About the Psalm
This psalm begins with "Praise", ends with "Praise", and sandwiches the two ends of "Praise". The psalmist has way too much to praise God about, than to complain about, to God or anyone else.
The occasion for such endless praise is not a common thing that happens to anyone of us. We seem to go from one negative thing to deal with to another headache and then another trouble that we need to respond to but which is none of our doing. But, this psalm makes me think we often forget good moments when God answers our prayers and meets our needs.
We might also think that, back then, with much less gadget and mod con, stuffs will be way worse than we are now; attractive as it is to think it that way, they won’t know what the miss or missed or "will miss" since they didn’t know what they didn’t know. There is a sense of over-thinking going on in this case. The matter in this psalm is there are plenty to thank God for.
It says the created nature praise God; they praise him for being who they are, e.g., twinkling stars, and vapours serving their purpose rising above the clouds.
Psalm 148: About the music
I turned the essence of the psalm the other way around when I decided the title, by asking "Who Will Praise the Lord?"
- Firstly, we might think there is too much bother to deal with, we can leave the praising to the natural world, while we concentrate on our troubles we face and moan we feel like doing.
- Secondly, while God is to be praise, the rhetorical title "Who Will Praise the Lord?" is back-handedly saying we should praise the Lord.
Everything else praises God, what holds us back and we are part of God’s reation? What makes us think we should be something other than God’s wonderful and perfect creation?
As for the music; I want this to bear a slightly unusual setting for singing. The materials in fact support a two-part writing where repeating the melody for the second set of lyrics over a new melody for the same lyrics, therefore harmonising the two parts. I went further by repeating the second melody in the third section. The structure is:
Section A
Voice 1: Melody 1 only
Section B
Voice 1: Melody 2
Voice 2: Melody 1
Section C
Voice 1: harmony notes
Voice 2: Melody 2
Chorus
Constrating materials
There weren’t that many notes or rhythms to be adjusted to fit the words for sections A to C. Maintaining the lyrics from the psalm means, as usual, some wordsmight not fit as well as re-writing them; but Psalms It Up wants to retain the "original" lyrics as best as possible (bearing in mind English translations) except where minor changes are done when it is a good idea.
To aid singing, the melodies are colour coded in the score.
Psalm 148: A paraphrase
Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord – the edges of creation do that.
Praise the Lord – the dominions of creation do that.
Praise the Lord – the life-enriching agents do that.
Praise the Lord – the moderating agents do that.
All creature praise God because they exist, incredibly, only by God’s saying so.
God’s creation comes of universal laws from his word, the world works and runs on its own.
Praise the Lord – from the ground and deep seas.
The elements of weather obey God.
Also the mountains, forest that sustain lives for all animals.
All human beings of vast power and control, to newly born and the rest of us running the mill.
Ready? We all praise God.
He is beyond good, he is more than what "good" and "great" means.
Why, his glory goes beyong what we feel and can understand, to the edges of the universe!
But God is near, he has ensured that the human brings he created have all that they need.
In turn the humans achieve great things that God honour them, especially the people of Israel, his chosen example to other nations.
Yes, we are ready. We praise the Lord!
