“Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth.” Psalm 100:1
Sisters in Christ,
April is here, and the spring showers have brought so many changes, both through the wild flooding but also through the new growth and life that comes after such devastation. Psalm 100 is a beautiful thanksgiving to the Lord, as an exhortation to all mankind to praise God. In these verses, we are encouraged to serve the Lord with gladness, to come before Him with joyful singing, and to know that He is God. But did you know that this Psalm starts on the battlefield?
The Hebrew word for “shout” in Psalm 100:1 is rûwaʻ, (roo-ah'); and it’s meaning is to split the ears (with sound), i.e. shout (for alarm or joy): blow an alarm, cry, make a joyful noise, triumph. The Hebrew-Greek Keyword Study Bible describes rûwaʻ this way: “In the old testament, shouting often took place just before a people or army rushed into battle against opposition; sometimes the war cry became the very signal used to commence engagement with the enemy. Many times the shout was a cry of joy, often in response to the Lord’s creating or delivering activity on behalf of His people. In several other instances, the shout expressed triumph and victory over a foe, and occasionally mourning.
This rûwaʻ is the same word used as the Israelites trusted in the God of Abraham to bring the walls of Jericho down (Joshua 6:5,10,16,20). It is the same word used in Numbers 10:9 “And when you go to war in your land against the enemy who attacks you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, so that you will be thought of by the LORD your God and be saved from your enemies”. It is the word that was used as the people praised God when the foundations of God’s temple were laid in Ezra 3:11, and it is the same word used to declare the victory of the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ, in Zechariah 9:9 “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is righteous and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Our own psalms in life will have battles, but when we “Shout joyfully to the LORD”, we are then able to declare that both the battle and the victory are the Lord’s, and not our own. Shouting joyfully to the Lord reminds us and the enemy around us that we are His people, and that the Lord Himself is God, good and faithful to all generations, with everlasting kindness. In the midst of the ensuing battles, we can raise the battle cry, the alarm to remember to stand fast in the Lord, and the proclamation of the victory we have in Christ. May we pray this battle cry over our sisters this month and stand firm in the Lord’s faithful victory.
In His Grace, Jaime Angel