This is a short, joyful psalm that keeps reaching for bigger and stranger instruments as it goes — harps, trumpets, and finally rivers themselves, imagined clapping their hands like an audience that simply cannot stay quiet any longer.
A study in Psalm 98 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
His Holy Arm Hath Gotten Him The Victory
“O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory.”
Psalm 98:1
“Gotten him the victory” suggests God accomplished this rescue without any human army or alliance actually contributing to it — His own hand and arm alone, the credit belonging nowhere else.
All The Ends Of The Earth Have Seen
“The LORD hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly shewed in the sight of the heathen. He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.”
Psalm 98:2-3
“Openly shewed” and “all the ends of the earth have seen” both insist on visibility — whatever God did for Israel specifically was never meant to stay a private, internal matter. Its intended audience was always wider than the people it directly benefited.
“Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the LORD, the King.”
Psalm 98:4-6
Three distinct instruments are named in three short verses — the psalm keeps piling up sound rather than settling for a single form of praise, as though one instrument alone could never really carry what this occasion actually calls for.
Let The Floods Clap Their Hands
“Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together.”
Psalm 98:7-8
Rivers do not literally have hands, and the psalm plainly knows that — this is deliberate, exuberant overreach, human instruments no longer sufficient, so the poem borrows a human gesture and hands it to the landscape itself.
“Before the LORD; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.”
Psalm 98:9
The same closing note found in Sing Unto The LORD A New Song returns here almost verbatim — joy and coming judgment named together again, as though this pairing were simply the standard, expected way these psalms of praise were meant to end.
