What Does Psalms 147:1 Mean?

Psalm 147 opens with both the summons and the reason for praise: "Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting." The goodness and pleasantness of praising are the aesthetic arguments for the practice — praise is not a grim duty but a good and pleasant activity, appropriate to the one doing it and appropriate to the one being praised. The fitting (navah, beautiful, becoming, the right thing in the right place) is what genuinely good worship feels to those doing it: that the activity matches its object, that the praise is the right response to what is being praised, that the singing fits the singer's relationship to the one sung about.

The our-God is the covenant-specific address — not any deity but the God who is ours by covenant relationship. The praise is good partly because of the object: it is good to sing praises to our God rather than to idols whose mouths cannot respond or to princes whose breath departs. The goodness of the praise derives from the character of the one praised, which the rest of the psalm will elaborate.

Philippians 4:8 gives the New Covenant's beautiful-and-fitting-to-think-about list: "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." The it-is-good-and-pleasant-to-praise of Psalm 147:1 and the think-about-whatever-is-worthy-of-praise of Philippians 4:8 are the same orientation — praise directed toward what is actually praiseworthy is the fitting and pleasant activity that the psalm names and Philippians recommends. The God of Psalm 147 is all the categories of Philippians 4:8 combined: true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, worthy of praise.