Jehovah is my Song!

At one point in his writings, Isaiah proclaims that Jehovah is his strength and his song. Jehovah being my strength, I understand. How Jehovah is my song isn’t as clear. In the Psalms we find the declaration “with my song will I praise him” (Psalm 28:7). This makes more sense to me. After all, music is a powerful way to praise God. And maybe that is similar to what Isaiah means when he says, “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also has become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2 and 2 Ne 22:2). The Hebrew word translated here as song, is zimrath, and means “song of praise.” So maybe Isaiah means that Jehovah is what he sings about and praises.

But he says Jehovah is his song so maybe there is more to this declaration that he wants us to understand. A song is a type of music and music is “the art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.”

This takes a little thought, so ponder on it for a moment. If we let Jehovah order our lives, he orders the experiences in succession, in combination, and in relationship to each other to produce a life having unity and continuity. So our life becomes a song and Jehovah is the composer. Sometimes life is like modern music—full of polyphonic, dissonant and syncopated events. But when we trust in the composer, he always brings it back to harmony, melody and rhythm. And the promise is that it will eventually end in harmony, melody and rhythm and stay there forever.

But still, Jehovah in this analogy is the composer, not the song. There has to be one more step in the process. Jehovah is our song when he becomes our life. When we stop trying to order the events of our life and let him do it, he produces a composition having unity and continuity and He is that song.