Psalm 148:8

Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(8) Fire.—Lightning, as in Psalm 18:12; Psalm 105:32. where it is also found with “hail.”

Vapours.—The same Hebrew word in Genesis 19:28 and Psalm 119:83 is rendered “smoke,” and from the use of the cognate verb is certainly connected with “burning.” Hence we probably have here the figure chiasmus (fire and hail, snow and smoke), the smoke answering to the fire, as the snow to the hail. On the other hand, from Psalm 18:8, Psa_144:5, it is plain that the driving mists of a storm were regarded as smoke. (Comp. “The smoky mountain tops.”—TENNYSON.)

This invocation of the powers of the air is a fine poetic touch, and shows the freedom of lyric treatment of the story of Creation, which in Genesis passes at once from the monsters of the deep to the land and its creatures. To the poet there is another region of life and power; other voices, which, though wild and fierce, may yet join in the grand anthem of praise.

Stormy wind.—As in Psalm 107:25. This, to us, free and uncontrollable agent is yet but a messenger of Jehovah, fulfilling his word (Psalm 104:4).

Benson Commentary

Psalm 148:8. Fire — Lightning, thunderbolts, fiery meteors, in which God shows his wonderful power, lighting up those powerful flames, even in cold regions, which are far removed from subterraneous fires. And the noise and stupendous effects of these fires, and especially of thunder and lightning, are such, that they have been justly termed, the voice of God, and the arrows of the almighty. Hail, snow, and vapour — It is really wonderful, that from the same places where the hot lightnings flash, and from whence the thunderbolts are thrown, hail and snow should also descend: nor could this possibly happen, but by the power and wisdom of that Being that can effect every thing. The word קישׂיר, here rendered vapour, signifies fumes, or hot exhalations, as cold exhalations are comprehended under the title of snow; and both of them, arising from the earth, are here fitly mentioned as belonging to it. Stormy wind — Which is of very great use in vehemently agitating the air, and thereby keeping it from stagnating and becoming unwholesome. But the expression, סערה

רוח, ought, perhaps, rather to be rendered whirlwind, a wind which moves in a spiral direction, as well as horizontally, and is exceedingly rapid and impetuous: see on Job 37:9. This also wonderfully displays the power of God. Fulfilling his word — Going forth as so many messengers to execute his commands and effect his purposes, either of mercy for the comfort, or of judgment for the punishment of the inhabitants of the earth. And they all praise and glorify God after their manner, while they accomplish his pleasure.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

148:7-14 Even in this world, dark and bad as it is, God is praised. The powers of nature, be they ever so strong, so stormy, do what God appoints them, and no more. Those that rebel against God's word, show themselves to be more violent than even the stormy winds, yet they fulfil it. View the surface of the earth, mountains and all hills; from the barren tops of some, and the fruitful tops of others, we may fetch matter for praise. And assuredly creatures which have the powers of reason, ought to employ themselves in praising God. Let all manner of persons praise God. Those of every rank, high and low. Let us show that we are his saints by praising his name continually. He is not only our Creator, but our Redeemer; who made us a people near unto him. We may by the Horn of his people understand Christ, whom God has exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour, who is indeed the defence and the praise of all his saints, and will be so for ever. In redemption, that unspeakable glory is displayed, which forms the source of all our hopes and joys. May the Lord pardon us, and teach our hearts to love him more and praise him better.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Fire, and hail - Fire, when accompanied by hail; that is, the lightning. See Psalm 18:12.

Snow, and vapors - Snow and clouds. It was not unnatural that these should be combined, or suggested together to the mind.

Stormy wind - The storm; the tempest.

Fulfilling his word - Obeying his command; accomplishing his purpose. Let the storm-wind, which seems to be so little under any control, speak his praise by showing how obedient it is to his will, and how exactly it carries out his designs. Its perfect submission to his laws - the exactness with which, though apparently so fierce, raging, and lawless, it carries out his plans, and pauses when he commands it - is in fact an act of praise or homage, as it proclaims his majesty, his supremacy, and his power. On the sentiment here expressed, compare Psalm 107:29, note; Psalm 89:9, note.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

8. fulfilling his word—or, law, may be understood of each. Next the most distinguished productions of the vegetable world.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Fire; lightnings and other fire-works of the air.

Vapours, or fumes; hot exhalations, as the word properly signifies, as cold exhalations are comprehended under the title of snow. And both of them, arising from the earth, are here fitly mentioned as belonging to it.

