Psalms 89: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The psalm begins by praising the LORD's faithful love and the sworn promise he made to David that his family line and throne would last for all generations, then praises God's power over the sea, the world, and the heavenly beings. God's own words are quoted at length: if David's descendants break his laws he will punish them, but he will not take back his covenant or his faithful love. The second half turns to a king who has been defeated, his crown thrown to the ground and his walls broken down, and the psalmist asks how long God will hide himself and where the old promises to David have gone. The psalm closes with a single line of blessing.

Claim by Claim

1. 89:1
   • The speaker will sing of the LORD's steadfast love forever.
   • The speaker will make known God's faithfulness with his mouth to all generations.
2. 89:2
   • The speaker has said the following.
   • Steadfast love is built up forever.
   • God establishes his faithfulness in the heavens.
3. 89:3
   • God says he has made a covenant with his chosen one.
   • God says he has sworn an oath to David.
   • David is God's servant.
4. 89:4
   • God says he will establish David's offspring forever.
   • God says he will build up David's throne for all generations.
5. 89:5
   • The heavens praise the LORD's wonders.
   • The LORD's faithfulness is praised in the assembly of the holy ones.
6. 89:6
   • It is asked who in the skies can be compared to the LORD.
   • It is asked who among the divine beings is like the LORD.
7. 89:7
   • God is greatly feared in the council of the holy ones.
   • God is held in awe by all who are around him.
8. 89:8
   • God is addressed as the LORD God of hosts.
   • It is asked who is mighty like the LORD.
   • God's faithfulness surrounds him.
9. 89:9
   • God rules the raging of the sea.
   • When the sea's waves rise, God stills them.
10. 89:10
    • God crushed Rahab like one slain.
    • God scattered his enemies with his strong arm.
11. 89:11
    • The heavens belong to God.
    • The earth belongs to God.
    • God founded the world and everything in it.
12. 89:12
    • God created the north and the south.
    • Tabor and Hermon rejoice in God's name.
13. 89:13
    • God has a mighty arm.
    • God's hand is strong.
    • God's right hand is lifted high.
14. 89:14
    • Righteousness and justice are the foundation of God's throne.
    • Steadfast love and faithfulness go before God's face.
15. 89:15
    • The people who know the joyful shout are blessed.
    • They walk in the light of the LORD's countenance.
16. 89:16
    • They rejoice in God's name all the day.
    • They are exalted in God's righteousness.
17. 89:17
    • God is the glory of their strength.
    • By God's favor our horn is exalted.
18. 89:18
    • Our shield belongs to the LORD.
    • Our king belongs to the Holy One of Israel.
19. 89:19
    • God once spoke in a vision to his faithful one.
    • God said he had bestowed help upon a mighty man.
    • God said he had exalted one chosen out of the people.
20. 89:20
    • God says he has found David his servant.
    • God says he has anointed David with his holy oil.
21. 89:21
    • God says his hand will be steady with David.
    • God says his arm will strengthen David.
22. 89:22
    • The enemy will not exact tribute from him.
    • The son of wickedness will not afflict him.
23. 89:23
    • God will beat down his foes before his face.
    • God will strike down those who hate him.
24. 89:24
    • God's faithfulness and steadfast love will be with him.
    • His horn will be exalted in God's name.
25. 89:25
    • God will set his hand on the sea.
    • God will set his right hand on the rivers.
26. 89:26
    • He will cry out to God.
    • He will say that God is his father.
    • He will say that God is his God.
    • He will say that God is the rock of his salvation.
27. 89:27
    • God will make him his firstborn.
    • God will make him higher than the kings of the earth.
28. 89:28
    • God will keep his steadfast love for him forever.
    • God's covenant will stand fast with him.
29. 89:29
    • God will make his offspring endure forever.
    • God will make his throne endure like the days of heaven.
30. 89:30
    • The condition is set that his children forsake God's law.
    • The condition is set that they do not walk in God's judgments.
31. 89:31
    • The condition is set that they break God's statutes.
    • The condition is set that they do not keep God's commandments.
32. 89:32
    • In that case God will punish their transgression with the rod.
    • In that case God will punish their iniquity with stripes.
33. 89:33
    • God will not utterly take his steadfast love from him.
    • God will not be false to his faithfulness.
34. 89:34
    • God will not break his covenant.
    • God will not alter what has gone out of his lips.
35. 89:35
    • God has sworn once by his holiness.
    • God will not lie to David.
36. 89:36
    • David's offspring will endure forever.
    • David's throne will endure like the sun before God.
37. 89:37
    • It will be established forever like the moon.
    • It will be like a faithful witness in the sky.
38. 89:38
    • God has cast off and rejected.
    • God has been angry with his anointed.
39. 89:39
    • God has renounced the covenant with his servant.
    • God has profaned his crown to the ground.
40. 89:40
    • God has broken down all his walls.
    • God has brought his strongholds to ruin.
41. 89:41
    • All who pass by the way plunder him.
    • He has become a reproach to his neighbors.
42. 89:42
    • God has raised the right hand of his adversaries.
    • God has made all his enemies rejoice.
43. 89:43
    • God has turned back the edge of his sword.
    • God has not made him stand in the battle.
44. 89:44
    • God has made his splendor cease.
    • God has cast his throne down to the ground.
45. 89:45
    • God has shortened the days of his youth.
    • God has covered him with shame.
46. 89:46
    • It is asked how long this will last, addressed to the LORD.
    • It is asked whether God will hide himself forever.
    • It is asked whether God's wrath will burn like fire.
47. 89:47
    • God is asked to remember how short the speaker's lifetime is.
    • It is asked why God created all men for futility.
48. 89:48
    • It is asked what man can live and not see death.
    • It is asked whether a man can deliver his soul from the hand of Sheol.
49. 89:49
    • The Lord is asked where his former acts of steadfast love are.
    • God swore those acts of steadfast love to David in his faithfulness.
50. 89:50
    • The Lord is asked to remember the reproach of his servants.
    • The speaker bears in his bosom the reproach of many peoples.
51. 89:51
    • God's enemies have hurled that reproach.
    • They have reproached the footsteps of God's anointed.
52. 89:52
    • The LORD is blessed forevermore.
    • The word Amen is said twice.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

