663. Saying: "Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty!" This symbolically means that everything in the world, in heaven and in the church was created and formed by the Lord out of Divine love by means of Divine wisdom.

The Lord's works symbolize everything created and formed by Him, which in general is everything in the world, everything in heaven, and everything in the church, which could not possibly be enumerated in particular. These works are called great and marvelous because greatness is predicated of love, and marvelousness of wisdom, as in no. 656 above. Moreover, the Lord is also called the Lord in the Word because of the Divine goodness of His Divine love, and God because of the Divine truth of His Divine wisdom.

The Lord is called almighty because He is, lives, and can do all things of Himself, and also directs all things from Himself, as may be seen in no. 31 above.

So it is that, in a universal sense, "Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty!" means symbolically that everything in the world, in heaven and in the church was created and formed by the Lord out of His Divine love by means of His Divine wisdom.

It is common in the Bible for people to "rise up," and it would be easy to pass over the phrase as simply describing a physical action. But in fact it represents an elevation in spiritual state, moving to a more internal frame of mind closer to the Lord. Often it has to do with understanding a new or important idea; we "rise up" to a state of greater perception and enlightenment. Obviously context is crucial to the exact meaning of the phrase in a given passage -- it matters greatly who it is that is rising up, and why.