Shout to the Lord
Let the sea resound, and all that fills it, the world, and all who dwell in it. Psalm 98:7 · Berean Standard Bible
The ocean itself, with everything living in it, should join in the celebration—imagine creation roaring its approval.
Here's where it gets imaginative and beautiful. The writer moves beyond humans to the whole created world. It's poetic language, yes, but it expresses something real: creation exists because of God and responds to His greatness, whether literally or in the writer's vision of how things should be.
The psalmist, using vivid imagery to expand the scope of praise.
This echoes creation itself—God made the seas and everything in them, and they display His glory. You see this theme again in Romans when Paul says creation itself groans, waiting for redemption. All creation is bound up in God's story.
The sea and all its creatures are called to resound in celebration, along with the inhabited earth and all its inhabitants.
The shift to animate creation marks a dramatic theological move. 'Let the sea resound' (יְרַנֵּן הַיָּם, yerannen hayam)—the sea itself becomes a praising subject, not mere setting. In ancient Near Eastern cosmology, the sea represented primordial chaos (תְהוֹם, tehom), yet here it is conscripted into ordered, joyful response. 'All that fills it' (וּמְלֹאוֹ, umelao) encompasses marine life—not sentient in human terms, yet theologically integrated into praise. The parallelism extends to 'world' (תֵּבֵל, tevel—the inhabited world) and 'all who dwell in it' (יוֹשְׁבֵי בָהּ, yoshvei bah), moving from non-human to human creation. Medieval commentators (Rashi, Ibn Ezra) sometimes allegorized these verses; moderns recognize them as hyperbolic liturgical language expressing creation's dependence on God.
The psalmist, now employing the rhetorical mode of apostrophe, directly addresses natural phenomena as capable of responding to God.
This reflects the Psalter's consistent theme that creation is not morally neutral but participates in the divine economy. Job 38-41 similarly invites Job to recognize creation's independent creaturely response to God. Psalm 19 opens by declaring 'The heavens declare the glory of God.' This cosmic participation reaches its New Testament apogee in Colossians 1:15-20, where Christ reconciles 'all things, whether on earth or in heaven' through His redemptive work.
5Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, in melodious song with the harp.
6With trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn shout for joy before the LORD, the King.
7Let the sea resound, and all that fills it, the world, and all who dwell in it.
8Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy
9before the LORD, for He comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.
Read all of Psalm 98 — Rivers clap their hands, mountains sing together. All creation celebrates a salvation the whole world will see.
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