Psalm 113
9 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 135×21 Samuel 2×2Ephesians 5×1Daniel 2×1Malachi 1×1Psalms 18×1
Summary
Chapter summary
The Hallel opens (113–118, sung at Passover): 'Praise ye Jehovah. Praise, O ye servants of Jehovah… from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same Jehovah's name is to be praised.' High above all nations, 'who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth', and stoops lower still: 'He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the needy from the dunghill; that he may set him with princes.' He maketh the barren woman to keep house, a joyful mother of children: Hannah's song, and Mary's, in psalm form.
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 113The history
This psalm begins a group of six, Psalms 113 through 118, known as the Hallel — the praise. Jewish practice recorded in the Mishnah has the family sing the first two of them before the Passover meal and the rest after it, and the same group was sung at the other pilgrim feasts and at each new moon. Whatever else a family owned, they knew these six songs from memory.
The rising and setting of the sun in the opening lines is how ancient people said everywhere. There were no maps of the globe; the boundary of the world was where the sun came up and where it went down.
The ash heap is a real location. Every village had a mound outside the wall where ashes from cooking fires and household refuse were dumped. It was warm at night, and the destitute slept on it. Lifting a man from that heap and seating him with princes is not a mild figure — it is the widest social distance the culture had.
The childless woman given a household was the other end of the same reversal. A wife without children had no security in old age, no standing among the other women, and no share in the family's future. Hannah had sung about exactly this at the sanctuary generations earlier.
What it meant to them
Passover began with the memory of slaves. A family opening the meal with this song was saying that the God who is too high for the heavens to hold is also the one who goes to the rubbish heap to find people.
For the poorest person at the table, the psalm was a promise made in public in front of everyone else in the room.
Sources cited
- The Mishnah, tractate Pesahim (Danby translation)
- Alfred Edersheim, The Temple: Its Ministry and Services
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 113. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.