← All chapters
871 / 1113 · Psalms 113 · Return & Rebuilding · Undated; read here after the return (after 538 BC)

The God Who Stoops Down

Debated
Read

At a big school function the chief guest usually sits at the high table on the stage, garlanded, speaking into the microphone, far from the children at the back. Everyone remembers the rare guest who walks down the steps afterwards, crouches beside the smallest child and asks her name. The height made the stooping memorable. Psalm 113 is built exactly on that movement. It lifts God as high as language can go, above the nations and above the heavens themselves, and then in the same breath has him bend down to the dust, to the rubbish heap, to a woman whose house has no children in it.

Where it sits in the story: This is the opening of a group of six psalms, 113–118, that Jewish tradition calls the Hallel, or the 'Egyptian Hallel' because of its memory of the Exodus. In the Old Testament's big story, Israel had learned in Egypt and again in Babylon that its God rescues from the bottom. After the return, a small and poor community could sing that truth about itself: the God of heaven notices people at the bottom of the heap.

What this chapter is doing: To call every servant of the LORD, at every hour and in every place, to praise him, and to ground that praise in a surprising pairing: God's unmatched height and his readiness to lift the lowest.

Why it is read here: Books 4–5 of the Psalms carry few headings. Most scholars think the Psalter reached its final shape after the exile, so we read these untitled psalms at the close of the Old Testament story. Individual psalms may be much older.
The walk-through
  • 113:1–3 — A triple call to the LORD's servants: praise his name now and forever, from the rising of the sun to its setting. Praise is meant to fill all of time and all of the map.
  • 113:4–6 — God is high above the nations, his glory above the heavens. Then the question: who is like him? He is so high that he has to stoop even to look at the sky and the earth.
  • 113:7–9 — And he does stoop. He raises the poor from the dust and the needy from the ash heap, seats them with princes, and gives the childless woman a household of children. The wording closely echoes Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2.
What it showsThe psalm is the first of the Hallel group (113–118), which Jewish sources from the Mishnah onward describe being sung at Passover, with Psalms 113–114 recited before the meal in one early tradition.
Where the evidence stopsThe psalm has no heading and no datable reference; when it was written, and when it first became part of the Passover liturgy, cannot be fixed. Its closeness to Hannah's song shows shared tradition, not which came first.

Key verse: Psalm 113:7  ·  So what: Many people assume that the more important someone is, the less they notice the unimportant. This psalm refuses that logic. It says God's greatness is shown precisely in his attention to the overlooked. Later, Mary's song in Luke 1 sounds this same note, which is one reason Christians have long read the psalm alongside the story of Jesus' birth.

← Like Father, Like ChildYou have just read Psalm 112, a portrait of the generous person who fears the LORD (Psalms 112). Next, Psalm 114 remembers the Exodus itself, when sea and mountains ran from God's presence (Psalms 114).When the Sea Ran Away →
Sources & further reading
← All chapters