Anticipation and Celebration: Reflections on Psalm 98 and Isaiah 52

“All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” — Isaiah 52:10 (ESV)

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

Sometimes when I’m reading through the Bible, I come across a passage that sounds strangely familiar. Not just because I’ve read that passage before, but because it sounds like another passage I’ve read before.

Reading through Psalm 98 this morning, the feeling was especially strong, because of a favorite Rich Mullins song. The opening track on his album A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band is called 52:10, and the lyric is almost a straight quotation of Scripture:

The Lord has bared His Holy arm
The Lord has bared His Holy arm
In the sight of all the nations
And all the ends of the earth shall see
The Lord’s salvation

Did I mention the title of the song is “52:10?”

So, reading these verses in PSALM 98 was causing some cognitive dissonance in my mind:

¹ Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. ² The Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations. ³ He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Psalm 98:1–3 (ESV)

So I got out my trusty concordance (full disclosure– I Googled it), and found that Isaiah 52:10 and Psalm 98 are almost identical.

Almost.

And it was in the difference between the two that I found encouragement today.

An Echo Across the Scriptures

Consider these parallels:

Psalm 98:1–2: “His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The LORD has made known his salvation.”
Isaiah 52:10: “The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations.”

Psalm 98:4: “Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!”
Isaiah 52:9: “Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem.”

And then there’s the most striking parallel of all:

Psalm 98:3: “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.”
Isaiah 52:10: “All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”

Did you catch the difference?

Have seen (Psalm 98).
Shall see (Isaiah 52)

One looks forward. The other looks back. One anticipates. The other celebrates.

Which Came First?

We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that because Psalms comes before Isaiah in our Bibles, that Psalms was written before Isaiah.

But that ain’t necessarily so. Bear in mind that Psalms is a collection of Psalms, and not even the Psalms themselves are assembled in chronological order. Although about a third of them were written by King David, some were written before him. Psalm 90, for example, is attributed to Moses. Others were written during (or about) the exile, such as Psalm 137. And Psalm 126 is a celebration of returning from the Babylonian captivity.

We can’t say for certain when Psalm 98 was written. It has no superscription identifying its author or the circumstances of its composition. Many scholars believe it was written during or after the Babylonian exile, partly because its language so closely resembles Isaiah 40–55.

Isaiah 52, meanwhile, belongs to a section of Isaiah that speaks powerfully of God’s promise to redeem His people and restore Jerusalem. Scholars differ over the dating of these chapters, but the traditional understanding places Isaiah’s ministry centuries before the return from exile.

So it’s entirely possible that Isaiah’s proclamation came first and that Psalm 98 was written as a celebration of what God had promised.

I love that possibility.

Imagine generations of God’s people holding on to Isaiah’s words: All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

And then imagine a later generation singing: All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

The promise has become praise.

Of course, we should be careful not to make too much of the difference in verb tenses. The prophets sometimes describe future events as accomplished realities because God’s promises are so certain. And we can’t prove that the psalmist was deliberately quoting Isaiah.

But whether one writer was consciously echoing the other or both were drawing from the same tradition of worship, the theological connection is beautiful.

From Jerusalem to the Ends of the Earth

There’s another difference worth noticing.

In Isaiah 52:9, the prophet calls upon the ruins of Jerusalem to sing for joy:

“Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people; he has redeemed Jerusalem.”

The picture is extraordinary. Jerusalem has been devastated. Its walls have been broken down. Its people have been carried into exile. But Isaiah calls even the ruins to sing because God is coming to redeem His people.

Then listen to the invitation in Psalm 98:

“Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the LORD” (Psalm 98:7–9).

Isaiah calls upon the ruins of Jerusalem to sing. The psalmist calls upon the whole creation to join the chorus.

It’s as though the celebration has become too big for Jerusalem to contain. The sea roars. The rivers clap. The mountains sing.

And why not? The salvation of God was never intended for Israel alone. From the beginning, God’s promise to Abraham was that through his offspring all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3).

Isaiah anticipated that blessing. The psalmist celebrated it. And the New Testament reveals its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Anticipation, Celebration, Consummation

Here’s one more connection I love.

Psalm 98 is the inspiration behind one of our most beloved Christmas carols, Isaac Watts’s Joy to the World.

We usually associate that hymn with the birth of Jesus, and understandably so. But Watts wasn’t simply writing a song about a baby in a manger. He was writing a Christian interpretation of Psalm 98, celebrating the reign of Christ.

That’s why we sing:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King.

And later:

While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy.

Sound familiar?

That’s Psalm 98. The rivers clapping their hands. The hills singing together. All creation celebrating the reign of its King.

And that brings us to one final observation.

Living in the In-Between

Isaiah looked forward to God’s salvation.

The psalmist celebrated God’s saving work.

As Christians, we do both.

We look back to the cross and the empty tomb, where Jesus accomplished the salvation Isaiah anticipated. We can say with the psalmist that the Lord has made known His salvation. We have seen His righteousness revealed in Jesus Christ.

But we also look forward.

Psalm 98 ends by declaring that the Lord “comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity” (verse 9).

That hasn’t happened in its fullness yet.

We still live in a world where injustice flourishes, creation groans, and God’s people suffer. We still wait for the day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

So we stand between two great realities.

Christ has come. Christ is coming again.

We celebrate the salvation He has accomplished, and we anticipate the day when He will make all things new.

And maybe that’s why Psalm 98 still speaks so powerfully to us. It gives us permission to sing about what God has already done, even while we wait for everything He has promised.

Isaiah says, He shall.

The psalmist says, He has.

And the church says, He has—and He will.

Until that day, we keep singing.

Joy to the world. The Lord is come.

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