Psalms 97

Between Psalms 97, 98 there is a marked resemblance in tone, imagery, and allusions, which indicates a common occasion and authorship. A great victory, of some sort, had been obtained over the heathen nations. Wonderful displays of God’s power and presence, of his majesty and supremacy, had been made. A military air pervades the whole, and the peaceful worship in the sanctuary, through the willing offerings of converted nations, with which Psalms 96:0 abounds, gives place to the sterner phase of war and the shouts of conquest. Yet here, as there, the triumph of Jehovah over the gods of the nations is hailed as the greatest blessing of the world, over which the subdued peoples themselves should rejoice. The advance now gained upon the heathen is accepted as a fulfilment of divine promise to his covenant people, and as a harbinger of that universal theocracy which was the theme of Psalms 96:0. Although no direct evidence of authorship or occasion is given, yet the style of David is sufficiently marked, and the period of his foreign wars and victories, which established his kingdom and extended his eastern border to the Euphrates, best suits the intimations and spirit of the psalm. See 2 Samuel 8:0, and 1 Chronicles 18:0. The Septuagint, followed by the Vulgate, inscribes the psalm “To David when his land is established,” or restored, ( καθισταται ,) which confirms the view here taken, and there is no internal or historic reason for setting aside the authority of the title. That the psalm accords with the later prophecies of Isaiah is no proof that it was borrowed from, and hence later than, that prophet; and that it contains phrases and modes of expression which appear elsewhere in the Davidic psalms is no evidence that it is a later compilation by another hand, for David often borrowed from, or repeated, himself. And as to the high evangelic and theocratic ideas it contains, neither the later prophecies of Isaiah, nor the postexilic times, ever reached a higher degree of perfection than in the Davidic period. More detail and amplitude there are in Isaiah, but not a loftier reach nor a more incisive diction, as the quotations of the New Testament clearly show. The freshness of the joy, and the strongly indicated outline of recent events, (Psalms 97:4-5; Psalms 97:8,) point to some real historic occasion, and preclude the supposition that it is the product of reflective meditation, prompted by a general survey of the providential history of the nation. If Psalms 96:0 belongs pre-eminently to the spiritual sphere, this does no less to the civic-spiritual, and both to the prophetic. In Psalms 96:0 God is represented specially as Saviour and Sovereign; in this more particularly as Lawgiver and Judge.