Psalm 113

Psalms 113:1-3

This psalm opens the Egyptian Hallel, Psalms 113 to 118, sung at the Passover meal by long liturgical practice, so its first word stands at the head of the group the Lord and his disciples likely sang before Gethsemane. The call to praise names the servants of the Lord as the ones who owe it, and stretches the Lord's name from the rising of the sun to its going down, the whole day and the whole compass of the earth pressed into one line. Nothing has yet been said about what God has done; the psalm praises the name itself before it names a single act.

Psalms 113:4-6

The psalm sets two claims side by side without resolving the tension between them: the Lord is high above all nations and his glory above the heavens, yet he humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth. Who is like unto the Lord our God is not answered from any rival; the plain sense of the text is that his greatness and his condescension are the same fact seen from two sides. The older commentators note that a throne so high it must stoop even to look at heaven is a description no earthly ruler could earn.

Psalms 113:7-9

He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill sets the humbling of verse 6 to visible work: the one who stoops to look stoops further still to lift. The barren woman made a joyful mother of children echoes Hannah's own song after her long barrenness in 1 Sam 2:5 and 8, and the commentators read the two songs together, Hannah's private mercy become the pattern for a whole people's. The closing Praise ye the Lord returns the psalm to where it began, framing these specific mercies inside the same call that opened them.