Strophe I: The Summons of
Celestial Beings (vv. 1–2)
Celestial elements are
personified and become beings, like angels and the heavenly host of the sons of
God in the opening folktale of Job (2:1). The poet does not have the power to
summon the mythical inhabitants of the divine sphere, but he lyrically associates
the whole universe with the hymnic symphony and chorus that he will direct in
the course of a service of thanksgiving. His own words of exaltation include
the heavenly spheres, before his horizon comes closer, as the hymn progresses.
In the meantime, orchestral and vocal aesthetics are the controlled channels of
a transcendental emotion.
Strophe II: The Heavens of Heavens (vv. 3–4)
The poet outdoes himself as he
exhorts the moon, the sun, and the stars to join the concert and to render
praise truly universal. He wishes to invite the totality of creation by
summoning the heavens par excellence—cf. the Hebrew idiomatic “construction” of
two identical nouns, “heavens of heavens,” to join the Grand Magnificat. The
infinitely distant heights of sublimity, the heavens’ heavens, even the
celestial ocean, do not confine the universe within a humanly conceived
limitation in space. This is the language of a mystic. When the artist seeks to
formulate in poetic metaphors the memory of his ecstasy, he must turn to the
art of music. Ancient music knew the mathematical basis of its tunes, and it
also acknowledged the overpowering force of its tonality and rhythms, which led
to the realm of the ineffable. (Samuel Terrien, The Psalms: Strophic Structure and Theological Commentary, The
Eerdmans Critical Commentary [Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 2003], 919-20)
