Ps. 96.9 (a liturgically healed cosmos)

For you / O Yhwh / are God Most High / over all the earth
exalted far above / all gods. 

Again we find the earth-heaven dynamic that we have traced through this psalm and psalm 96. Idolatry—or, here, ‘serving images’ and ‘boasting in mere idols’—is, itself, a earth-heaven dynamic. The ‘people of the earth’ bow down to the ‘gods’ and, in so doing, introduce profane divine worship into the earth. When Yhwh appears, however, the ‘exaltation’ that was given to the gods is now transferred to Yhwh. Importantly, this is not merely human transformation. “Even all the gods bow down” to Yhwh. As such, it is both a human and divine exaltation of Yhwh. The gods too are (re)aligned into a proper attitude of worship to Yhwh. It is not that they do not exist. Rather, within the radiance of Yhwh, they are understood to be far below him who is “far above all gods”. And this is why this verse is arranged in the way it is—Yhwh is the ‘high god’ on both earth (the Most High) and in heaven (exalted far above all gods). Here we find a liturgically healed cosmos (heaven and earth). Yhwh’s ‘judgments’ are not something merely earthly. Rather, they extend all the way into the heavens. What we see is that the divine ‘ceiling’ that previously became the end-point of all human praise, is itself turned upward (far upward) toward Yhwh.