Scripture Daily

Context No. 197 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 138:1-8: in context

1I will give you thanks with my whole heart. Before the gods, I will sing praises to you. 2I will bow down toward your holy temple, and give thanks to your Name for your loving kindness and for your truth; for you have exalted your Name and your Word above all. 3In the day that I called, you answered me. You encouraged me with strength in my soul. 4All the kings of the earth will give you thanks, LORD, for they have heard the words of your mouth. 5Yes, they will sing of the ways of the LORD, for the LORD’s glory is great! 6For though the LORD is high, yet he looks after the lowly; but he knows the proud from afar. 7Though I walk in the middle of trouble, you will revive me. You will stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies. Your right hand will save me. 8The LORD will fulfill that which concerns me. Your loving kindness, LORD, endures forever. Don’t forsake the works of your own hands.

Psalm 138 is a short thanksgiving attributed to David, and it opens in an unexpected place. I give you thanks with my whole heart, before the gods I sing your praise. Whatever those other gods are taken to be, the psalm stages its worship in front of them, as a public act rather than a private one.

Then the reason: on the day I called, you answered me, you increased strength in my soul. It is specific, a particular day when something was asked and something came back.

The middle of the psalm imagines all the kings of the earth joining in when they hear God's words, and then the line that turns it: though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from far away. Height is not distance. The high God is near to the low and keeps the proud at arm's length, which is the opposite of how status usually works. The psalm ends with a hand: though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life, you stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies. Not around the trouble, in the middle of it. And then a request that reads like a worry: do not forsake the work of your hands. Where do I want to be met, and have I been asking to be taken out of something instead?

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