New Song

When the Lamb appears in heaven, the angels begin singing a new song (Revelation 5:9). What’s new about it? Why a new song?

The phrase “new song” is used six times in Psalms (33:3; 40:3; 96:1; 98:1; 144:9; 149:1), and once in Isaiah (42:10). The position of these Psalms in the Psalter is significant. The Psalms that speak of a new song are distributed in three different sections of the Psalter. Two are in Book 1, two in Book 4, and two in Book 5. Each of these sections of the Psalter has a particular Davidic or kingly connotation. Book 1 is made up almost entirely of Psalms attributed to David; apart from Psalms 1-2, Psalm 33 is the only one that is not, and it is perhaps to be attached to Psalm 32. (Psalm 33 has 22 lines, numerically matching the Hebrew alphabet, and this might be the “alphabet” of instruction that is promised in Psalm 32:8.) 

Book 4 particularly celebrates Yahweh’s kingdom, especially in the opening Psalms 90-101, where two “new song” Psalms appear. The final book of the Psalter is mainly about song in exile, but there is a section (Psalms 138-145) that contains Psalms of David, and Psalm 144 fits into that section. This is a reminder that songs can be sung in a strange land, just as David did.

Psalm 33:2 is the first Psalm to mention a lyre or harp in the body of the Psalm. Kinor appears here for the very first time in the Psalter, and the same is the case for the word “psaltery” and for “instrument of strings.” A word that is often understood as an eight-string instrument is used in the titles of Psalm 6:1, 12:1, but this is perhaps a word instead for octave. 

In any case, Psalm 33 is the first Psalm to speak of a “new song,” and this new song is one accompanied by instruments. That bears out in other Psalms that speak of a new song as well. Psalm 144:9 connects the new song with playing on a harp of ten strings, and in Psalm 149:1, the exhortation to sing a new song is followed by references to dancing, timbrel, lyre. A new song is a song of kingship, Yahweh’s kingship, accompanied by instruments.

The one use of the phrase outside the Psalter is in Isaiah 42:10. That chapter begins with the introduction of Yahweh’s Servant, the chosen one who brings justice to the nations, who opens the eyes of the blind and releases prisoners, and the response to the introduction of the Servant is a new song sung from the ends of the earth, by all the islands, as far away as Kedar, classically a place of distance from God, a place of exile (Psalm 120).

The phrase is used again in Revelation 14:3. The new song is sung in chapter 5 because the Lamb is taking the throne for the first time, and there are changes taking place in heaven that will have their effect on earth. When this comes to its climax in the war of the beast on the saints, when the saints’ blood is ready to be shed on the earth and an end made of the whole series of events, the saints sing a new song again. This fulfills the kingship of the Lamb. The weeping of exile, the weeping that was John’s response to the empty throne, has now been turned to joy, the joy of a Lamb upon the throne of the Father. Mourning gives way to dancing, sackcloth to garments of festivity.

A new song for a new condition.