Commentary on Psalm 113

Consider “the name of the LORD,” a phrase repeated three times in the first three verses of Psalm 113 (The name “LORD” is repeated three times in the first verse alone and eight times in the nine verses of the psalm. The theme is crystal clear!).

Perhaps you cannot help but recall the commandment: “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God” (Exodus 20:7; Deuteronomy 5:11). This commandment admonishes us not to use “the name of the LORD” as a prop to promote an agenda or as a shield to cover an agenda that we know in our hearts is not the Lord’s. As preachers, this commandment demands that we remember the audacity of our task, discerning with faithfulness what we dare to proclaim in “the name of the LORD,” lest the words we speak from the pulpit make it harder for people to trust in the Lord, rather than sustaining and strengthening that trust.

We know, then, that we ought not use the Lord’s name wrongfully. But how do we use it rightly? How are we supposed to use it? The Lord’s Prayer is helpful here: “May your name be revered as holy” (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2). Or, more traditionally, “Hallowed be thy name.” In this prayer that Jesus taught us, we ask the Lord to help us honor the Lord’s name, in the words of Martin Luther, “as the greatest treasure and most sacred thing that we have.”¹ Psalm 113 leaves no question about what this looks like: Praise and bless the name of the Lord at all times and in all places! (verses 2–4).

Non-churchy types tend to balk at this notion. I hear the cynic asking, “How arrogant is the Lord, that the Lord needs constant praising and blessing?”

Good question. The Lord doesn’t! The one who created all things and reconciled all things to Godself without us does not need us—does not have needs. Period. To understand the psalmist’s call to praise the Lord everywhere and always, it is vital to note the genre.

Psalm 113 is not legal material; it is not a list of commandments. It is the work of an artist, a poet, a songwriter. “Praise the name of the LORD” is not an admonition to “Get your act together and show some respect!” to some narcissistic lord in the sky. Rather, it is sung out of an overflow, an uncontainable awe and wonder and thanksgiving at the name of the one who created the infinitely expansive cosmos and continues to care for each individual creature who lives in it, including you! (see also Matthew 10:29–30). It is an exclamation of joy that cannot help but be proclaimed for all who have ears to hear! Praise the name of the Lord, because—how could you not?!

In a world in which many of us can go online and purchase whatever we need without knowing where or how the product was grown or made, or the journey it took to sit on our doorstep, a world in which we can turn on a faucet without a clue about the water’s source, it takes no small amount of curiosity and wonder to trace these journeys further and further back, all the way to creation, until one cannot help but ask with the astonishment of a young child, the astonishment of the psalmist, “Who is like the LORD our God?!” (verse 5).

The preacher might play with the images in this psalm to open the doors of people’s imaginations to wonder at the majesty of the Lord, “who is high above the nations, and his glory above the heavens” (verse 4); who, in this psalm, does not sit on a throne in heaven somewhere, but is above even heaven, looking “far down on the heavens and the earth” (verse 6).

The incomprehensibility of the Lord doesn’t stop there. This inconceivably limitless Lord freely chooses to “bend down” (Psalm 86:1; 116:2) to human beings in order to “raise” us from the “dust” and “ash heaps” to which we condemn one another—especially the poor, ill, and those unable to fulfill the expectations society places upon them (verses 7–9).

For Christians, the character of the Lord that we hear proclaimed in this psalm is seen most clearly in Christ Jesus,

who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6–8)

In Christ, the Lord who “looks far down” (Psalm 113:6) comes all the way down to us, to the depths of the earth. The Lord of the cosmos, who might have remained abstract to and distant from us, freely chooses to be revealed as the Lord who is with us and for us, always. In Christ, the Lord walked through all the “dust” and “ash heaps” to which we could condemn him, all the way to death, and overcame death once and for all—for us. Through the Holy Spirit, the Lord unites us with Christ in his death and resurrection, raising us to new life with him and freeing us from all condemnation.

Therefore, whatever ash heap the world throws us on—and whatever ash heap we throw others on—does not have the final say. In Christ, we are set free from our death-dealing ways. Death itself is put to death. We are raised to “sit with princes” (verse 8), through no merit of our own.

“Who is like the LORD our God?” (verse 5). No one!

In faith, we cannot help but use the name of the Lord rightly, praising the one whose name is “the greatest treasure and most sacred thing that we have.”² Praise the name of the Lord!

Notes

1. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. Charles P. Arand et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 445.
2. Kolb, 445.