89:1

"LORD" in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants often written Yahweh; Jewish readers did not pronounce it, saying "the Lord" instead, and English Bibles keep that custom by printing the title in capitals. The word behind "faithful love" is *hesed*, meaning loyalty and generosity owed inside a binding relationship, closer to "sworn commitment" than to warm feeling.

89:3

A covenant was a formal, binding agreement sealed by an oath, the same instrument used between kings and their subject rulers. The agreement referred to here is the promise made to David that his descendants would rule permanently, reported in 2 Samuel 7.

89:4

"Selah" appears seventy-one times in the Psalms and nobody now knows what it meant. It is probably a direction to the musicians (a pause, a louder passage, or a change of instrument), rather than a word to be read aloud.

89:5

"Saints" in 1611 English simply meant "holy ones" and carried none of the later sense of canonized human beings. Here, as in verse 7, it refers to the heavenly beings gathered around God.

89:6

"Sons of the mighty" translates a Hebrew phrase literally meaning "sons of gods", a standard idiom for members of a class, so "divine beings" rather than offspring. Israel's poets pictured God presiding over a court of such beings, much as surrounding peoples pictured their high god, but the point being made is that none of them are comparable to him.

89:8

"LORD of hosts" is a military title: the hosts are massed armies, understood as the heavenly ranks under God's command.

89:9

In the poetry of Israel and its neighbors, the sea stands for untamed, hostile chaos. Mastering it is the standard image for a god establishing order over the world.

89:10

Rahab here is not the woman of Joshua 2. It is the name of a monster of the sea in ancient Near Eastern poetry, and elsewhere in the Bible a mocking nickname for Egypt. Either sense fits: a defeated chaos-beast, or the power crushed at the Exodus.

89:12

Tabor is a rounded hill west of the Jordan; Hermon is the snow-capped mountain range at Israel's northern edge. Naming two well-known landmarks is a way of saying that the whole visible land joins in.

89:13

The right hand was the sword hand and the place of honor, so "right hand" throughout this psalm means effective power, not a body part.

89:14

Poetic picture of a royal court: justice and fairness are the platform the king's throne stands on, and faithful love and truth are the attendants who walk ahead of him in procession.

89:15

"The joyful sound" is a technical term, *teruah*, the ringing shout and ram's-horn blast raised at festivals and at the appearing of a king. To "know" it means to belong to the people who have the right to make it. "The light of your face" is court language for a ruler's favorable attention; a turned-away face meant disfavour.

