Psalms 138: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A song of thanks to the LORD. The singer thanks him with a whole heart, bowing toward the holy temple, because God answered on the day he called and gave him strength. The singer says all the kings of the earth will thank the LORD when they hear his words, and that the LORD, though high above, pays attention to the lowly while knowing the proud from far off. It closes with confidence that the LORD will finish what he has begun for the singer, and a plea that God not abandon what his hands have made.

Claim by Claim

1. 138:1
   • The psalm is ascribed to David.
   • The speaker will praise God with his whole heart.
   • The speaker will sing praise to God in the presence of the elohim.
   • It is ambiguous whether the elohim here are gods, angels, or human rulers.
2. 138:2
   • The speaker will bow down toward God's holy temple.
   • The speaker will give thanks to God's name.
   • The thanks are given for God's covenant love and for God's faithfulness.
   • God has magnified his word above all his name.
   • It is ambiguous whether God exalted his word above his whole name, or exalted his name and his word above all things.
3. 138:3
   • On the day the speaker called out, God answered him.
   • God made the speaker bold with strength in his soul.
4. 138:4
   • All the kings of the earth will give thanks to the LORD.
   • The kings give thanks because they have heard the words of God's mouth.
5. 138:5
   • They will sing of the ways of the LORD.
   • The glory of the LORD is great.
6. 138:6
   • The LORD is high.
   • The LORD looks upon the lowly.
   • The LORD knows the lofty from a distance.
7. 138:7
   • If the speaker walks in the midst of trouble, God preserves his life.
   • God stretches out his hand against the anger of the speaker's enemies.
   • God's right hand saves the speaker.
8. 138:8
   • The LORD will complete what concerns the speaker.
   • The LORD's covenant love endures forever.
   • The speaker asks God not to abandon the works of his own hands.

Words Worth Explaining

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

138:1

"The gods" translates Hebrew *elohim*, a word that can mean gods, or the divine beings of a heavenly court, or, as the ancient Greek and Latin translations took it here, angels; some older English versions and Jewish tradition read it as human judges or rulers. The Hebrew leaves the sense open. The point of the phrase is the setting: the singer praises in the presence of whatever other powers are supposed to be there.

138:2

Bowing or praying while facing the temple in Jerusalem was a normal practice for Israelites who were somewhere else; the direction you turned showed which God you were addressing. The line does not mean the singer is inside the building. "Faithful love" translates *hesed*, the loyalty owed inside a binding relationship, the steady commitment of someone who keeps their obligations to you, not warm feeling. "Faithfulness" translates a separate word, *emet*, meaning reliability or truth: what can be depended on. The last clause is one of the hardest lines in the Psalms. The Hebrew reads roughly "you have made your word great above all your name," which is odd, since a god's name normally outranks everything. Some translators rearrange it to "you have exalted your name and your word above all else." The rendering keeps the difficulty rather than smoothing it out.

138:3

"Soul" here translates *nephesh*, which in Hebrew means the whole living person (your life, your appetite, your very self), not an immaterial part housed inside a body. "Strength in my soul" means strength in the person, through and through.

138:4

"The words you speak" would be heard as a royal announcement, the kind of decree a king issues and messengers carry to other kingdoms. That is why kings, rather than ordinary people, are the ones pictured responding.

138:5

"Ways" translates a word for roads or paths, used of how someone habitually acts. To sing about the LORD's ways is to sing about the manner in which he deals with people.

138:6

"Low" translates a word for those who are physically or socially down, poor, powerless, pressed on. "Knows only from far away" is a deliberate reversal of the usual picture: it is the high God who comes close to the low, and holds the high-and-mighty at arm's length.

138:7

The right hand was the sword hand, the strong hand, and "right hand" became a standard Hebrew figure for someone's power in action. Saying God's right hand saves is saying his full force is applied.

138:8

The verb means to complete, finish off, or bring to its intended end. The Hebrew phrase is compressed (literally something like "the LORD will complete on my behalf") leaving what he will complete unstated, so translators supply "his purpose for me" or "what concerns me." "The things your own hands have made" is a potter-and-clay image applied to the speaker himself: he is asking the maker not to abandon his own handiwork.