Psalms 113:1--114:8

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.

113:9 He makes the barren woman of the family ⁷ 

a happy mother of children. ⁸ 

Praise the Lord!

Psalm 114 ⁹ 

114:1 When Israel left Egypt,

when the family of Jacob left a foreign nation behind, ¹⁰ 

114:2 Judah became his sanctuary,

Israel his kingdom.

114:3 The sea looked and fled; ¹¹ 

the Jordan River ¹²  turned back. ¹³ 

114:4 The mountains skipped like rams,

the hills like lambs. ¹⁴ 

114:5 Why do you flee, O sea?

Why do you turn back, O Jordan River?

114:6 Why do you skip like rams, O mountains,

like lambs, O hills?

114:7 Tremble, O earth, before the Lord –

before the God of Jacob,

114:8 who turned a rock into a pool of water,

a hard rock into springs of water! ¹⁵ 

[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.

[113:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “of the house.”

[113:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “sons.”

[114:1]  ⁸ sn Psalm 114. The psalmist recalls the events of the exodus and conquest and celebrates God’s kingship over his covenant people.

[114:1]  ⁹ tn Heb “the house of Jacob from a nation speaking a foreign language.” The Hebrew verb לָעַז (la’at, “to speak a foreign language”) occurs only here in the OT.

[114:3]  ⁹ sn The psalmist recalls the crossing of the Red Sea (Exod 14:21).

[114:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the Jordan” (also in v. 5). The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[114:3]  ¹¹ sn The psalmist recalls the crossing of the Jordan River (Josh 3:13, 16).

[114:4]  ¹⁰ sn The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. This may recall the theophany at Sinai when the mountain shook before God’s presence (Exod 19:18).

[114:8]  ¹¹ sn In v. 8 the psalmist recalls the event(s) recorded in Exod 17:6 and/or Num 20:11 (see also Deut 8:15 and Ps 78:15-16, 20).