Psalm 100:2

Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

100:1-5 An exhortation to praise God, and rejoice in him. - This song of praise should be considered as a prophecy, and even used as a prayer, for the coming of that time when all people shall know that the Lord he is God, and shall become his worshippers, and the sheep of his pasture. Great encouragement is given us, in worshipping God, to do it cheerfully. If, when we strayed like wandering sheep, he has brought us again to his fold, we have indeed abundant cause to bless his name. The matter of praise, and the motives to it, are very important. Know ye what God is in himself, and what he is to you. Know it; consider and apply it, then you will be more close and constant, more inward and serious, in his worship. The covenant of grace set down in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, with so many rich promises, to strengthen the faith of every weak believer, makes the matter of God's praise and of his people's joys so sure, that how sad soever our spirits may be when we look to ourselves, yet we shall have reason to praise the Lord when we look to his goodness and mercy, and to what he has said in his word for our comfort.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Serve the Lord with gladness - That is, In your worship, and in all your acts of obedience. Let there be joy in this service. Let it not be with the fear of slaves; not as a matter of compulsion and force; not with reluctance, moroseness, or gloom. Let it be a cheerful, happy service; let it be freely rendered, let it be an occasion of joy to the soul. The service of God is a source of the highest joy that man knows.

Come before his presence with singing - As expressive of joy. So the birds sing; so nature rejoices; so should man - intelligent, redeemed, immortal man, be joyful.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

PSALM 100

Ps 100:1-5. As closing this series (see on [630]Ps 93:1), this Psalm is a general call on all the earth to render exalted praise to God, the creator, preserver, and benefactor of men.

1, 2. With thankful praise, unite service as the subjects of a king (Ps 2:11, 12).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Serve the Lord with gladness,.... Not with a slavish fear, under a spirit of bondage, as the Jews under the legal dispensation; not in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the Spirit: with spiritual joy and freedom of soul, as under the spirit of adoption; readily, willingly, cheerfully; without sinister and selfish ends and views; as their Lord and Master; taking delight in his person, and pleasure in his service; rejoicing in him, without having any confidence in the flesh:

come before his presence with singing; to the throne of his grace with thankfulness for mercies received, as well as to implore others; and into his house, and at his ordinances, beginning public worship with singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; see Psalm 95:2.

Geneva Study Bible

Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. Serve] The homage of worship takes the place of the homage of submission (Psalm 2:11); and now the nations can draw near with joy instead of fear.

singing] Cp. Psalm 95:1; Psalm 98:4.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - Serve the Lord with gladness. "Gladness" is the emphatic word. Almost every clause of the psalm contains some such call. Come before his presence with singing; or, with a cry of joy. Psalm 100:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The call in Psalm 100:1 sounds like Psalm 98:4; Psalm 66:1. כּל־הארץ are all lands, or rather all men belonging to the earth's population. The first verse, without any parallelism and in so far monostichic, is like the signal for a blowing of the trumpets. Instead of "serve Jahve with gladness (בּשׂמחה)," it is expressed in Psalm 2:11, "serve Jahve with fear (בּיראה)." Fear and joy do not exclude one another. Fear becomes the exalted Lord, and the holy gravity of His requirements; joy becomes the gracious Lord, and His blessed service. The summons to manifest this joy in a religious, festive manner springs up out of an all-hopeful, world-embracing love, and this love is the spontaneous result of living faith in the promise that all tribes of the earth shall be blessed in the seed of Abraham, and in the prophecies in which this promise is unfolded. דּעוּ (as in Psalm 4:4) Theodoret well interprets δι ̓ αὐτῶν μάθετε τῶν πραγμάτων. They are to know from facts of outward and inward experience that Jahve is God: He hath made us, and not we ourselves. Thus runs the Chethξb, which the lxx follows, αὐτὸς ἔποήσεν ἡμᾶς καὶ οὐχ ἡμεῖς (as also the Syriac and Vulgate); but Symmachus (like Rashi), contrary to all possibilities of language, renders αὐτὸς ἐποίησεν ἡμᾶς οὐκ ὄντας. Even the Midrash (Bereshith Rabba, ch. c. init.) finds in this confession the reverse of the arrogant words in the mouth of Pharaoh: "I myself have made myself" (Ezekiel 29:3). The Ker, on the other hand, reads לו,

(Note: According to the reckoning of the Masora, there are fifteen passages in the Old Testament in which לא is written and לו is read, viz., Exodus 21:8; Leviticus 11:21; Leviticus 25:30; 1 Samuel 2:3; 2 Samuel 16:18; 2 Kings 8:10; Isaiah 9:2; Isaiah 63:9; Psalm 100:3; Psalm 139:16; Job 13:15 cf. the note there, Psalm 41:4; Proverbs 19:7; Proverbs 26:2; Ezra 4:2. Because doubtful, Isaiah 49:5; 1 Chronicles 11:20 are not reckoned with these.)

which the Targum, Jerome, and Saadia follow and render: et ipsius nos sumus. Hengstenberg calls this Ker quite unsuitable and bad; and Hupfeld, on the other hand, calls the Chethb an "unspeakable insipidity." But in reality both readings accord with the context, and it is clear that they are both in harmony with Scripture. Many a one has drawn balsamic consolation from the words ipse fecit nos et non ipsi nos; e.g., Melancthon when disconsolately sorrowful over the body of his son in Dresden on the 12th July 1559. But in ipse fecit nos et ipsius nos sumus there is also a rich mine of comfort and of admonition, for the Creator of also the Owner, His heart clings to His creature, and the creature owes itself entirely to Him, without whom it would not have had a being, and would not continue in being. Since, however, the parallel passage, Psalm 95:7, favours ולו rather than ולא; since, further, ולא ,reh is the easier reading, inasmuch as הוּא leads one to expect that an antithesis will follow (Hitzig); and since the "His people and the sheep of His pasture" that follows is a more natural continuation of a preceding ולו אנחנו than that it should be attached as a predicative object to עשׂנוּ over a parenthetical ולא אנחנו: the Ker decidedly maintains the preference. In connection with both readings, עשׂה has a sense related to the history of redemption, as in 1 Samuel 12:6. Israel is Jahve's work (מעשׂה), Isaiah 29:23; Isaiah 60:21, cf. Deuteronomy 32:6, Deuteronomy 32:15, not merely as a people, but as the people of God, who were kept in view even in the calling of Abram.