Psalm 99:3

Verse 3. Thy great and terrible name; for it is holy. The FATHER'S name is "great," for he is the source, the Creator, the Lord of all; the SON'S name is "terrible," for he is to be our judge; the name of the HOLY GHOST is "holy," for he it is who bestows hallowing and sanctification. The Hebrew commentators see here the mystic Tetragrammaton hwhy, whose true pronunciation was kept a profound secret by the Rabbins, owing to a feeling of awful reverence; while the Greeks are precise in bidding us take it of that name, which is "terrible" to God's enemies, "holy" to his friends, and "great" to both, the name of JESUS. Hugo Cardinalis, Genebrardus, and Balthazar Corderius, in Neale's Commentary.

Verse 3. Let them praise thy terrible name. What force the experience of a burdened conscience attaches to the expression, "Thy great and terrible name; for it is holy!" The misery of sin consists not merely in its consequences, but in its very nature, which is to separate between God and our souls, and to shut us out from God, and God from us. Yet the Spirit of God indicates, in the covenant of grace, a threefold practical influence of his holiness upon us, of which the issue is the opposite of despair. The various steps are marked as praise, exaltation, and worship ( Psalms 99:3 Psalms 99:5 , 9). Of these the last seems by far the most difficult to realise. For it is in the nature of conscious sin to prevent even our approaches to God, to keep us from all comfortable fellowship with God, and to fill us with a heavy sense of our infinite and almost hopeless distance from him. Yet we will "praise thy great and terrible name; for it is holy." Great it is; most glorious and high; far above all human conceptions. Viewed in this light, even the fact otherwise so consoling, "The Lord reigneth," leads only to the inference, "Let the people tremble;" and "He sitteth between the cherubim" (or manifesteth himself as the covenant God) to the conclusion, "Let the earth be moved," or stagger. But his name is not only great and terrible in its manifestations, "it is holy," and therefore we "praise" it. His greatness is all arrayed on the side of goodness, his power on that of righteousness and truth. Alfred Edersheim, in "The Golden Diary of Heart Converse with Jesus in the Book of Psalms," 1873.

Verse 3. Thy terrible name... holy. In acts of man's vindictive justice, there is something of impurity, perturbation, passion, some mixture of cruelty; but none of these fall upon God in the several acts of wrath. When God appears to Ezekiel in the resemblance of fire, to signify his anger against the house of Judah for their idolatry, "from his loins downward there was the appearance of fire, but from the loins upward the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber." Ezekiel 8:2 . His heart is clean in his most terrible acts of vengeance; it is a pure flame wherewith he scorcheth and burns his enemies. He is holy in the most fiery appearance. Stephen Charnock.

Verse 3. It is holy. No attribute is sounded out so loftily, with such solenmity, and so frequently by angels that stand before his throne, as this. Where do you find any other attribute trebled in the praises of it as this? Isaiah 6:3 : "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory;" and Revelation 4:8 : "The four living creatures rest not day and night saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," &c. His power of sovereignty as Lord of hosts is but once mentioned, but with a ternal repetition of his holiness. Do you hear in any evangelical song any other perfection of the divine nature thrice repeated? Where do we read of the crying out, Eternal, eternal, eternal; or Faithful, faithful, faithful, Lord God of hosts! Whatsoever other attribute is left out, this God would have to fill the mouths of angels and blessed spirits for ever in heaven... As it seems to challenge an excellence above all his other perfections, so it is the glory of all the rest; as it is the glory of the Godhead, so it is the glory of every perfection in the Godhead; as his power is the strength of them, so his holiness is the beauty of them; as all would be weak without almightiness to back them, so all would be uncomely without holiness to adorn them: should this be sullied all the rest would lose their honour and their comfortable efficacy; as at the same instant that the sun should lose its light, it would lose its heat, its strength, its generative and quickening virtue. As sincerity is the lustre of every grace in a Christian, so is purity the splendour of every attribute in the Godhead. His justice is a holy justice, his wisdom a holy wisdom, his arm of power a "holy arm," Psalms 98:1 ; his truth or promise a "holy promise," Psalms 105:42 . Holy and true go hand and hand, Re 6:10. "His name," which signifies all his attributes in conjunction, "is holy." Stephen Charnock.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 3. The terrors of the Lord, connected with holiness, and worthy of praise.