Psalms 100
Psalm 100 carries one of the simplest headings in the whole book - A Psalm of praise - and it has earned its long history as the people's call to worship. For centuries it has been sung at the threshold of worship under the Latin name by which it is still known, the Jubilate, “Rejoice.” It is only five verses, with no enemy to fear, no lament to pour out, no crisis to survive. It is pure summons: a call to come, and the reasons to come gladly.3
What is striking from the first line is how wide the invitation reaches. The psalm does not call Israel alone; it calls all ye lands - the whole earth - to the same glad worship: Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing (vv. 1-2). And it does not leave the worship hanging in the air; it plants it on solid ground. Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture (v. 3). Two certainties hold up the whole song: He made us, so we belong to Him; and we are His flock, kept under a shepherd's care.
From there the psalm moves the worshipper through the temple gates and into the courts - Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name (v. 4) - and then gives, in a single closing verse, the deepest reason of all to come: For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations (v. 5). The goodness of God, mercy that never runs dry, truth that holds firm through every generation - this is why the song can be all gladness and no fear. The flock is fed by a Shepherd who said I am the good shepherd, brought in through a door He opened, giving thanks to the God whose goodness the apostles would one day say they had seen with their own eyes, full of grace and truth.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 100:1-3 · A Psalm of praiseMake a Joyful Noise Unto the LORD
1Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. 2Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. 3Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
The psalm opens not with a request but with a command to rejoice: Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. The very first word sets the tone for everything that follows. This is not a quiet, careful, throat-clearing approach to God; it is a summons to make noise - the kind of full-throated shout a watching crowd gives when the king appears, the sound of gladness that cannot be contained. And notice at once how far the invitation reaches: not the temple congregation only, not Israel only, but all ye lands. The whole earth is called to the same glad worship. There is a quiet largeness in that phrase that the rest of the Bible will keep widening, until the song of this one small people becomes the song of every nation. For now, simply feel the shape of the opening: worship begins not with our striving but with a call, and the call is to joy. The God of this psalm is not approached with dread; He is met with a shout.1
Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing (v. 2). Two words are joined here that we do not always keep together - serve and gladness. Service can curdle into drudgery; duty can harden into grim obligation, the kind of religion that shows up because it must and leaves relieved to be done. The psalm will have none of it. The service it commands is glad service, worship offered the way a song is sung rather than the way a debt is paid. And it tells us where that service happens: come before his presence. This is the heart of all worship - not a transaction conducted at a distance, but coming before God, into His very presence, the way one comes before a king or into the room of someone deeply loved. The manner of coming is singing. A heart that truly grasps who it is approaching does not trudge; it sings. Gladness is not an optional decoration on worship in this psalm. It is the appropriate response to the God who is about to be named in verse 3 - the One who made us and keeps us as His own.
Now the psalm gives the reason underneath all the rejoicing, and it lands in one weighty sentence: Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture (v. 3). First, know - the gladness is not mindless excitement but rests on something true that we are told to know. And what we are to know is, first, that the LORD he is God: He is the real and living God, not one option among many. Then comes the ground of our very existence: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We did not bring ourselves into being; we are not self-made, self-owned, self-explaining. Our life is a gift from a Maker, which means we belong to Him before we belong to anyone, including ourselves. (An old reading in the margin runs and his we are - a fitting echo of the same truth: we are His.) And then the tender image that the rest of the psalm leans on: we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Not merely creatures He made and left, but a flock He keeps - led, fed, watched, owned by a shepherd's care. Everything the psalm asks of us - the joyful noise, the glad service, the thanksgiving still to come - flows from this: He made us, and we are His sheep.
Psalm 100:4-5For the LORD Is Good
4Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. 5For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name (v. 4). The verse traces a movement inward - first the gates, the outer threshold of the temple, then the courts, drawing nearer to the place of God's presence. The worshipper is not loitering outside; he is coming in. And notice the manner of entry, named twice so we cannot miss it: thanksgiving at the gate, praise in the court, then be thankful unto him, and bless his name. One does not come before this God empty-handed or grasping, demanding to be served; one comes with gratitude already on the lips. There is a deep wisdom in that order. Thanksgiving is not a mood we must wait to feel before we worship; it is the doorway we walk through to get there. We enter with it. To bless his name is to speak well of God - to return to Him, in words, the goodness He has shown. The whole verse assumes there is every reason for gratitude, and the next verse will say plainly what that reason is. For now the instruction is simple and practical: the way into God's presence is paved with thanks.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 100 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the heading todah (“praise” or “thanksgiving”), for 'asah (v. 3, “hath made us”), and for the long discussion of the marginal reading of verse 3, “and his we are,” alongside the text's “and not we ourselves.”
- Psalm 100 ↔ John 10 · John 1 · Revelation 7Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Psalm 100 to the rest of Scripture - the flock of verse 3 met in the Good Shepherd and the door of John 10, the goodness of verse 5 echoed in the One full of grace and truth (John 1:14), and the summons of all ye lands kept in the worship of every nation before the throne (Rev. 7:9-10).
- Psalm 100 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 100 - the force of the heading A Psalm of praise, the shout-word behind “make a joyful noise,” the textual question in verse 3 (“and not we ourselves” / “and his we are”), and the covenant weight of “mercy” and “truth” in verse 5.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Make a Joyful Noise Unto the LORD
- John 10:11I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.The flock of verse 3 met in the Shepherd who arrives in person and lays down His life for the sheep.
- Psalm 95:6-7O come, let us worship and bow down... For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.A companion call to worship sounding verse 3 almost word for word - He made us, and we are His flock.
- Psalm 23:1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.The shepherd image of verse 3 sung as personal trust - the sheep who lacks nothing under His care.
- Genesis 1:31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.The same verb “made” as verse 3 - the Maker who fashioned us and called His work good.
For the LORD Is Good
- John 10:9I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.The way in of verse 4 - the gates entered through the door the Shepherd Himself opens.
- John 1:14the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us... full of grace and truth.The mercy and truth of verse 5 seen in a human face - grace and truth made flesh.
- Psalm 136:1O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.The refrain of verse 5 - the LORD is good and His mercy never ends, the great ground of all thanksgiving.
- Revelation 7:9-10a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations... stood before the throne, and before the Lamb.The summons of “all ye lands” kept in full - every nation gathered in worship before the throne.
- Hebrews 13:15let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.The thanksgiving and blessing of His name in verse 4, carried forward as the worship offered through Christ.