Sunday’s Coming

Exclaiming praise! (Psalm 148)

No one and nothing escapes Psalm 148’s exhortation.

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For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.

There are an aggressive number of exclamation points in Psalm 148, at least as rendered by the updated edition of the New Revised Standard Version. In the 14 verses of the psalm, there are 11 exclamation points; nearly every sentence ends with one. This observation led me down a rabbit hole of close textual study, in which I spent more time than I would like to admit counting the number of exclamation points in various English translations.