Mazmur 113:1--114:8
Konteks113:1 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!
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
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!
114:1 When Israel left Egypt,
when the family of Jacob left a foreign nation behind, 10
114:2 Judah became his sanctuary,
Israel his kingdom.
114:3 The sea looked and fled; 11
the Jordan River 12 turned back. 13
114:4 The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs. 14
114:5 Why do you flee, O sea?
Why do you turn back, O Jordan River?
114:6 Why do you skip like rams, O mountains,
like lambs, O hills?
114:7 Tremble, O earth, before the Lord –
before the God of Jacob,
114:8 who turned a rock into a pool of water,
a hard rock into springs of water! 15
[113:1] 1 sn Psalm 113. The psalmist praises God as the sovereign king of the world who reaches down to help the needy.
[113:3] 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.
[113:4] 3 tn Heb “above the sky [is] his splendor.”
[113:5] 4 tn Heb “the one who makes high to sit.”
[113:6] 5 tn Heb “the one who makes low to see.”
[113:7] 6 sn The language of v. 7 is almost identical to that of 1 Sam 2:8.
[113:9] 7 tn Heb “of the house.”
[114:1] 9 sn Psalm 114. The psalmist recalls the events of the exodus and conquest and celebrates God’s kingship over his covenant people.
[114:1] 10 tn Heb “the house of Jacob from a nation speaking a foreign language.” The Hebrew verb לָעַז (la’at, “to speak a foreign language”) occurs only here in the OT.
[114:3] 11 sn The psalmist recalls the crossing of the Red Sea (Exod 14:21).
[114:3] 12 tn Heb “the Jordan” (also in v. 5). The word “River” is not in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.
[114:3] 13 sn The psalmist recalls the crossing of the Jordan River (Josh 3:13, 16).
[114:4] 14 sn The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. This may recall the theophany at Sinai when the mountain shook before God’s presence (Exod 19:18).
[114:8] 15 sn In v. 8 the psalmist recalls the event(s) recorded in Exod 17:6 and/or Num 20:11 (see also Deut 8:15 and Ps 78:15-16, 20).
