1For David.
I acclaim You with all my heart,
2I bow toward Your holy temple,
for Your kindness and Your steadfast truth,
for You have made Your word great across all Your heavens.
3On the day I called You answered me,
You made strength well up within me.
4All kings of the earth will acclaim You, LORD,
for they have heard the words of Your mouth.
5And they will sing of the ways of the LORD,
for great is the LORD’s glory.
6For high is the LORD yet the lowly He sees,
and the lofty, from a distance, He knows.
7Though I walk in the midst of straits,
You give me life in spite of my enemies’ wrath.
You stretch out Your hand,
and Your right hand rescues me.
8 The LORD will requite me.
O LORD, Your kindness is forever.
Do not let go of Your handiwork.
PSALM 138 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
1. I acclaim You. As repeatedly elsewhere, the initial verb for acclaim or thanks signals a thanksgiving psalm. The individual who is offering thanks here appears to have been rescued from enemies who sought his undoing (verse 7), though it is unclear whether these are actual martial enemies or hostile people who wanted to harm him in some other way (perhaps judicially).
before gods. This implicitly polytheistic phrase has troubled interpreters through the ages. The Aramaic Targum rendered it, not very convincingly, as “judges.” Following this line, Rashi and other medieval exegetes understood it as a reference to the Sanhedrin (!). It is most plausible to see here either a linguistic fossil from polytheism or even an anti-polytheistic polemic gesture: I hymn to You in defiant presence before all those deities that people imagine to be real gods.
2. for You have made Your word great across all Your heavens. The Hebrew is problematic. The literal sense of the received text is “for You have made Your word greater than all Your name.” This translation adopts a frequently proposed emendation, reading instead of shimkha, “Your name,” shameykha, “Your heavens.”
3. You made strength well up within me. The verb hirhiv is surprising because it would generally mean something like “to make proud.” It could have an extended meaning here, or it could be a mistake for hirḥiv (literally, “to broaden”) or hirbah (“to increase”), as several of the ancient versions show.
4. All kings of the earth . . . / have heard the words of Your mouth. The background of this line is not self-evident. The idea that the rulers of all the nations will acclaim the God of Israel is in keeping with a reiterated theme of Deutero-Isaiah, as many scholars have noted. But, at least on the face of it, the saving act of YHWH in this psalm is in the life of one individual, so the kings of the earth would scarcely be aware of it. Perhaps hearing God’s words—realizing the truths He has revealed to humankind—is an action entirely independent of the plight from which the thankful speaker of the poem has been rescued. God has shown His kindness to the speaker, and this same attribute, for different reasons, is recognized across the earth.
6. the lofty, from a distance, He knows. The Hebrew syntax also allows a different construction, “the Lofty [One] from a distance knows,” but that adjective (gavoah) is not generally used as an epithet for God, and the pairing of antithetical objects to the verb in each half of the line is much more in keeping with biblical poetic practice.
8. requite me. The Hebrew verb gamar might also mean “finish” or “complete” (its fixed meaning in later Hebrew), but the context suggests that here it is the equivalent of the verb gamal, “requite.”
Do not let go of Your handiwork. The Hebrew verb has a concreteness diluted by the conventional translation as “forsake.” The verb hirpah means to relax the muscles of the hand so that what it holds is dropped or released. The speaker, as a human creature, reminds God that he is God’s own handiwork. The use of the “hand” component in all likelihood encouraged the poet to choose this particular verb. God is thus implicitly figured as a potter (as in Genesis 2) who is implored not to loose his hand and allow what he has made to fall and shatter.