89:17

The horn is the horn of a bull or ram, the animal's weapon and its display of strength. "Lifting the horn" was the ordinary Hebrew image for giving someone power and standing; lowering or cutting it off meant humiliation.

89:18

"Shield" was a common title for a king, the man who covered his people in battle. The Hebrew line can be read either as "our shield belongs to the LORD" or as "the LORD is our shield"; both readings are old, and the sense of the pairing with the second half is that Israel's king is held by God.

89:19

The vision is the prophecy delivered to David through the prophet Nathan (2 Samuel 7). Hebrew manuscripts differ over whether the words were spoken to "your faithful one" (the prophet, or David) or "your faithful ones" (the people), and translations divide accordingly.

89:20

Pouring perfumed oil on a man's head was the public ceremony that installed him in office, king or priest. The oil was reserved for sacred use, which is why it is called holy. The Hebrew word for a man so treated is *mashiach*, "anointed one," the source of the English word Messiah; in this psalm it means the reigning king of David's line.

89:22

The picture is of a defeated ruler forced to hand over tribute, regular payments extracted by a stronger king. The promise is that David's line will never be reduced to that position.

89:25

"The sea" and "the rivers" describe the outer limits of the promised territory, from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates. The same two words are also the names of the chaos powers defeated in older Near Eastern poetry, so the line carries a second sound of mastery over hostile forces.

89:26

"Rock" was a standard word for a place of refuge (a crag a fugitive could not be dislodged from), rather than a comment on hardness or reliability.

89:27

In the ancient world the firstborn son held first rank in the family and received the largest share. Kings across the region were formally adopted as a god's son at their coronation; "firstborn" here is that legal language of rank, placing this king above all other kings, and not a statement about birth order.

89:32

The rod is the stick a father used on a son, and "stripes" are the marks left by blows. The image is deliberately domestic: correction inside a family, not the destruction of an enemy.

89:35

An oath was sworn by something greater than the person swearing, which could not be put at risk lightly. God is pictured as having nothing greater to swear by, so he stakes his own holiness, the last possible guarantee.

89:37

Sun and moon were the fixed public timekeepers, visible to everyone and reliably returning. "A faithful witness in the sky" most likely describes the moon itself as the standing witness to the promise, though the Hebrew allows it to name a separate witness in heaven.

89:38

"Your anointed" is the same word as in verse 20, the king installed with oil. From here to verse 45 the psalm turns from quoting the promise to describing the disaster that seems to contradict it.

89:39

The word for crown is the consecrated headband placed on a king at his installation, an object treated as holy. Throwing it in the dust is the deliberate reversal of that ceremony.

89:40

The image is a vineyard or a walled town: first the boundary walls come down, then the fortified strongholds. Once the walls are gone, anyone walking past can help themselves, hence the looting in the next verse.

89:41

Once the walls were broken, anyone walking past could come in. There was nothing left to stop them taking things.

89:43

The Hebrew says the "rock" of his sword was turned back, the flint-hard cutting edge. The sword no longer bites.

89:45

This means the king grew tired and weak far too soon. His strong young years did not last.

89:47

This verse is difficult in Hebrew and translations differ over whether the speaker is asking why God made humanity so fleeting, or protesting that human life has been made pointless. Both readings are represented in standard versions.

89:48

"The grave" translates *Sheol*, the underworld where the Hebrew Bible pictures all the dead going, good and bad alike, a place of shadowy inactivity rather than reward or punishment.

89:50

Carrying something "in the bosom" means carrying it in the fold of the robe above the belt, where a person kept what they had to bear about with them. The second half of the line is obscure in Hebrew; it may mean the taunts of many peoples, or the burden of all those peoples in one's heart.

89:51

"The footsteps of your anointed" means each move the king makes as he goes, every step is jeered at. Some ancient readers instead took the phrase to mean the delayed footsteps of the promised king, that is, mockery at how long he takes to arrive.

89:52

This line is not part of the poem. The book of Psalms is divided into five collections, and a short blessing like this one marks the end of each; here it closes the third collection, Psalms 73–89. "Amen" is a Hebrew word meaning "it is firm" or "let it stand," said by a congregation to endorse what has just been spoken.