Psalm 148:7-10 vs. “All Creatures of Our God and King”

Sovereign Grace Music · checked 2026-08-22

What we checked

PassagePsalm 148:7-10 chapter ↗ 1 more proof on Psalm 148 →

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumPrayers of the Saints (Live) · 2017

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Says it is nothing but a song. No verse is cited on the recording, no translation is named, and the credit line points at the poem it came from rather than at a chapter of the Bible
The rights holder publishes its own scripture list for the song, so what the publisher believes it rests on can be checked instead of guessed
The credit line separates the layers by name: Francis for the first two verses, Draper as translator, the Baird brothers for the two new verses and the arrangement. A singer can tell the old part from the new
Where it does touch Psalm 148, the direction is the psalm's. It tells created things to praise God rather than telling God how the singer feels about them
Nothing is said of God that the psalm contradicts, and the refrain keeps its praise in the third person

⚠ Cautions

The Psalm 148 resemblance belongs to the English. Francis's Italian praises God for the sun and moon and calls them brother and sister rather than ordering them to praise. A singer told this is Francis's Psalm 148 is being told two things, and only one of them is checkable
This passage is largely a bestiary and the hymn has no animals in it. Psalm 148:7 and 148:10 call sea creatures, wild beasts, cattle, crawling things and birds, and neither the canticle nor Draper's paraphrase names an animal. The title says all creatures. The roster is elements and weather
Only two of Draper's stanzas are sung here, so most of his own list is missing, including the stanza hymnals index to Psalm 148:9
Hymnary's note calls the text a meditation on Psalm 145 first, reflecting Psalm 148 and the Canticle of the Three Young Men second. That third source is not in most Protestant Bibles
The dates are unsettled. Sources put Draper's paraphrase anywhere from 1899 to 1919, and the 1919 date on most credit lines is publication, not writing

Verse Proof

Psalm 148:7-10

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Praise the LORD from the earth, all great sea creatures and ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, powerful wind fulfilling His word, mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, crawling creatures and flying birds,”

Psalm 148 is a summons rather than a prayer. Nobody in it speaks to God. A voice calls creation to praise, and the chapter is built in two storeys. Verses 1 to 6 call the heavens, and verses 7 to 14 call the earth. This passage is the opening of the earth half, and almost everything in it is something that cannot speak. Verse 7 calls the sea creatures and the ocean depths. Verse 8 calls the weather, including the wind that carries out God's word. Verse 9 calls the mountains and hills and the trees. Verse 10 calls the animals, wild and domestic, the things that crawl and the things that fly. Human beings do not arrive until verse 11, and when they arrive they are listed after the cattle. Verse 13 gives the reason the chapter has been building toward, that the name of the LORD alone is exalted.

What the song says, described not quoted

Four verses and a repeated alleluia refrain. The rights holder's own credit line splits the text in two. Verses one and two are the traditional hymn, credited to Francis of Assisi and to William Henry Draper as translator. Verses three and four were written in 2013 by Jonathan Baird and Ryan Baird, who also made the arrangement. The traditional half calls on created things to praise God and opens with the sun and the moon, which is the stanza hymnal editors index to Psalm 148:3. The added half moves to ground the psalm does not cover: the redeemed set free by Christ's atoning work, and the day of His return, when creation acknowledges His reign. The publisher lists four scripture references for the song, Psalm 107:2, Psalm 145, Psalm 148 and Romans 8:3. No verse is quoted anywhere in it and no translation is named.

Three hands sit between Psalm 148 and this recording, and the likeness to the psalm gets stronger at each one. Francis wrote *Il Cantico del Frate Sole* in Umbrian Italian at the end of his life, around 1224 to 1225. Its grammar is the reverse of Psalm 148's. Francis addresses God, and praises Him for the sun, the moon, the wind, water, fire and the earth, calling them brother and sister. He does not tell any of them to do anything. Psalm 148 never addresses God at all. It addresses the creatures and orders them to praise. Draper, rector at Adel near Leeds, put the canticle into English verse for a children's Whitsuntide festival, first published in the Public School Hymn Book in 1919. Hymnary credits him as paraphraser rather than translator and its note says he translated, or rather paraphrased, the text. The UMC Discipleship history of the hymn says the result is too free to be called a translation. What Draper changed is the direction of the address. His English sets aside the sibling names and turns Francis's praise of God for the creatures into a call addressed to the creatures, which is Psalm 148's grammar and not Francis's. The third hand is the 2013 adaptation. Two of Draper's stanzas are kept and two new verses are added, so most of Draper's own roster is not sung on this recording, including the stanzas hymnals index to Psalm 148:9 and Psalm 148:11-13.

· Not a quote: The song quotes no verse and names no translation. Its call to created things does match Psalm 148's grammar. But that grammar arrived at the English stage, since Francis's Italian praises God for the creatures rather than commanding them.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The hymn sounds like Psalm 148 because an English paraphraser made it sound like Psalm 148.

