Psalms 71:22–24

Psalms 71:22 — "I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, my God."

The Hebrew word translated "faithfulness" here is emet (אֱמֶת) — truth, reliability, covenant fidelity — one of the supreme divine attributes in the Old Testament. The psalmist does not praise God merely for deliverance, but for who God is in relation to His promises. The harp (kinnor), David's own instrument (1 Sam 16:23), is not incidental decoration. In the Temple liturgy of Israel, the harp was a sacred instrument specifically assigned to the Levitical singers (1 Chr 25:1–6), which signals that this praise is not private sentiment but formal, liturgical worship. The phrase "my God" (Elohay) marks a deeply personal possessive — this is covenantal address, the language of a man who knows God intimately after a lifetime of relationship.

Psalms 71:23 — "My lips shall shout for joy!"

The verb for "shout" (ranan) denotes a piercing, jubilant cry — the kind of vocalization that cannot be contained, the opposite of whispered prayer. This verse captures something physiological about genuine praise: it overflows the body. The psalmist's lips are not merely instruments of language; they become instruments of worship, trembling with exultation. In the broader psalm, the psalmist has described his mouth as speaking of God's righteousness since youth (v. 15, 17); now in old age, these same lips reach their fullest expression — no longer just speaking about God but shouting to Him. The soul ransomed is the soul set free into vocal exuberance.

Psalms 71:24 — "My tongue will also talk about your righteousness all day long."

Where verse 23 climaxes in exultant eruption, verse 24 settles into something more sustained: all day long (kol-hayyom). This is ceaseless, quotidian witness. "Righteousness" (tzedaqah) in the Psalms carries the double sense of God's moral justice and His saving intervention — His right-acting on behalf of the covenanted people. The tongue, which in Hebrew anthropology was considered the seat of human testimony, here becomes a perpetual instrument of theodicy: the psalmist proclaims that God is right, that God acts rightly, that his own deliverance proves it. This is not abstract theology but lived witness — the old man who has been through fire testifying in the public square (cf. v. 18) that God's righteousness endures.

Typological and Spiritual Senses:

Taken together, these three verses employ three distinct members — harp (instrument), lips, tongue — in a literary progression from mediated music, to spontaneous cry, to continuous speech. This triad anticipates the full-bodied, full-voiced worship of the redeemed in the heavenly liturgy (Rev 5:8–9, where harps and new song unite). Typologically, the Church Fathers read the "harp" as the human body itself, strung with virtues and played by the Holy Spirit. St. Augustine sees the voice of this psalm as ultimately the vox Christi — Christ's own voice of praise rising through His Body, the Church, to the Father. The "faithfulness" and "righteousness" praised are fulfilled in Christ, who is simultaneously God's covenant fidelity made flesh (John 1:14, pleres... aletheias) and God's righteousness incarnate (1 Cor 1:30).

Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates these verses through several convergent streams of teaching.

The Liturgical Theology of the Body in Praise: The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "the praise of God which will ring out in the eternal Jerusalem through the songs of the saints" is already anticipated in earthly liturgy (CCC §1090). The trifold instrument of praise — harp, lips, tongue — resonates with the Church's insistence that worship must engage the whole person, body and soul. The Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium (§112) explicitly affirms sacred music as a "necessary or integral part of the solemn liturgy," echoing the psalmist's harp. The lips and tongue, meanwhile, point toward what the Catechism calls vocal prayer — "the form of prayer most readily accessible to us" (CCC §2700) — and the absolute necessity of exterior expression in authentic worship.

The Divine Attribute of Faithfulness: Emet — God's faithfulness — is identified by the Church Fathers as the preeminent quality that the Incarnation reveals. St. Augustine in his Enarrationes in Psalmos on Psalm 71 writes that the harp's praise for God's faithfulness is properly the voice of Christ thanking the Father for the resurrection — the supreme act of divine fidelity to the covenantal promise of life over death. Pope Benedict XVI, in Deus Caritas Est (§1), similarly grounds Christian hope in God's faithful love (chesed) made definitive in Christ.

Righteousness as Soteriological Witness: "Righteousness" (tzedaqah) in verse 24 is read by St. Thomas Aquinas (Commentum in Psalmos) as pointing not merely to moral justice but to iustitia salutaris — saving righteousness, the righteousness by which God makes the sinner right. This aligns precisely with Paul's proclamation in Romans 1:17 and with the Council of Trent's teaching that justification is a true interior transformation, not merely imputed. The tongue's all-day proclamation of this righteousness is thus an act of evangelization as much as doxology.

These closing verses of Psalm 71 challenge the contemporary Catholic in a very specific way: they present a vision of praise that is bodily, public, and relentless — qualities easily dulled by a privatized, interior-only spirituality.

Practically: The harp of verse 22 calls Catholics to take seriously the role of sacred music in their worship life — not as aesthetic preference but as theological act. Attending Mass with full, conscious participation in sung liturgy (not merely enduring it) is itself a form of praising God's faithfulness.

The shout of verse 23 challenges the habit of muted, almost embarrassed faith. Where in daily life do your lips actually proclaim joy in God? The Liturgy of the Hours — especially Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer — is the Church's structured answer: sung praise that punctuates the day with the very shout the psalmist describes.

The tongue of verse 24 — speaking of righteousness all day long — is an invitation to integrate faith and conversation. This could mean bearing witness in ordinary conversation, choosing not to let a colleague's cynicism about Providence go unanswered, or simply praying the Jesus Prayer throughout the day as a form of the tongue's perpetual testimony. Ceaseless praise is not monastic luxury; the psalmist is an old man speaking in the public square (v. 18). So can you be.