117:1. O praise the LORD, all ye nations. This is an exhortation to the Gentiles to glorify Jehovah, and a clear proof that the Old Testament spirit differed widely from that narrow and contracted national bigotry with which the Jews of our Lord’s day became so inveterately diseased. The nations could not be expected to join in the praise of Jehovah unless they were also to be partakers of the benefits which Israel enjoyed; and hence the psalm was an intimation to Israel that the grace and mercy of their God were not confined to one nation, but would in happier days be extended to all the race, as Moses had prophesied when he said, “Rejoice, O ye nations, his people” (Deuteronomy 32:43), for so the Hebrew has it. The nations were to be his people. He would call them a people that were not a people, and her beloved that was not beloved. Individuals have already been gathered out of every kindred and people and tongue by the preaching of the Gospel, and these are but the advance-guard of a number which no one can number who will come ere long to worship the all-glorious One.
Praise him, all ye people. Having done it once, do it again, and still more fervently, daily increasing in the reverence and zeal with which you extol the Most High. The multitude of the common folk will bless the Lord. Under the Gospel dispensation we worship the God of Abraham; the God of the whole earth shall he be called.
117:2. For his merciful kindness is great toward us. By which is meant not only his great love towards the Jewish people, but towards the whole family of man. The Lord is kind to us as his creatures, and merciful to us as sinners, hence his merciful kindness to us as sinful creatures. This mercy has been very great, or powerful. We can all join in this grateful acknowledgment, and in the praise which is therefore due.
And the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. He has kept his covenant promise that in the seed of Abraham should all nations of the earth be blessed, and he will eternally keep every single promise of that covenant to all those who put their trust in him. This should be a cause of constant and grateful praise, wherefore the psalm concludes as it began, with another Hallelujah, Praise ye the LORD.
The Treasury of David by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
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