The Praise of God, the Eternal Creator, Is Finished and Completed

The Praise of God, the Eternal Creator, Is Finished and Completed
Psalm 150

The heading I have given for this final psalm is the rabbis’ footnote to the Hebrew text of the Psalms. We have come a long way from Psalm 1, where we began with an exhortation to pay heed to Yahweh’s Teaching, and then with a promise to the king in Psalm 2. You could say that the second psalm from the end (Psalm 149) corresponds to the second psalm from the beginning in its assertions about nations being rebuked and kings being put down, but the very last psalm contrasts with the very first psalm. It also contrasts with the development of the book of Psalms after that opening: the first half of the book was dominated by prayer and protest, but praise is more prominent in the second half of the book, and its ending in Psalms 146– 150 simply comprises praise. The Hebrew title of the book of Psalms, Praises, is not very appropriate to the book as a whole, but it corresponds to where the book ends, where pain, abandonment, and disappointment have been forgotten—and it corresponds to where everything must end...