Thursday, April 11, 2013

The Story behind From All That Dwell Below the Skies

From All That Dwell below the Skies is Isaac Watt's paraphrase of Psalm 117.
O praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord.

The Psalms were originally written to be sung. Many of them include musical notations. While the music has long since been lost, the words, as all of the Lord's words, have endured.

Watts believed that King David was divinely inspired to write many of the Psalms but also argued that David didn't fully understand the truths about which he wrote. We now, after Christ, can see the Psalms in all of the fullness of their meanings. He believed that the Psalms should be "imitated in the language of the New Testament." (from his 1719 metrical psalter).