Psalms
Psalms 100
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3 commentators · 8 notes on this chapter
Matthew Henry1
Writes as a pastor rather than a critic. Expect devotional and practical application over historical or linguistic analysis, read through a Reformed covenantal frame — and expect the Old Testament to be read forward toward Christ throughout.
Why this voice is here: The most widely read English commentary for three centuries. Included as a baseline: where Henry and a modern voice diverge, the divergence itself is usually the interesting part.
Here, I. The exhortations to praise are very importunate. The psalm does indeed answer to the title, A psalm of praise; it begins with that call which of late we have several times met with (Psa 100:1), Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all you lands, or all…
John Gill5
The most exhaustive and the most doctrinally committed here. Expect high — even supralapsarian — Calvinism applied consistently, and unusually heavy use of rabbinic and Talmudic sources for Jewish context. Where a passage bears on election or the will, Gill will read it in one direction, and knowing that in advance is the point.
Why this voice is here: The strongest Calvinist reading available in the public domain, and the best on Jewish background. Read alongside Clarke, not instead of him — between them you get both sides of the argument.
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Or, "all the earth" (c); that is, as the Targum, all the inhabitants of the earth, who are called upon to shout unto him as their King; as the angels did at his birth, the disciples when he made his public…
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…
Know ye that the Lord he is God,.... Own and acknowledge him to be God, as well as man; and though a man, yet not a mere man, but the great God and our Saviour, the true God and eternal life; so a man, as that he is Jehovah's fellow; or our God, as the Syriac…
Keil & Delitzsch2
The technical one, and Old Testament only. Expect Hebrew grammar, textual argument, and direct engagement with nineteenth-century critical scholarship — closer to a scholarly apparatus than a devotional read. Where a modern critic claims a text is late or composite, this is where the conservative counter-argument was made.
Why this voice is here: Old Testament only, and heavy going — but the place to look when someone asserts a passage cannot mean what it appears to.
The call in Psa 100:1 sounds like Psa 98:4; Psa 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…
Therefore shall the men of all nations enter with thanksgiving into the gates of His Temple and into the courts of His Temple with praise (Psa 96:8), in order to join themselves in worship to His church, which - a creation of Jahve for the good of the whole…
World English Bible — Public domain