Why it matters

Hymnary lists this text in 314 hymnals, and the credit line most singers read says Francis of Assisi, 1225. That credit is honest about the poem and silent about the psalm, which is the whole difficulty. A publisher's scripture reference describes what a song resembles now. It is not a record of what the author had open in front of him.

The habit worth building is to ask which layer a scripture reference is attached to. Here the reference is fair for the English and wrong for the Italian, and both are printed under one name.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is mostly the refrain, and the refrain is praise spoken in the third person by a room full of people who are not the subject of the sentence. That is the psalm's own arrangement. Psalm 148 puts human beings in verse 11, after the cattle, and this song does something similar by giving the sun and the moon the opening verse.

The dwelling tag is God because the verbs mostly belong to Him. Even the added verse about the redeemed is about what was done for them rather than about how they feel. Sung on a loop, this trains a reflex of looking at something that is not you and telling it to praise, which is a good reflex and it is the psalm's.

What it will not plant is the psalm's earth half. If you sing this often, read Psalm 148:7 to 10 alongside it sometimes. The animals the title seems to promise are all in the chapter, and none of them are in the hymn.

Helpful comparison

The rosters are countable, and counting them is the clearest way to see what this passage holds that the hymn does not.

Psalm 148:7-10 names fifteen kinds of thing in four verses, running from the sea creatures and the depths through the weather to the mountains, the trees, and four classes of animal. Seven of the fifteen are alive.

Francis's canticle names eight subjects across its whole length: sun, moon and stars, wind and air, water, fire, mother earth, those who forgive, and death. Not one of them is an animal. Draper's paraphrase keeps that roster, and Hymnary's stanza-level index reflects it exactly, mapping stanzas to Psalm 148:3, 148:8, 148:9 and 148:11-13, and never to verse 7 or verse 10, which are the two verses in this passage that name living creatures.

That gap matters more for the popular story than for the hymn itself. Francis is remembered as the saint who preached to the birds, and the hymn carrying his name is called All Creatures. The creatures in it are the sun, the wind, the water, the fire and the earth. The birds are in the psalm.

The Canticle of the Three Young Men in the Furnace is an apocryphal addition to Daniel 3, so a reader who goes looking for it may not find it in their own copy.

Hymnary puts Draper's paraphrase around 1910, the UMC history reports he could place it no earlier than 1906, and Wikipedia gives a range of 1899 to 1919. Sources also differ on where Francis composed the canticle and whether it was 1224 or 1225.

Sources

Sovereign Grace Music — All Creatures of Our God and King (Prayers of the Saints Live) · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed returns the SovereignGraceMusic channel, and the title names the album)
Sovereign Grace Music — All Creatures of Our God and King song page · (rights holder's page: original words by Francis of Assisi translated by William Henry Draper, additional verses three and four by Jonathan Baird and Ryan Baird, CCLI 6529800, and the publisher's own scripture list of Psalm 107:2, Psalm 145, Psalm 148 and Romans 8:3)
Sovereign Grace Music — All Creatures of Our God and King on Bandcamp · (rights holder's store: album Prayers of the Saints (Live), released 17 November 2017, with the same layered credit line and the 2013 copyright on the adaptation)
Hymnary.org — All Creatures of our God and King · (text authority: Francis of Assisi 1225 as author and William H. Draper as paraphraser, 314 hymnals, the stanza-level scripture index mapping stanzas to Psalm 148:3, 8, 9 and 11-13, the note calling the text a meditation on Psalm 145 that also reflects Psalm 148 and the Canticle of the Three Young Men in the Furnace, and the Whitsuntide festival in Leeds around 1910)
Hymnology Archive — All creatures of our God and King · (Il Cantico del Frate Sole composed in Francis's final months in early Umbrian Italian, oldest surviving manuscript around 1300; the difference in direction between Francis praising God for creation and the English versions calling creatures to praise; Draper at Adel, first published in the Public School Hymn Book in 1919; LASST UNS ERFREUEN from a 1623 German Catholic hymnal)
UMC Discipleship Ministries — History of Hymns: Saint's "Canticle of the Sun" inspires 20th-century hymn · (Draper's version is too free to be called a translation, it is based in part upon Psalm 148, and Draper could place his writing of it no earlier than 1906)
Anglican Compass — Hymn Guide: All Creatures of our God and King · (the English text directly addresses creatures and exhorts them as Psalm 148 does, and Draper's formal address replaces Francis's brother and sister language)
Wikipedia — Canticle of the Sun · (Umbrian dialect, the earliest Italian literature with a known author, the poem addresses God and praises Him for the creations, the eight subjects it names in order, and the absence of any named animal)
Wikipedia — All Creatures of Our God and King · (Draper's paraphrase written between 1899 and 1919 for a children's Whitsun festival, first published 1919, and Vaughan Williams's 1906 arrangement of the tune)

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