Praise the LORD, all nations! Extol him, all peoples!
PSALM 117 Psalm 117:1-2 1. Praise Jehovah, all ye nations; magnify him:, all ye peoples. “That all the nations here, and in the next word all peoples, signify, in the greatest latitude, all the nations, all people of the Gentile world, even πᾶσαν κτίσιν, ‘the whole creation,’ and κόσμον ἅπαντα, ‘the whole world,’ Mark 16:15, appears both by Matthew 28:19, where, parallel to those phrases...
Commenting on Psalm 117:1-2
O praise the Lord, all ye nations. This is an exhortation to the Gentiles to glorify Jehovah, and a clear proof that the Old Testament spirit differed widely from that narrow and contracted national bigotry with which the Jews of our Lord's day became so inveterately diseased.
There is a great deal of gospel in this psalm. The apostle has furnished us with a key to it (Rom 15:11), where he quotes it as a proof that the gospel was to be preached to, and would be entertained by, the Gentile nations, which yet was so great a stumbling-block to the Jews.
Commenting on Psalm 117:1-2