It is divided into five strophes, three of which are marked by Selah. That musical indication is wanting at the close of the third strophe (ver. 12), which is also the close of the first or choral part, and its absence may be connected with the transition to a single voice. A certain progress in thought is noticeable, as will appear as we proceed. The first strophe calls upon all the earth to praise God for His works. The special deeds which fire the psalmist are not yet mentioned, though they are present to his mind. The summons of the world to praise passes over into prophecy that it shall praise. The manifestation of God's character by act will win homage. The great thought that God has but to be truly known in order to be reverenced is an axiom with this psalmist; and no less certain is he that such knowledge and such praise will one day fill the world. True, he discerns that submission will not always be genuine; for he uses the same word to express it as occurs in Psalm xviii. 44, which represents "feigned homage." Every great religious awakening has a fringe of adherents, imperfectly affected by it, whose professions outrun reality, though they themselves are but half conscious that they feign. But though this sobering estimate of the shallowness of a widely diffused recognition of God tones down the psalmist's expectations, and has been abundantly confirmed by later experience, his great hope remains as an early utterance of the conviction, which has gathered assurance and definiteness by subsequent Revelation, and is now familiar to all. The world is God's. His Self-revelation will win hearts. There shall be true submission and joyous praise, girdling the earth as it rolls. The psalmist dwells mainly on the majestic and awe-inspiring aspect of God's acts. His greatness of power bears down opposition. But the later strophes introduce other elements of the Divine nature and syllables of the Name, though the inmost secret of the "power of God" in the weakness of manhood and the all-conquering might of Love is not yet ripe for utterance.
The second strophe advances to a closer contemplation of the deeds of God, which the nations are summoned to behold. He is not only "dread" in His doings towards mankind at large, but Israel's history is radiant with the manifestation of His name, and that past lives on, so that ancient experiences give the measure and manner of to-day's working. The retrospect embraces the two standing instances of God's delivering help--the passage of the Red Sea and of Jordan--and these are not dead deeds in a far-off century. For the singer calls on his own generation to rejoice "there" in Him. Ver. 6 _c_ is by some translated as "There did we rejoice," and more accurately by others, "Let us rejoice." In the former case the essential solidarity of all generations of the nation is most vividly set forth. But the same idea is involved in the correct rendering, according to which the men of the psalmist's period are entitled and invoked to associate themselves in thought with that long-past generation, and to share in their joy, since they do possess the same power which wrought then. God's work is never antiquated. It is all a revelation of eternal activities. What He has been, He is. What He did, He does. Therefore faith may feed on all the records of old time, and expect the repetition of all that they contain. Such an application of history to the present makes the nerve of this strophe. For ver. 7, following on the retrospect, declares the perpetuity of God's rule, and that His eyes still keep an outlook, as a watchman on a tower might do, to mark the enemies' designs, in order that He may intervene, as of old, for His people's deliverance. He "looked forth upon the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of cloud" (Exod. xiv. 24). Thus He still marks the actions and plans of Israel's foes. Therefore it were wise for the "rebellious" not to rear their heads so high in opposition.