Psalm 98:1, 2-3a, 3b-4, 5-6 (3c)

“All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” (Psalm 98:3)

Psalm 98 is an enthronement psalm, one of the group at Psalms 93 to 99 that acclaims the LORD as king, and it opens with the summons to a new song that also begins Psalm 96 and Isaiah 42:10. Its first strophe shares striking vocabulary with the first reading of this Mass: the holy arm and the ends of the earth seeing salvation appear in almost the same words at Isaiah 52:10, and the overlap is very likely why the two are paired here. The psalm’s logic is that a new act requires new music, and the act is described without a human agent, accomplished by God’s right hand alone. The Roman rite’s four stanzas stop at v. 6, with the trumpets and the horn, leaving out the cosmic response of vv. 7-9 in which sea, rivers and mountains greet a judge who is still coming. What the congregation sings on Christmas Day, then, is what has been seen.

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