Today I looked at Psalm 117 here it is in its entirety:
1 Praise the LORD, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.
2 For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.
Praise the LORD.
That’s it, it’s a call to praise God. Pretty cool huh?
As simple and cool as that is on the front end it becomes even sweeter in my mind when we look into the concept of praise as it is expressed here. I’m not looking to examine the vast understanding of praise but I do find the origin of the word to be fascinating.
In English it would look something like this: Halal
As in: halelu-yah or more often in English hallelujah
Yah or Jah are shortened forms of God’s proper name.
In Hebrew the verb translated as praise here without question means to shine. The same root word as a noun can be translated as star. One scholar suggests that the very word comes from the idea not only of the shinning of stars but more specifically the North Star (for more info see Jeff Benner’s The Living Words).
The North Star is unique when viewed from our perspective of earth. It doesn’t rotate in the night sky because of its position over the North Pole. Travelers from the earliest days have looked toward this star and its shining light to show them the way—true north.
So when we praise we are to praise as an action: to shine and we are to praise God or haleu-yah which literally means to shine God.
No matter what praise has come to mean today (ie: a feeling, a style of music, a body posture, a complement, etc.) it was intended as an action verb here in Psalm 117 one thing is certain when we praise God we’re called to shine in such a way that others are shown his true light, direction, certainty, and brilliance. Paul said it best:
Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life – Philippians 2:14-16
