The structure is clear and simple. There is, first, a magnificent description of God's coming to judgment and summoning heaven and earth to witness while He judges His people (vv. 1-6). The second part (vv. 7-15) proclaims the worthlessness of sacrifice; and the third (vv. 16-21) brands hypocrites who pollute God's statutes by taking them into their lips while their lives are foul. A closing strophe of two verses (22, 23) gathers up the double lesson of the whole.
The first part falls again into two, of three verses each, of which the former describes the coming of the judge, and the latter the opening of the judgment. The psalm begins with a majestic heaping together of the Divine names, as if a herald were proclaiming the style and titles of a mighty king at the opening of a solemn assize. No English equivalents are available, and it is best to retain the Hebrew, only noting that each name is separated from the others by the accents in the original, and that to render either "the mighty God" (A.V.) or "the God of gods" is not only against that punctuation, but destroys the completeness symbolised by the threefold designation. Hupfeld finds the heaping together of names "frosty." Some ears will rather hear in it a solemn reiteration like the boom of triple thunders. Each name has its own force of meaning. El speaks of God as mighty; Elohim, as the object of religious fear; Jehovah, as the self-existent and covenant God.
The earth from east to west is summoned, not to be judged, but to witness God judging His people. The peculiarity of this theophany is that God is not represented as coming from afar or from above, but as letting His light blaze out from Zion, where He sits enthroned. As His presence made the city "the joy of the whole earth" (Psalm xlviii. 2), so it makes Zion the sum of all beauty. The idea underlying the representation of His shining out of Zion is that His presence among His people makes certain His judgment of their worship. It is the poetic clothing of the prophetic announcement, "You only have I known of all the inhabitants of the earth; therefore will I punish you for your iniquities." The seer beholds the dread pomp of the advent of the Judge, and describes it with accessories familiar in such pictures: devouring fire is His forerunner, as clearing a path for Him among tangles of evil, and wild tempests whirl round His stable throne. "He cannot be silent." The form of the negation in the original is emotional or emphatic, conveying the idea of the impossibility of His silence in the face of such corruptions.
The opening of the court or preparation for the judgment follows. That Divine voice speaks, summoning heaven and earth to attend as spectators of the solemn process. The universal significance of God's relation to and dealings with Israel, and the vindication of His righteousness by His inflexible justice dealt out to their faults, are grandly taught in this making heaven and earth assessors of that tribunal. The court having been thus constituted, the Judge on His seat, the spectators standing around, the accused are next brought in. There is no need to be prosaically definite as to the attendants who are bidden to escort them. His officers are everywhere, and to ask who they are in the present case is to apply to poetry the measuring lines meant for bald prose. It is more important to note the names by which the persons to be judged are designated. They are "My favoured ones, who have made a covenant with Me by (lit. _over_) sacrifice." These terms carry an indictment, recalling the lavish mercies so unworthily requited, and the solemn obligations so unthankfully broken. The application of the name "favoured ones" to the whole nation is noteworthy. In other psalms it is usually applied to the more devout section, who are by it sharply distinguished from the mass; here it includes the whole. It does not follow that the diversity of usage indicates difference of date. All that is certainly shown is difference of point of view. Here the ideal of the nation is set forth, in order to bring out more emphatically the miserable contrast of the reality. Sacrifice is set aside as worthless in the subsequent verses. But could the psalmist have given clearer indication that his depreciation is not to be exaggerated into entire rejection of external rites, than by thus putting in front of it the worth of sacrifice when offered aright, as the means of founding and sustaining covenant relations with God? If his own words had been given heed to, his commentators would have been saved the blunder of supposing that he is antagonistic to the sacrificial worship which he thus regards.