O praise our mighty Lord

The penultimate Psalm, it has been suggested, may have grown from the ‘seed’ of Psalm 148:14, about ‘the praise of all his saints’; cf the note on 112, about that Psalm and its predecessor. Its warlike 2nd half (toughened by the guttural-sounding Heb vocabulary) has sometimes been enlisted overreadily to justify more questionable conflicts, but the two-edged sword in the NT is the word of Christ and of God. The Christian’s battles are those described in 2 Corinthians 10:5 and Ephesians 6:10–18. Like 144, this text by Peter Ninnis was written by request for the present book. It is preferred to versions by H F Lyte from the 19th-c, and James Seddon, Michael Perry and David Preston from the 20th. Joseph Parry’s tune DINBYCH, surprisingly bypassed by many mainstream books, appeared in its original form in the composer’s Llyfr Tonau Cynulleidfaol Cenedlaethol Cymru containing hundreds of tunes and published in several parts between 1887 and 1892. Hymnals in England have set it to one or other of the Wesleyan trio of Commit thou all thy griefs; Jesus, my strength, my hope; and Thou Judge of quick and dead.

b Croydon, Surrey 1948. He was raised in ‘a chapel-going but not overtly Christian’ family. Trinity Sch of John Whitgift, Croydon; followed by training for the horticultural industry (Advanced Nat Cert in horticulture). Converted in a small Gospel Standard chapel at Grove, Oxfordshire, he then trained for Christian ministry at the S Wales Bible Coll, and from 1983 served full-time in a Reformed Baptist Ch in Watford, Herts. In 1996 he moved to the Grace Baptist Ch at Basildon, Essex, and after a short break to Truro Evangelical Ch, Cornwall (FIEC), in 2001. His hymnwriting began in 1988 with no.543 and ‘has continued in gentle fashion ever since’—PJN. He has texts and tunes in print, all for the first time in Praise!; others are arriving. Nos.144, 149, 186, 188, 543, 1143, 1198. 1143*, 1198*