Fulfilling his word; executing his commands, either for the comfort and refreshment, or for the punishment, of the inhabitants of the earth.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Fire, and hail,.... These, and what follow in this verse, are in the air, but are what are exhaled or drawn up from the earth or water; "fire" is lightning, which is very swift in its motion, and powerful in its effects; this is the fire which consumed Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain; which in Elijah's time came down and destroyed the captains and their fifties; and which attended the Lord's appearance on Mount Sinai; when "the voice of his thunder was in the heaven, the lightnings lightened the world, and the earth trembled and shook", Psalm 77:18; and by which the power, majesty, and glory of God are greatly displayed; see Psalm 29:3; "hail", which is water frozen in the air and congealed; this was one of the plagues of Egypt; and with hailstones many of the Canaanites were slain in the times of Joshua; and by these God has shown his power, and has got himself praise from his people by destroying their enemies, though they have blasphemed his name on account of them, as they will when the great hailstorm of all shall fall, Revelation 16:21;

snow, and vapour; the former is a gift of God, and very beneficial to the earth, and the cause of praise and thankfulness to God; See Gill on Psalm 147:16; the word (f) for "vapour" signifies smoke, and is what rises out of the earth like smoke, as Kimchi and Ben Melech observe; and is hot and dry, and forms lightnings and winds, and has its place among things that occasion praise;

stormy wind fulfilling his word; which is raised up by a word of his command; he creates it, brings it out of his treasures, holds it in his lists, and lets it go out at his pleasure to fulfil his will; either, as at some times in a way of mercy, as to dry up the waters of the flood, to make a way for Israel through the Red sea, to bring quails to them in the wilderness, and rain to the land of Israel in Ahab's time; and sometimes in a way of judgment, to drown Pharaoh and his host in the Red sea, to break the ships of Tarshish, to fetch Jonah the disobedient prophet back, and to distress him afterwards; see Psalm 107:25; to do all this is an argument of divine power, and a proof of deity, as it is of our Lord's, Matthew 8:27. The Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, and Arabic versions, read it in the plural number, "which do his word"; referring it not to the stormy wind only, but to fire and hail, snow and vapour; but the Hebrew text restrains it to the stormy wind.

(f) "vapor seu fumus", Piscator, Muis, Gejerus.

Geneva Study Bible

{f} Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:

(f) Which come not by chance or fortune, but by God's appointed ordinance.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

8. Fire, and hail] Lightning and hail are naturally coupled, as hail most commonly falls in thunderstorms. Cp. Psalm 18:12 ff.

vapour] The word elsewhere means smoke (Genesis 19:28; Psalm 119:83); but must here mean the mists, which drift like smoke over the mountains.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 8. - Fire and hail. By "fire," in this combination, we must understand "lightning," or rather the various electrical phenomena accompanying storms in the East, which are sometimes very strange and terrible. Snow and vapors; rather, vapor. The mist so often accompanying snowstorms is probably the "vapor" intended. Stormy wind fulfilling his word (comp. Psalm 107:25). Psalm 148:8

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The call to the praise of Jahve is now turned, in the second group of verses, to the earth and everything belonging to it in the widest extent. Here too מן־הארץ, like מן־השּׁמים, Psalm 148:1, is intended of the place whence the praise is to resound, and not according to Psalm 10:18 of earthly beings. The call is addressed in the first instance to the sea-monsters or dragons (Psalm 74:13), i.e., as Pindar (Nem. iii. 23f.) expresses it, θῆρας ἐν πελάγεΐ ὑπερο'χους, and to the surging mass of waters (תּהמות) above and within the earth. Then to four phenomena of nature, coming down from heaven and ascending heavenwards, which are so arranged in Psalm 148:8, after the model of the chiasmus (crosswise position), that fire and smoke (קטור), more especially of the mountains (Exodus 19:18), hail and snow stand in reciprocal relation; and to the storm-wind (רוּח סערה, an appositional construction, as in Psalm 107:25), which, beside a seeming freeness and untractableness, performs God's word. What is said of this last applies also to the fire, etc.; all these phenomena of nature are messengers and servants of God, Psalm 104:4, cf. Psalm 103:20. When the poet wishes that they all may join in concert with the rest of the creatures to the praise of God, he excepts the fact that they frequently become destructive powers executing judicial punishment, and only has before his mind their (more especially to the inhabitant of Palestine, to whom the opportunity of seeing hail, snow, and ice was more rare than with us, imposing) grandeur and their relatedness to the whole of creation, which is destined to glorify God and to be itself glorified. He next passes over to the mountains towering towards the skies and to all the heights of earth; to the fruit-trees, and to the cedars, the kings among the trees of the forest; to the wild beasts, which are called חחיּה because they represent the most active and powerful life in the animal world, and to all quadrupeds, which, more particularly the four-footed domestic animals, are called בּהמה; to the creeping things (רמשׂ) which cleave to the ground as they move along; and to the birds, which are named with the descriptive epithet winged (צפּור כּנף as in Deuteronomy 4:17, cf. Genesis 7:14; Ezekiel 39:17, instead of עוף כּנף, Genesis 1:21). And just as the call in Psalm 103 finds its centre of gravity, so to speak, at last in the soul of man, so here it is addressed finally to humanity, and that, because mankind lives in nations and is comprehended under the law of a state commonwealth, in the first instance to its heads: the kings of the earth, i.e., those who rule over the earth by countries, to the princes and all who have the administration of justice and are possessed of supreme power on the earth, then to men of both sexes and of every age.

