Psalm 99

Psalms 99:1-3

The Lord reigneth opens Psalm 93 and Psalm 97 in the same words, and the phrase falls again inside Psalm 96 at verse 10, so this psalm joins a small cluster that opens on God's kingship. The sitting between the cherubims pictures him enthroned above the mercy seat as at the ark, the throne the tabernacle was built to house (Exod 25:22; 1 Sam 4:4). His reign is not remote: it moves peoples to tremble and the earth to shake, and the first of three holy refrains closes the stanza at verse 3, a pattern the psalm repeats at verses 5 and 9.

Psalms 99:4-5

The king's strength is not raw power but a love of judgment, and the throne is credited with establishing equity and executing righteousness in Jacob, the covenant people named by the patriarch's own name. Worship at his footstool sets the same throne pictured in the first stanza on the ground where his people meet him, the ark or the earth itself under his feet in the same figure as Psalm 132:7 and Lamentations 2:1. The second holy refrain closes the call to worship.

Psalms 99:6-9

Moses is named among the priests though the office by descent belonged to Aaron's line, an unusual placement the commentators trace to the priestly acts Moses himself performed at the tabernacle's dedication (Lev 8) and his standing between the people and God at Sinai. Samuel, a Levite but not a priest by birth, is remembered beside them for the intercession that answered the people's cry (1 Sam 7:9; 12:19-23), and verse 8 holds forgiveness and discipline together, a God who forgave yet took vengeance of their inventions, which fits the golden calf and the wilderness rebellions. The third holy refrain closes the psalm at his holy hill, Zion answering the footstool of verse 5.