roar, and all that fills it." 8"Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together." The clapping is the gesture of applause for a king returning from battle, now given to the sea and the rivers. The sea claps, and it does not rule. Creation stands as the crowd at its king's return.
All of this widening praise, from Israel to the nations to the whole created order, is aimed at one coming event. 9"for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity." The rivers clap and the hills sing because judgment is coming, since a world still bent by sin cannot be put right any other way. Paul says something close to this centuries later, that creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption (Romans 8:21). Psalm 98 asks whether we trust God's judgment enough to sing about it in advance, as creation seems to.
Isaac Watts read this psalm and heard Christmas in it. His carol follows its structure closely, including nature's response to the coming King. Watts heard the first coming here, and his third verse, that Christ comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found, reaches past Bethlehem toward the judgment the psalm describes, the day the world is finally set right. The same new song that remembers what God has done in Christ is still, in this life, a song sung ahead of time, in hope, for what he has not yet finished.
Sing something new this week, and let it be a song of hope in the judgment that is coming.
Prayer
Father, you have done marvelous things, and your own arm has worked salvation. Let our praise widen as this psalm's does, from our own hearts to the nations and to the whole creation groaning for the day you set it right. Come and judge the earth with righteousness and the peoples with equity, and until that day, let us sing the new song creation is already singing, trusting your judgment as good news. In Jesus' name, amen.