603_Praise on our lips and a sword in our hands (Psalm 149) Psalm 149 Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly! 2 Let Israel be glad in his Maker; let the children of Zion rejoice in their King! 3 Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre! 4 For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation. 5 Let the godly exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their beds. 6 Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, 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 judgment written! This is honor for all his godly ones. Praise the Lord! There is a well-known story about a group of prisoners of war who were marched every morning to forced labour. Each day, they trudged along the same dusty path, shoulders bent, hope almost extinguished. One morning, one of them began to hum a tune—softly at first, almost imperceptibly. Soon another joined, then another, until the entire group was singing. Nothing in their external situation had changed. They were still prisoners, still weak, still under threat. But something powerful had shifted within them. Later, one of the guards remarked with confusion, “They sing like free men.” That is the mystery of praise. Praise does not deny the battle; it declares who reigns in the midst of it. Psalm 149 belongs to the final cluster of psalms that begin and end with “Hallelujah.” These are songs that lift our eyes from the dust of earth to the throne of heaven. As we step into the fourth of these Hallelujah psalms, the call is unmistakable: “Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly.” This invitation is not merely to sing, but to sing anew. The psalmist is not asking God’s people to chase novelty for its own sake, as though worship depends on fresh lyrics or unfamiliar tunes. A new song, in the biblical sense, is born out of a fresh encounter with God. It is the overflow of a renewed experience of His faithfulness, His mercy, His intervention. Throughout Scripture, songs are often written after God has acted—after deliverance, after restoration, after revelation. They carry the weight of lived experience. That is why they have power not only for the singer but for the community that hears them. When God’s people sing in the assembly, they are not merely expressing personal emotion; they are testifying. They are telling one another, “This is what the Lord has done for me, and He can do it for you too.” The psalmist’s words echo the truth we see in Psalm 84, where those whose strength is in the Lord pass through the Valley of Baca—the valley of tears—and make it a place of springs. The image is striking. They do not
