The Chronicler writes for Jews who have come back from exile to a small temple, a small city, and a small political footprint. They need to know that the God they worship is not a regional deity who lost a war with Babylon. So the Chronicler reaches back to David's psalm at the bringing up of the ark (a song stitched from Psalms 105, 96, and 106) and replays it for a postexilic congregation. The line is not bravado. It is the confession of a chastened people who still know whose God is highest.

From the writers we read together

Carmen Joy Imes

Old Testament scholar, author of Bearing God's Name and Being God's Image

Imes argues that modern readers tend to flatten verses like this into monotheistic boilerplate — "of course there is only one God, so of course he is greatest." But the Chronicler's congregation did not live in that world. They lived among neighbors who poured out drinks to Marduk and burned incense to the queen of heaven, and they had just lost a war that, by ancient logic, meant their God had lost too. The verse insists otherwise. The LORD is feared above the gods — which presumes there are gods to be above.

What Imes opens up for the postexilic reader, and for us, is that worship is not a private mood. It is a public statement about which power is actually highest in the room. When you sing "great is the LORD" on a Sunday, you are not flattering God; you are taking sides in a contest the Bible assumes is real. The small congregation, the small temple, the small life — none of these change which name is at the top.