Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Mazmur 150:1

Maimonides Hilchot Bikkurim 4,16-17 describes the bringing of the bikkurim to Jerusalem in these words: “the notables of the respective towns along the route to Jerusalem would accompany the donors so that these would not appear as being solitary individuals bringing these gifts.” They based themselves on Proverbs 14,28 that “a throng of people constitutes honour for the king (the Almighty).” The donors would spend the night in the public square of the respective town they were passing and would not enter private houses so as to avoid entering an area which might house ritual impurity capable of being conferred upon them. On the morrow, early, the person appointed for this task would address them and say: “arise and let us ascend to the Lord our G’d.” The ox representing their peace-offering would precede them, its horns decorated with gold leaf, a laurel of olive (leaves) on its head. This was to alert people to the fact that the bikkurim consisted of the seven species which we mentioned earlier. A flute would play in front of them until they came close to Jerusalem. They would walk all along the way (not ride or travel in a coach) proclaiming the verse from Psalms 122,1: ”I rejoiced when they said to me we are going to the House of the Lord.” They would not walk all day long but only for two “hours” daily (points on the sundial). As soon as they approached Jerusalem they would dispatch messengers ahead to inform the people of Jerusalem of their impending arrival. They would decorate the bikkurim at that time with kinds of crowns. If the bikkurim contained both fresh fruit and dried fruit they would place the former on top. The various dignitaries of Jerusalem would come out to welcome these donors of bikkurim. The welcoming committee would correspond to the size of the delegation of people bringing their bikkurim at that time. As soon as they entered the gates of Jerusalem they would chant the verse from Psalms 122. All the skilled artisans (who would not be required to interrupt their work to welcome Torah scholars) did come out to welcome these farmers honouring them for performing this commandment. When the processional reached the Temple Mount, each farmer would place his basket on his shoulder and proclaim the verse from Psalms 122,1. This would be followed by the recital of Psalms 150,1: “Praise the Lord in His holy Sanctuary” until the end of this hymn, i.e. “let all that breathes praise the Lord, Hallelujah.” When the procession reached the foyer of the Temple the Levites would commence their song commencing with Psalms 30,2: “let me extol You O Lord, for You have lifted me up, and have not let my enemies rejoice over me.”

קומו ונעלה ציון – And on the way, they would recite )Psalms 122:1): “[A song of ascents. Of David.] I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘We are going to the House of the Lord.’” And when they arrived in Jerusalem, they would recite (Psalms 122:2): “Our feet stood inside your gates, O Jerusalem.” On the Temple Mount, they would recite (Psalms 150:1): “Hallelujah. Praise God in His sanctuary.” In the Temple Court, they would recite (Psalms 150:6): “Let all that breathes praise the LORD. Halleljah.”

"Let there be a firmament:" The Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to inform Israel that neither the sun nor anything else controls the rain, to bring it down or not to bring it down. Therefore, He told about the existence of the higher waters before the existence of the luminaries. "Firmament (rakiya):" [It is] a body that stretches out like a plate, [as in] the expression, "To the One that stretches out (rokea) the earth over the waters" (Psalms 136:6); "And they flattened (yiraka'au) the gold [into thin plates]" (Exodus 39:3); and [also] "And over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of a firmament, like the color of the terrible ice" (Ezekiel 1:22). And here it portrayed the air between the earth and the clouds as a body that extends and separates between the waters on earth and the waters in the clouds, and carries the waters upon it; and by the will of God, the water descends from there to the earth. And it is like it states (Deuteronomy 28:12), "And God will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give the rain of your land in its time;" and in the Curse, when it states (Leviticus 26:19), "And I will give your skies to be like iron," to prevent the descent of water upon them; and so [too] below (Genesis 7:11), "and the windows of the heavens opened." But afterwards, in the time of Yishiyahu, it appears that they knew that there are no storehouses of water above, and that rain waters return above; since behold, he says (Isaiah 55:10), "For just as the rain and the snow come down from the skies, and do not return there except when the earth is satiated;" [which] implies that after it is satiated, it does return to there, see my commentary there. And so [too], Yirmiyahu said in the way of a question, "do the heavens give raindrops?" (Jeremiah 14:22); [which] implies that [the heavens] do not give them by themselves, since they do not have storehouses of water in them. And so [too], they called the vapors that rise up from upon the earth [and become clouds] the name, nissi'im (raised up ones), as [in], "He raises nissi'im from the end of the earth" (Psalms 135:7); "He raised the nissi'im from the end of the earth" (Jeremiah 10:13; 51:16); and so [too], "Nissi'im and wind, but no rain" (Proverbs 25:14). And we do not know from what time this word (nissi'im) became common; as Psalm 135 is not attributed to David and it is not clear that the Book of Proverbs from Chapter 25 is by Shlomo. And in Job, he says (Job 38:22), "Did you come to the storehouses of snow, did you see the storehouses of hail?" - and this is a proof of the antiquity of that book. And since the word, rakiya, is based on the belief in higher waters - "the waters that are above the heavens" (Psalms 148:4) - that the rakiya supports, and that belief became antiquated and forgotten; the word, rakiya, also became antiquated. And [rakiya] is only used to indicate the skies in three [other] places. Two are in Psalms - "and the acts of your hands, does the rakiya proclaim" (Psalms 19:2); "praise Him in the rakiya of His strength" (Psalms 150:1) - since the word remained in poetic use; as it is the custom in all languages for the poets to use antiquated words. And the third place is in Daniel 12:3, "And the enlightened ones will shine like the splendor of the rakiya;" and there also, it is a poetic expression. And so [likewise], in Malachi 3:10, "I will open for you the windows of the heavens," is by way of poetic expression. And we have also found a variant of rakiya referring to the heavens in Job 37:18, "Tarkiya (Did you spread out) the skies with Him;" and this too is a sign of the antiquity of this book. And he finishes [this verse], "they are as strong as a molten mirror," as they carry the weight of many waters. And so [too] did Shlomo say (Proverbs 8:28), "And in His strengthening of the skies above." And behold, the Torah spoke as in the language of people, and stated, "let there be a firmament," according to their thought (that it actually existed). And nonetheless, what was intended does not deviate from being true and solid, and that is that God implanted in the nature of water to rise upwards and to descend afterwards down to the earth. And in the Greek translation attributed to the seventy elders (the Septuagint), rakiya is translated as strauma, [which] is a matter of strength, and so [too] did they translate it afterwords into Latin [as] firmāmenta and this came to them from the use of the root, raka, in Syriac, which denotes strength; and so [too], rakiya in Syriac is strong and hard. And Johannes Clericus says that they translated it thus, because it was the opinion of some of the ancient philosophers that the heavens and air that surround the earth on all sides, prevent it and everything on it from getting detached and crumbling apart; and behold, they cause the earth to stay hard and its parts to remain fastened together. And he explains the expression to be one of hitting and trampling, as in "hit with your hand and stamp (reka) with your foot" (Ezekiel 6:11); "because you hit with your hand and you stamped (rakacha) with your foot" (Ezekiel 25:6); because the heavens are stamping on the earth and stopping its parts from detaching. And all of this is far from the simple meaning of the verses. And nonetheless, [his] words, that the origin of the root, raka, is from stomping and hitting, are plausible. And because something that is hit [becomes] flat and stretched out, the root, raka, is borrowed to indicate stretching out and flatness.