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!
1 sn Psalm 113. The psalmist praises God as the sovereign king of the world who reaches down to help the needy.
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.
3 tn Heb “above the sky [is] his splendor.”
4 tn Heb “the one who makes high to sit.”
5 tn Heb “the one who makes low to see.”
6 sn The language of v. 7 is almost identical to that of 1 Sam 2:8.
7 tn Heb “of the house.”
8 tn Heb “sons.”