What Does Psalms 150:1 Mean?

Psalm 150 is the Psalter's grand finale — thirteen verses of unbroken summons to praise, the resolution toward which all 150 psalms have been moving. The opening locates the praise at its theological address: "Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens!" The sanctuary (qodsho, his holy place — the temple, or the heavenly dwelling) and the mighty heavens (raqia uzzo, the expanse of his strength — the visible sky that witnesses the divine power) are the two locations of the praise-call. Temple and sky together: earth's worship space and the universal arena. The praise of verse 1 has both an earthly address (the sanctuary where the community gathers) and a universal one (the heavens that Psalm 148:1 already called to praise).

The Hallelujah that opens the verse is the same Hallelujah that opened Psalms 146-149 — but arriving here at the end of the Psalter it carries the full weight of everything that came before. The Psalter that began with Psalm 1's blessed-is-the-man and the meditation on Torah arrives finally at nothing but Hallelu-Yah — praise the LORD is the distillation of everything the blessed life amounts to. The one who meditates on the Torah day and night (Ps 1:2) arrives through all the laments and the imprecations and the kingship psalms and the creation psalms to this: Hallelujah. Here. Now. Again.

Revelation 19:1-6 gives the eschatological Hallelu-Yah: "After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, 'Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God'..." The praise-God-in-his-sanctuary of Psalm 150:1 and the Hallelujah-of-the-great-multitude of Revelation 19:1 are the same word — the Hebrew Hallelujah appearing in the Greek New Testament text of Revelation 19 because the Revelation's worship is the continuation of the Psalter's worship, the same community, the same praise, in the sanctuary that is finally the throne room itself.