The Pulpit Commentary on Psalms 111:9

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

Reverence for the Name.

"Holy and reverend is his Name." "Reverend" here means "worthy of reverence." Horace Bushnell has a striking sentence: "This age is at the point of apogee from all the robuster notions of Deity." And therefore this age is an irreverent age. Even in the shaping of religious beliefs there are signs of undue familiarity with God. And that undue familiarity explains much of the weakness of Christian living, and lightness of Christian worship. The nineteenth century lacks awe of God.

I. JEWISH REVERENCE FOR THE NAME. Explain that in older times a name was supposed to gather up, and suggestively express, the attributes of a person. Moses asked for a name which would express God—stand for God to the people. And though the word given him was, properly, a declaration of fact rather than a name, it came to be treated as God's Name, and such a superstitious reverence for it grew up, that the Jewish people persisted in altering the vowels of it, so that never, by any accident, should they pronounce the hallowed Name. There was at least the danger of their coming to reverence the Name, rather than the Divine Being who was represented by the Name. If they did, their honoring of God was but a helpless and degrading formalism. A proper reverence for the sacred Name was enjoined in the third commandment (Exodus 20:7); and such reverence was characteristic of all loyal and saintly souls. See Abraham (Genesis 18:22-23); Jacob (Genesis 32:29); Moses (Exodus 3:13, Exodus 3:14); Joshua (Joshua 7:9); and also the psalmists and prophets. It may be said that reverence for the sacred Name was the key-note of the Jewish system. Of nothing were they more jealous. And if in this they were sometimes wrong, they were mostly right; for "holy and reverend is his Name."

II. CHRISTIAN REVERENCE FOR THE NAME. The Name of God revealed in Christianity is not the same as that revealed in Judaism. To the Jewish Church God is the one Existence, unique, spiritual; absolute Being. To the Christian Church God exists in relations, and only the highest and dearest of human relations is fitting to represent him. He is our Father. But that is the most reverend of all names. And the filial feeling ought to triumph over the superstitious. Show the reverence that is due from us in all our relations with the heavenly Father, the holy Father, the righteous Father. The Father-Name must never be "taken in vain."—R.T.

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