Psalms 113:1-8

Psalm 113 ¹ 

113:1 Praise the Lord!

Praise, you servants of the Lord,

praise the name of the Lord!

113:2 May the Lord’s name be praised

now and forevermore!

113:3 From east to west ² 

the Lord’s name is deserving of praise.

113:4 The Lord is exalted over all the nations;

his splendor reaches beyond the sky. ³ 

113:5 Who can compare to the Lord our God,

who sits on a high throne? ⁴ 

113:6 He bends down to look ⁵ 

at the sky and the earth.

113:7 He raises the poor from the dirt,

and lifts up the needy from the garbage pile, ⁶ 

113:8 that he might seat him with princes,

with the princes of his people.

[113:1]  ¹ sn Psalm 113. The psalmist praises God as the sovereign king of the world who reaches down to help the needy.

[113:3]  ² tn Heb “from the rising of the sun to its setting.” The extent is not temporal (“from sunrise to sunset”) but spatial (“from the place where the sun rises [the east] to the place where it sets [the west].” In the phenomenological language of OT cosmology, the sun was described as rising in the east and setting in the west.

[113:4]  ³ tn Heb “above the sky [is] his splendor.”

[113:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “the one who makes high to sit.”

[113:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “the one who makes low to see.”

[113:7]  ⁶ sn The language of v. 7 is almost identical to that of 1 Sam 2:8.