Psalm 99 (98)
Holy is the Lord!
1 The Lord reigns and the nations tremble. He is enthroned upon the cherubim; the earth gets distraught.
2 Great is the Lord in Zion; he is high over all the nations.
3 May they give glory to your name, great and terrible: “Holy is he:
4 this is the mighty King who loves justice.”
For you come to install fairness, to establish in Jacob right and justice.
5 Extol the Lord, our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he! And mighty!
6 Among his priests were Moses and Aaron, and Samuel among those who called on his name. They called to the Lord, and he answered them.
7 In the pillar of cloud he spoke to them, and they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them.
8 O Lord our God, you responded to them; you were a patient God for them, but you punished their wrongs.
9 Extol the Lord our God; worship at his holy mountain. Holy is the Lord our God!
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Comments Psalms, Chapter 99
• 99 Yes, he is holy! This ex clamation will appear three times in the psalm. Let us take the vision of Isaiah if we want to find the meaning of the word “holy.” It signifies, according to some, that God is totally different, removed from what is not “of him”: he is the “totally other.” That is true. It might be necessary to add here what the word “high tension” means for us: a mysterious power which upsets all our mechanisms, magnetizing all its surroundings, drawing sparks from bodies thought to be inert, striking down whoever approaches it (2 S 6:7).
This sovereign holiness has a beauty which leaves us speechless with a love that dispels our resistance and oppressive heaviness. It will not prevent God from giving himself totally to us in definitive marriage. The true fear of God, the fascination that his mystery has on us (we shall live it for eternity) has nothing to do with fear or defiance. The formidable as pect of death – necessary for re turning to God – helps us to gauge what separates us from him.