A psalm of thanksgiving.  Shout joyfully to YHWH, all the land. Psalm 100:1 

Thanksgiving – Most of your Bibles have chapter headings that sort of explain what the chapter will be about. Those weren’t in the early manuscripts; they were added much later and some even as recent as your modern translation. However, Psalms has many of these such as we find in Psalm 100 where the headings are actually embedded in the text. Thanksgiving is one of them. Have you ever considered the significance of this?

This is one of the 7 Hebrew words of praise, todah is the Hebrew word for thanksgiving. Expedition has a playlist on this linked below.  We have learned to almost skip over these headings in our Bibles and rightfully so as most of them as they aren’t in the inspired text, but in this case, it shouldn’t be simply passed over because it is in the text and means something – in fact it set the tone for the way modern translators have setup our interpretations.

The first word or phrase in Hebrew nearly always sets the context or frame of thought. In Leviticus 7 Israel was instructed to offer a fellowship offering (which was also simply called “todah”) and become sort of an idiom that covered everything from the sacrifice, the heart of the worship, the confessions, supplication, adoration, and proclamation of Yahweh towards all parts of life.

In Hebraic thought everyone and everything would image thanks to Yahweh. The reason that we are given here to offer such praise is a word that resounds deeply to my heart – TOV. Thanksgiving is connected to all things that are TOV, all things created good by God and intended to partner in His good will. This ties in Thanksgiving to connect to much more such as God’s order, God’s Hessed faithfulness, God’s mercy compassion and kindness, tribulation that becomes joy, and so much more. To live in a presence of Todah means to live in all things TOV. To be surrounded by your family of TOV, to walk each day in TOV, to swim in TOV.

Many of us have two families. A family we were born into of this world and then a new regenerated by the spirit family. I am blessed that much of this family is both. But as we connect with both kingdoms, these thankful psalms remind me to focus my attention on the things of TOV.

To understand that under this “TODAH-TOV” umbrella everything that we are given, past present and future -even the tribulation, should remind me to lift my countenance to Him by divine symphony, a pantheon of praise to the Lord is the heart of our thanksgiving. Giving thanks re-orients my thinking and my behavior back to Yahweh and then unto the image of Jesus and returns to everyone that I encounter. In Psalms this becomes a foreshadow of the image of Jesus Himself revealing the father to and in us. The already not yet amongst us.