All the beings mentioned from Psalm 148:1 onwards are to praise the Name of Jahve; for His Name, He (the God of this Name) alone (Isaiah 2:11; Psalm 72:18) is נשׂגּב, so high that no name reaches up to Him, not even from afar; His glory (His glorious self-attestation) extends over earth and heaven (vid., Psalm 8:2). כּי, without our being able and obliged to decide which, introduces the matter and the ground of the praise; and the fact that the desire of the poet comprehends in יהללוּ all the beings mentioned is seen from his saying "earth and heaven," as he glances back from the nearer things mentioned to those mentioned farther off (cf. Genesis 2:4). In Psalm 148:14 the statement of the object and of the ground of the praise is continued. The motive from which the call to all creatures to Hallelujah proceeds, viz., the new mercy which God has shown towards His people, is also the final ground of the Hallelujah which is to sound forth; for the church of God on earth is the central-point of the universe, the aim of the history of the world, and the glorifying of this church is the turning-point for the transformation of the world. It is not to be rendered: He hath exalted the horn of His people, any more than in Psalm 132:17 : I will make the horn of David to shoot forth. The horn in both instances is one such as the person named does not already possess, but which is given him (different from Psalm 89:18, Psalm 89:25; Psalm 92:11, and frequently). The Israel of the Exile had lost its horn, i.e., its comeliness and its defensive and offensive power. God has now given it a horn again, and that a high one, i.e., has helped Israel to attain again an independence among the nations that commands respect. In Psalm 132, where the horn is an object of the promise, we might directly understand by it the Branch (Zemach). Here, where the poet speaks out of his own present age, this is at least not the meaning which he associates with the words. What now follows is an apposition to ויּרם קרן לעמּו: He has raised up a horn for His people - praise (we say: to the praise of; cf. the New Testament εἰς ἔπαινον) to all His saints, the children of Israel, the people who stand near Him. Others, as Hengstenberg, take תּהלּה as a second object, but we cannot say הרים תּהלּה. Israel is called עם קרבו, the people of His near equals of His nearness or vicinity (Kster), as Jerusalem is called in Ecclesiastes 8:10 מקום קדושׁ instead of קדשׁ מקום (Ew. 287, a, b). It might also be said, according to Leviticus 10:3, עם קרביו, the nation of those who are near to Him (as the Targum renders it). In both instances עם is the governing noun, as, too, surely גּבר is in גּבר עמיתי ni, Zechariah 13:7, which need not signify, by going back to the abstract primary signification of עמית, a man of my near fellowship, but can also signify a man of my neighbour, i.e., my nearest man, according to Ew. loc. cit. (cf. above on Psalm 145:10). As a rule, the principal form of עם is pointed עם; and it is all the more unnecessary, with Olshausen and Hupfeld, to take the construction as adjectival for עם קרוב לו. It might, with Hitzig after Aben-Ezra, be more readily regarded as appositional (to a people, His near, i.e., standing near to Him). We have here an example of the genitival subordination, which is very extensive in Hebrew, instead of an appositional co-ordination: populo propinqui sui, in connection with which propinqui may be referred back to propinquum equals propinquitas, but also to propinquus (literally: a people of the kind of one that is near to Him). Thus is Israel styled in Deuteronomy 4:7. In the consciousness of the dignity which lies in this name, the nation of the God of the history of salvation comes forward in this Psalm as the leader (choragus) of all creatures, and strikes up a Hallelujah that is to be followed by heaven and earth.