Psalm 149 Hallelujah
1 Praise Yahweh! Sing to Yahweh a new song, and His praise in the assembly of saints. 2 Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; let the children of Zion be joyful in their King. 3 Let them praise His name with the dance; let them sing praises to Him with the timbrel and harp. 4 For Yahweh takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation. 5 Let the saints be joyful in glory; let them sing aloud on their beds. 6 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and and a two-edged sword in their hand, 7 to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; 8 to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; 9 to execute on them the written judgment— this honor have all His saints. Praise Yahweh!
“This psalm is allowed to be one of the most difficult in the Psalter; and the misunderstanding and abuse of it by the Catholic princes who brought on the Thirty Years War (F. Delitzsch), as well as abuses by the Protestant war-monger Thomas Munzer ‘who stirred up the peasants war,’ (ibid.) have resulted in rejection and even enmity against this psalm. The facts noted here, ‘Have encouraged a hostile attitude toward Psalms 149 as though anything said in its defense is reprehensible.’(H. C. Leupold).” (Coffman Commentary)
But “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.” (2 Cor 10:4) “The praying Christian must therefore transpose the letter of this Psalm into the spirit of the New Covenant.”(F. Delitzsch)
“‘Praise Yahweh! Sing to Yahweh a new song.’ Whoso loveth earthly things singeth an old song: let him that desireth to sing a new song love the things of eternity.” (Augustine)— ‘And His praise in the assembly of saints.’ (1) It is such a song as may be sung at the coming of the Lord, when the new dispensation shall bring overthrow to the wicked and honour to all the saints. The tone is exceedingly jubilant and exultant.” (C. H. Spurgeon) — “‘Let Israel rejoice in their Maker’— the Lord Jesus. “‘Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King’ — Jesus. (2) Such a King will not leave them subject to alien rule, but redeem them” (The Pulpit Commentary) upon taking the throne of David on the new earth. “’Let them praise His name with the dance;’ To praise God's name in the dance, as this Psalm expresseth it, carries with it somewhat solemn, grave, and full of devotion. Thus Miriam went forth to lead the Israelitish women in the dance, after the destruction of Pharaoh at the Red Sea; and the words of the song which accompanied that dancing most decidedly prove, that nothing of a wanton or trifling nature could mingle in that solemnity: Sing ye to the Lord (saith Miriam) for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea, Exodus 15:21.” (Robert Hawker) “Let them sing praises to Him with the timbrel and harp” (3)
“‘For Yahweh takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation.’ (4) Salvation “adds a lustre to the countenance. We only read of three in Scripture whose faces shone remarkably—i.e., Christ, Moses, and Stephen—and they were eminent for meekness.” (Matthew Henry) But as “lovely and glorious as are the saints on earth, their beauty falls far short of the perfection to which it will attain hereafter. They are ‘predestinated to be conformed to the image of the Son;’ and when they awake up in another world, it will be after His likeness, without any remaining blemish, defect, or spot. Carry forward your thoughts to the morning of the resurrection, when this corruption shall have put on incorruption, this mortal immortality; when the body, raised in honour and glory, shall be clothed in its beauteous apparel, and being made like unto Christ's glorious body, shall shine as the sun in the firmament; when now, once more united to its kindred and sanctified spirit, it shall no longer be a weight, and a clog, and a hindrance, but become a furtherer of its joy, and a sharer and a helper in its spiritual happiness." (Edward Cooper)
“'Let the saints be joyful in glory;' i.e. In their glorious estate by Christ, notwithstanding their present poverty. ‘Let the brother of low degree rejoice (or glory) in that he is exalted,’ James 1:9.” (Trapp)— “‘Let them sing aloud on their beds,’ (5) even on the bed of sickness and death… They sing aloud, in a state of perfect ease and security, resting from their labours, but not from their Hallelujahs.’ Bp. Horne.” (Thomas Scott) “Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, ‘Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?’ And I said to him, ‘Sir, you know.’ So he said to me, ‘These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’” (Revelation 7:13-17)
“When John saw the Lamb on Mount Zion, encircled with his royal redeemed army, and heard them sing this same new song; he tells us, that no man could learn that song, but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from the earth.” (Robert Hawker) “‘Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; — this honor have all His saints. Praise Yahweh!’ (6- 9) Count me in the number. In times prior, the two-edged sword of the Word of God would have been used by them to share the Good News, but here it is the basis of judgment of all flesh of which they now have a part.—“‘to execute on them the written judgment.’ “Here we are upon solid ground indeed. Israel did indeed execute the judgment that God had written against the kingdoms of Canaan (a type of the world) in this passage: 'When Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before thee, the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; and when Jehovah thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou shalt smite them; then thou shalt utterly destroy them: thou shalt make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them, neither make marriages with them, etc.’ (Deuteronomy 7:1-2).” (Burton Coffman)
“All Israel participated in the conquest, as for example, when they all marched around the walls of Jericho, and thus all of them shared in the honor God bestowed upon them in his removal of the pagan kingdoms of Canaan and giving the Promised Land to the Israelites as an inheritance.” (Burton Coffman) “The allusion is probably to Deuteronomy 32:41, 42, where God announces the judgments that He will execute upon the oppressors of His people. This honor have all his saints; rather, a glory is this to all His saints.” (The Pulpit Commentary) Praise Jesus for the victory!