Passage

Psalms 148.5

Book: Psalms · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

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Setting

• Speaker: the psalmist; the psalm carries no title or attribution and opens and closes with "Praise ye Jehovah" (Hallelujah)
• Audience: the whole created order, summoned in two movements: the heavens and their hosts (148:1-6), then the earth and its creatures, kings and peoples (148:7-14)
• Location: the worship of Israel; the psalm ends with "the children of Israel, a people near unto him" (148:14)
• Time period: undated; one of the five Hallelujah psalms (Psalms 146-150) that close the Psalter, which reached its final form after the exile

Theological reading

"Let them praise the name of Jehovah; For he commanded, and they were created." The verse closes the first half of the psalm. Angels, hosts, sun, moon, stars of light, the heavens of heavens and "the waters that are above the heavens" have each been told to praise (148:1-4). Verse 5 gives the reason.

Creation by command. The reason is two verbs: "he commanded" (Strong's H6680) "and they were created" (H1254, bara). In the Old Testament bara in its basic stem is used only with God as its subject; people make and form, but only God creates in this sense. Nothing stands between the command and the result: no material is named, no helper, no struggle. The same pattern runs through Genesis 1 ("And God said... and it was so") and Psalm 33: "By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made" (33:6), "For he spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast" (33:9). The verse is one of the texts behind the doctrine that God made the world by His word and will, without drawing on any pre-existing stuff (see Creatio ex Nihilo). The verse itself does not say "out of nothing"; it says the creatures exist because God spoke, which is the ground the doctrine builds on.

The stars are worshippers, not gods. The sun, moon and stars were worshipped across the ancient world, and Israel was warned "lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars... thou be drawn away and worship them" (Deuteronomy 4:19). The psalm turns them around: they are not to be praised, they are told to praise. A creature that owes its existence to a command is in the position of a servant.

A decree that holds. Verse 6 continues the thought: "He hath also established them for ever and ever: He hath made a decree which shall not pass away." The word for "decree" (H2706) is a statute or fixed ordinance, the word Jeremiah uses for "the ordinances of the moon and of the stars" (Jeremiah 31:35) and "the ordinances of heaven and earth" (Jeremiah 33:25). The order of the heavens is not self-sustaining; it is kept by a standing word. That is the contrast God Is the Eternal Atoms Objection Defeater draws on: the universe exists because God commanded it, and it continues because His decree stands, so it is neither eternal in itself nor divine.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

• H1254 - bara, bara, Strong's H1254
• H8034 - shem, shem, Strong's H8034
• H3068 - YHWH, YHWH, Strong's H3068

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

• God Is the Eternal Atoms Objection Defeater

Concepts:

• Big Bang

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

• ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
• WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
• KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
• YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.