recalls Psa 116:19 (cf. Psa 92:14); and Psa 135:4 is an echo of Deu 7:6. The servants of Jahve to whom the summons is addressed, are not, as in Psa 134:1., His official servants in particular, but according to Psa 135:2, where the courts, in the plural, are allotted to them as their standing-place, and according to Psa 135:19-20, those who fear Him as a body. The threefold Jahve at the beginning is then repeated in Jāh (הללוּ־יהּ, cf. note 1 to PsPsa 104:35), Jahve, and Jāh. The subject of כּי נעים is by no means Jahve (Hupfeld), whom they did not dare to call נעים in the Old Testament, but either the Name, according to Ps 54:8 (Luther, Hitzig), or, which is favoured by Psa 147:1 (cf. Pro 22:18), the praising of His Name (Appolinaris: ἐπεὶ τόδε καλὸν ἀείδειν): His Name to praise is a delightful employ, which is incumbent on Israel as the people of His choice and of His possession.
Verses 5-7
The praise itself now begins. כּי in Psa 135:4 set forth the ground of the pleasant duty, and the כי that begins this strophe confirms that which warrants the summons out of the riches of the material existing for such a hymn of praise. Worthy is He to be praised, for Israel knows full well that He who hath chosen it is the God of gods. The beginning is taken from Psa 115:3, and Psa 135:7 from Jer 10:13 (Psa 51:16). Heaven, earth, and water are the three kingdoms of created things, as in Exo 20:4. נשׂיא signifies that which is lifted up, ascended; here, as in Jeremiah, a cloud. The meaning of בּרקים למּטר עשׂה is not: He makes lightnings into rain, i.e., resolves them as it were into rain, which is unnatural; but either according to Zec 10:1 : He produces lightnings in behalf of rain, in order that the rain may pour down in consequence of the thunder and lightning, or poetically: He makes lightnings for the rain, so that the rain is announced (Apollinaris) and accompanied by them. Instead of מוצא (cf. Psa 78:16; Psa 105:43), which does not admit of the retreating of the tone, the expression is מוצא, the ground-form of the part. Hiph. for plurals like מחצרים, מחלמים, מעזרים, perhaps not without being influenced by the ויּוצא in Jeremiah, for it is not מוצא from מצא that signifies “producing,” but מוציא = מפיק. The metaphor of the treasuries is like Job 38:22. What is intended is the fulness of divine power, in which lie the grounds of the origin and the impulses of all things in nature.
