For Teaching

Psalms 115: What the Passage Says

51 claims across 18 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Psalms 115 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm asks that glory go to the LORD rather than to Israel, and answers the nations who ask where Israel's God is by saying that God is in the heavens and does whatever he pleases. It then describes idols of silver and gold that have mouths, eyes, ears, noses, hands, and feet but cannot use any of them, and says that those who make and trust them become like them. The psalm calls Israel, the house of Aaron, and all who fear the LORD to trust in him as their help and shield, and states that he will bless them. It closes by saying the dead do not praise the LORD, but the living will bless him from now on and forever.

Claim by Claim

115:1
- The psalmist asks that glory be given not to us.
- The psalmist repeats that glory be given not to us.
- The psalmist asks that glory be given to the LORD's name.
- The reason given is the LORD's steadfast love.
- The reason given is the LORD's faithfulness.
115:2
- The psalmist asks why the nations should say, 'Where is their God now?'
115:3
- Our God is in the heavens.
- He has done whatever he pleased.
115:4
- The nations' idols are silver and gold.
- The idols are the work of human hands.
115:5
- The idols have mouths.
- The idols do not speak.
- The idols have eyes.
- The idols do not see.
115:6
- The idols have ears.
- The idols do not hear.
- The idols have a nose.
- The idols do not smell.
115:7
- The idols have hands.
- The idols do not feel.
- The idols have feet.
- The idols do not walk.
- The idols make no sound in their throat.
115:8
- Those who make the idols become like them.
- Everyone who trusts in the idols becomes like them.
115:9
- Israel is told to trust in the LORD.
- The LORD is their help.
- The LORD is their shield.
115:10
- The house of Aaron is told to trust in the LORD.
- The LORD is their help.
- The LORD is their shield.
115:11
- Those who fear the LORD are told to trust in the LORD.
- The LORD is their help.
- The LORD is their shield.
115:12
- The LORD has been mindful of us.
- He will bless us.
- He will bless the house of Israel.
- He will bless the house of Aaron.
115:13
- He will bless those who fear the LORD.
- He will bless both the small and the great.
115:14
- The LORD will add increase to you.
- The LORD will add increase to you and to your children.
115:15
- You are blessed by the LORD.
- The LORD made heaven and earth.
115:16
- The heavens belong to the LORD.
- The earth he has given to human beings.
115:17
- The dead do not praise the LORD.
- None who go down into silence praise the LORD.
115:18
- But we will bless the LORD.
- We will bless him from this time forth and forever.
- The psalmist calls for praise of the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

115:1: "LORD" in small capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH. Jewish readers avoided pronouncing it and said "the Lord" instead, and English Bibles have followed that custom ever since. "Your name" in Hebrew means far more than a label: a person's name stands for their reputation and their standing in the world, so "give glory to your name" means "let your reputation be the thing that is honoured." The two reasons given translate a famous Hebrew word pair: *hesed*, loyal love of the kind that keeps a commitment, and *emeth*, reliability or trustworthiness, being the sort of person whose word holds.
115:2: The word behind "nations" (Hebrew *goyim*, King James "heathen") simply means the peoples other than Israel, each with its own gods and shrines. The taunt "Where is their God now?" assumes a defeat or disaster: in the ancient world a nation's fortunes were read as a measure of its god's power, so a beaten people invited the jeer that their god had proved absent or weak. The question is also pointed because Israel had no image of its God to display, while its neighbors could point to theirs.
115:4: Ancient idols were not usually solid precious metal. A craftsman carved a core of wood or cast a base of cheaper metal and then overlaid it with hammered sheets of silver or gold, then clothed and adorned it. The statue was not thought to be the god, but the place where the god was present and could be fed, washed and addressed. "The work of men's hands" is the sting: the object of worship was manufactured to order.
115:5: People who owned idols would talk to them, set food in front of them, and burn sweet-smelling incense for them. This song lists mouths, eyes, ears and noses to point out that a statue cannot use any of them.
115:7: The last line translates an unusual Hebrew phrase, literally something like "they do not mutter in their throat." It may mean the idol cannot make even a wordless noise, the lowest possible sign of life; some read it against the murmuring or growling sounds that priests and mediums produced when a god was supposed to be speaking through them.
115:8: "Become like them" plays on a standard idea: worshipers take on the character of what they worship. Here the point is turned into a joke about the statue's defects, the maker ends up as blind, deaf and powerless as the thing he made.
115:9: Verses 9 to 11 call on three groups in turn (the whole people, the priests, and a wider circle of worshipers) and each call is answered by the same refrain. The repeated shape suggests this was sung antiphonally, a leader calling and the congregation answering. "Shield" is military: the large body-shield a soldier hid behind, a standard image for a protector.
115:10: Aaron was the brother of Moses, and by law only his male descendants could serve as priests at the sanctuary. "House of Aaron" therefore means the priestly families as a body, a small, hereditary professional group, not the population at large.
115:11: "Those who fear the LORD" translates a fixed Hebrew expression meaning reverent loyalty, not terror, roughly "those who take him seriously." Because this group is named after Israel and the priests, many readers take it as a third, wider circle: foreigners who attached themselves to Israel's worship without becoming Israelites. Others take it simply as a summary of the first two. The Hebrew leaves both readings open.
115:13: "Small and great" is a Hebrew way of naming two extremes to mean everything in between, here low and high in social rank, so: everyone, whatever their standing.
115:14: The verb means "add to" and is used of growing numbers, children, descendants, livestock, land. In a culture without written wills, insurance or old-age provision, a large family was the practical form of security and continuity, so this is a substantial wish rather than a vague one. The Hebrew form can be read either as a statement ("the LORD will") or as a prayer ("may the LORD").
115:16: The Hebrew word for "heavens" covers both the visible sky and what lies beyond it. The doubled phrase (literally "the heavens, the heavens" or "heaven of heavens") is a superlative, the highest reach of the sky, the way "king of kings" means the greatest king. "The children of men" is simply an idiom for human beings.
115:17: "Silence" is a name for the realm of the dead, called Sheol elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible: an underground place where all the dead go, good and bad alike, pictured as dim, still and cut off. Praise in these psalms means audible, public worship at the temple with other people, so the dead are outside it: they have left the assembly where the singing happens. The line is an argument for keeping the singer alive, not a statement about what awaits people after death.
115:18: The closing "Praise the LORD" is the Hebrew word *hallelu-yah*, an imperative addressed to a group: "you all, praise Yah", Yah being the short form of the divine name. It was left untranslated in Greek and Latin and reached English as "hallelujah." Here it works like a rubric, a cue for the congregation.

Read Psalms 115