Faithlife Study Bible (FSB) is your guide to the ancient world of the Old and New Testaments, with study notes and articles that draw from a wide range of academic research. FSB helps you learn how to think about interpretation methods and issues so that you can gain a deeper understanding of the text.
96:11-12 The psalmist describes personified creation as looking forward to Yahweh’s judgment, which will be right and fair. As Yahweh’s reign is fully established over everything in the way that it should be—with justice and equality (righteousness)—everything on heaven and earth that knows Yahweh will rejoice.
Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., Whitehead, M. M., Grigoni, M. R., & Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible (Ps 96:11–13). Lexham Press.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” “Thy word is a lamp to my feet.” “Search me, O God, and know my heart!” Such phrases leap to mind each time a Christian lifts his heart to God. For many, in fact, Psalms is the richest part of the Old Testament. Derek Kidner provides a fresh and penetrating guide to the Psalms.
96:10–13. The King’s coming
So the psalm moves to its climax.
If the cry, ‘The Lord reigns!’ was a message first of all to Israel (cf. 93:1, and comment) like that of the lone runner in Isaiah 52:7, here a host of messengers spreads it to the world. The decisiveness of the Hebrew verb and the exultant response in 11–13 point to a new and overwhelming assertion of sovereignty rather than a timeless theological truth. It announces God’s advent, the Day of the Lord. What it will mean to the world, to be established and never … moved (10), is best seen against the welter of raging nations and collapsing régimes depicted in e.g. 46:6. The first and last lines of verse 10 make it additionally clear that this is a prophecy of perfect government, not a pronouncement on—of all things!—the earth’s rotation, as an old controversy suggested. The disastrous freedom of the fall will be replaced by the only ‘perfect freedom’, which is serving God.
11ff. This ecstatic welcome had its human counterpart on Palm Sunday, with a hint, as well, that given half a chance ‘the very stones would cry out’. How much more the teeming seas, fields and forests. The belief of fallen man that righteousness, truth (i.e. dependability), the rule of justice, and the Lord himself are the enemies of joy, is scouted by this passage. Where God rules (it implies), his humblest creatures can be themselves; where God is, there is singing. At the creation. ‘the morning stars sang together’; at his coming, the earth will at last join in again; meanwhile the Psalter itself shows what effect his presence has on those who, even through a glass, darkly, already see his face.
Kidner, D. (1975). Psalms 73–150: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 16, pp. 381–382). InterVarsity Press.
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