Psalm 115

Psalms 115:1

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory opens the psalm by refusing credit twice before naming the reason, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake. The doubled unto us has long been read as the corporate voice of the whole nation disowning any claim on its own deliverance. Spurgeon calls the line the true believer's motto, the same refusal of self-glory that runs through the psalm's argument against idols who exist only to be credited.

Psalms 115:2-3

Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God puts the taunt of the nations in the psalm's own mouth before answering it, the same question other psalms and the prophets face down, as at Joel 2:17. The answer refuses to locate God in a place that could be pointed to and found empty: our God is in the heavens, he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased. Sovereignty, not visibility, is the reply; the heathen ask where and the psalm answers what he has done.

Psalms 115:4-8

Their idols are silver and gold: The idol polemic runs through five organs in order, mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands and feet, each named only to be denied: they have them, but the making of them is the work of men's hands and none of them function. They that make them are like unto them closes the list with the psalm's real target, that a worshiper becomes like what he worships, inert imitating inert. The same argument runs at length in Isaiah 44:9-20 and Jeremiah 10:1-16, and the commentators read this psalm as its compressed form.

Psalms 115:9-11

The refrain trust in the Lord, he is their help and their shield is addressed three times to three widening circles, O Israel the whole nation, O house of Aaron the priesthood, and Ye that fear the Lord, read by the commentators as those outside the bloodline who had joined themselves to Israel's worship. Idols cannot help or shield anyone, as the previous verses showed; here the true God is named able to do both. The threefold address answers the fivefold silence of the idols point for point.

Psalms 115:12-15

The Lord hath been mindful of us answers the taunt of verse 2 directly, mindfulness where the heathen alleged absence, and the blessing that follows falls on the same three circles just addressed, us, the house of Israel, the house of Aaron. Both small and great removes rank from the blessing, and increase you more and more, you and your children extends it forward into generations not yet born. Ye are blessed of the Lord which made heaven and earth grounds the blessing in the same creator whose reality the idols could only counterfeit.

Psalms 115:16-18

The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's, but the earth hath he given to the children of men states the psalm's working geography, God's own dwelling reserved while the ground under human feet is handed over as a trust. The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence gives the psalmist's own reason for urgency, that praise belongs to this life and not to Sheol's silence. But we will bless the Lord from this time forth and for evermore closes the psalm exactly where it opened, refusing self-glory and choosing praise instead, sealed with the same Praise the Lord that framed Psalm 113.