Today’s Passage: Psalm 113
This short psalm opens a set of six psalms Jewish tradition would come to sing together at one of the year’s most significant meals.
Context The opening of the Hallel
Psalm 113 opens what later Jewish tradition calls the “Egyptian Hallel,” Psalms 113 through 118, songs of praise traditionally sung at Passover. Tradition holds that Jesus and His disciples would have sung part of this same set of psalms at the Last Supper itself, since Matthew records that “when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives” (Matthew 26:30) immediately after that meal. The very words this psalm opens with may have been among the last Jesus sang before His arrest.
As you read, hold this: the psalm holds two pictures of God together without softening either one, enthroned impossibly high, and reaching all the way down into the dust.
Psalm 113:1-4 (BSB)
Hallelujah! ¹ Give praise, O servants of the LORD; praise the name of the LORD. ² Blessed be the name of the LORD both now and forevermore. ³ From where the sun rises to where it sets, the name of the LORD is praised. ⁴ The LORD is exalted over all the nations, His glory above the heavens.
The psalm’s opening command widens immediately: not just Israel, but praise spanning “from where the sun rises to where it sets,” the entire inhabited world.
Psalm 113:5-6 (BSB)
⁵ Who is like the LORD our God, the One enthroned on high? ⁶ He humbles Himself to behold the heavens and the earth.
Word study He humbles Himself — shaphel (Psalm 113:6)
The verb behind “He humbles Himself” is מַשְׁפִּילִי (shaphel, mash-pee-LEE) — Strong's H8213, “to stoop down, to bring low.” The image is startling: God is enthroned so impossibly high that He must “stoop down” merely to look at the heavens, let alone the earth beneath them. This is not weakness. It is the psalm’s way of measuring just how far above creation God’s throne actually is.
Psalm 113:7-9 (BSB)
⁷ He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the dump ⁸ to seat them with nobles, with the princes of His people. ⁹ He settles the barren woman in her home as a joyful mother to her children. Hallelujah!
Study notes A song Mary sang centuries later
This psalm’s picture of a God who stoops from the highest throne to lift the lowest and most overlooked reappears almost exactly in Mary’s own song after learning she would carry the Messiah.
"He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has exalted the humble." Luke 1:52 (BSB)
Mary, herself an ordinary young woman from an unremarkable town, sings this psalm’s exact logic back to God: thrones brought low, the humble lifted up. The pattern this psalm celebrates in the abstract becomes, in Mary’s own story, something happening directly to her.
The psalm’s closing image, connected by its own header to Hannah’s story (1 Samuel 1), pictures God reaching into the most personal, painful kind of powerlessness, barrenness, and turning it into joy.
Personal Application
- Verse 6 pictures God stooping down from an impossibly high throne just to look at the earth. Does your own picture of God tend to emphasize His distant majesty or His close attention to your specific circumstances, and could this psalm widen that picture?
- The psalm’s closing examples, the poor lifted from the dust, the barren woman given a home full of joy, are specific and personal, not abstract. Is there a specific, personal lowness in your own life you have not yet trusted God to reach into?
Decision of the day: Name one specific, personal area where you feel overlooked or powerless, and bring it directly to God today, trusting the same reach this psalm describes.
Pray to Close
The truth to carry from this psalm: the God enthroned above the heavens is not too high to notice the lowest, most overlooked person, including you.
Praise: for the LORD who is exalted over every nation and still stoops to lift the needy from the dust.
Confess: any assumption that your own lowness or need is too small for God’s attention.
Ask: for the same reach this psalm describes, God’s hand extended into whatever feels most overlooked in your own life.
Worship for Today
Blessed Be Your Name · Matt Redman
This song’s title takes its exact opening line from verse 2, and its own confession that God is worth blessing whether life is a “road marked with suffering” or “the blessings pour” matches this psalm’s own confidence that the same LORD reigns over every extreme.
Listen: