The majesty of God's kingdom. The church rejoiceth at God's judgments upon idolaters. An exhortation to godliness and gladness.
The Greeks call this, "A Psalm of David, after his land was restored to him;" i.e. as Bishop Patrick explains it, after he was made master of all those countries which God anciently designed to be the inheritance of Israel. See 1 Chronicles 18:1-2. But in its sublimer meaning it belongs to Christ's triumph over the grave at his resurrection. This appears from those words which the apostle to the Hebrews alleges out of the 7th verse, and applies to Christ's royal power and authority over angels: and this the Hebrew Rabbis themselves, as Kimchi confesses, take to be here intended. Agreeably to this, the title of the psalm, in the Syriac version, says, "This psalm foretels the coming of Christ." The attentive reader will observe a great similarity between this and the 18th psalm: the poetical imagery of both is exceedingly lofty and grand; and the thoughts and style of both are so much alike, that it cannot be questioned whether they were both written by the same hand. To give an instance: The invisibility of God is thus finely described in the 18th psalm, the 9th and following verses: Darkness was under his feet: he made darkness his secret place: his pavilion round about him were dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies: and then, to shew that by this dark and gloomy scene he only meant to describe that attribute of God, the Psalmist adds, Psalms 97:12. At the brightness that was before him, &c. In like manner the same attribute is here thus described, Psalms 97:2 clouds and darkness, &c. and then too it presently follows, in the very next verse, A fire goeth before him. The curious reader will compare the whole, and judge for himself.