Psalms 115
Psalm 115 is part of the Hallel, the cluster of praise psalms sung at Israel's great feasts, and it opens not with a request but with a renunciation. Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory (v. 1). The repetition is deliberate and emphatic - a refusal, said twice, to keep any of the honour for itself. Whatever Israel has, whatever deliverance it has known, the glory belongs to God alone, and the reason is given in the same breath: for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake. The good that has come is not Israel's achievement but God's mercy and faithfulness in action, and so the praise follows the source.3
From that opening the psalm moves through three clear movements. First it answers the taunt of the watching nations - Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God? (v. 2) - with a confession of who God actually is: our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased (v. 3). Then it turns to the gods of those same nations and exposes them in a stroke of devastating satire: Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands (v. 4), things with mouths that cannot speak and eyes that cannot see. And out of that contrast it draws its central call - the threefold summons to trust thou in the LORD (vv. 9-11), the One who is their help and their shield.
What gives the psalm its quiet force is the law it states almost in passing: They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them (v. 8). We are formed into the likeness of whatever we worship. Bow to a thing that cannot hear, and the soul grows deaf; bow to a thing that cannot see, and it goes blind - while those who trust the living God are made alive with His life. The psalm closes by facing the one limit that silences every false hope: The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence (v. 17). Over against that silence it sets the resolve of the living: But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for evermore (v. 18). It is a small psalm with a vast horizon - a refused glory, a living God, a warning against dead trust, and a praise meant never to end.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 115:1-3Not Unto Us, but Unto Thy Name
1Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake. 2Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God? 3But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.
The psalm opens by refusing something most of us hold onto with both hands: Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory. Notice the doubling. It would have been enough to say it once; saying not unto us twice is the sound of someone deliberately pushing the credit away, refusing even the smallest share of the honour. This is not false modesty. It is the recognition that whatever good has come - rescue, blessing, survival before hostile nations - did not originate in Israel. It came down from above, and so the glory must travel back to its source. And the psalm names that source precisely: for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake. The good Israel enjoys is the visible shape of two things in God - His mercy, His steadfast covenant love, and His truth, His unfailing faithfulness to His word. To give God the glory, then, is not flattery; it is simple honesty about where everything actually came from. The worshipper who can say not unto us has been set free from the exhausting work of building his own monument, and is left holding the one thing worth holding: the name of the God who is merciful and true.
The watching nations have a question, and it is meant to wound: Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God? (v. 2). It is the taunt thrown at every believer in a hard season - if your God is real, where is He? The psalm does not flinch from the question; it answers it head-on: But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased (v. 3). The answer turns the taunt inside out. The nations imagine that a God who cannot be seen must not be there. The psalm replies that He is exactly where the true God ought to be - in the heavens, above and over all, not a local idol to be pointed at on a shelf. And He is not idle: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased. His will is not blocked by circumstance, outvoted by enemies, or frustrated by the very nations doing the mocking. He does what He pleases, and what He pleases is good. So the apparent absence the heathen sneer at is not absence at all; it is transcendence. The God who cannot be carved or carried is the God who reigns, and that is precisely why He is worth the glory verse 1 hands Him.
Psalm 115:4-8They That Make Them Are Like Unto Them
4Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. 5They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not: 6They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: 7They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. 8They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.
Having confessed the God who is in the heavens, the psalm turns to look at the gods of the nations - and the contrast is merciless. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands (v. 4). That single phrase, the work of men's hands, already settles the matter: the maker is greater than the made, and a god you manufactured is no god at all. Then comes the satire, organ by organ: They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not (v. 5); ears that do not hear, noses that do not smell, hands that do not handle, feet that do not walk (vv. 6-7). The idol has every feature of a living being and not one of its powers - it is a perfect portrait of life with no life in it. The wit is sharp, but the point underneath is deadly serious. To worship such a thing is to pour out devotion, fear, and hope on something that cannot return a single one of them. It cannot hear your prayer; it cannot see your need; it cannot lift a finger to help. The whole machinery of worship runs, and nothing answers. Set this beside verse 3 - our God… hath done whatsoever he hath pleased - and the difference is the difference between the living and the dead.
The satire reaches its real target in verse 8, and it is not the idols at all - it is the people who make and trust them: They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them. Here the psalm states a law of the soul that runs through all of Scripture: we become like what we worship. Bow before something deaf, and over time you grow deaf to the voice of God; fix your hope on something blind, and you lose the ability to see what matters; pour your life into a dead thing, and a deadness creeps into you. Worship is never a one-way transaction. Whatever you give your ultimate trust to is quietly reshaping you into its own image, for better or for worse. This is why idolatry is so much more dangerous than it looks. A statue of silver and gold seems harmless - until you notice that the worshipper has begun to take on its blindness and its silence, growing as unresponsive to truth as the thing he serves. The flip side is the great hope hidden in the verse: those who trust the living God are, by the same law, being made alive with His life - their eyes opened, their ears unstopped, their dead hearts quickened. The only question is which way the transformation runs, and that is decided by what you worship.
Psalm 115:9-18He Is Their Help and Their Shield
9O Israel, trust thou in the LORD: he is their help and their shield. 10O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield. 11Ye that fear the LORD, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield. 12The LORD hath been mindful of us: he will bless us; he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron. 13He will bless them that fear the LORD, both small and great. 14The LORD shall increase you more and more, you and your children. 15Ye are blessed of the LORD which made heaven and earth. 16The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD'S: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. 17The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence. 18But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for evermore. Praise the LORD.
Out of the contrast between dead idols and the living God comes the psalm's central summons, and it arrives three times, like a bell rung in three registers. O Israel, trust thou in the LORD (v. 9); O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD (v. 10); Ye that fear the LORD, trust in the LORD (v. 11). The call goes out first to the whole nation, then to the priests - the house of Aaron, those nearest the sanctuary - and then to a wider circle still, ye that fear the LORD, a phrase that seems to reach beyond Israel to anyone, of any background, who has come to reverence the true God. No one is exempt from the call, and no one is excluded from it. And to each group the same promise is repeated, unchanged: he is their help and their shield. Two images, and both are active. A help is one who actually does something - the opposite of the idol that cannot lift a finger. A shield is one who stands between you and the blow, taking on himself the danger aimed at you. This is the exact reversal of verses 5-7: where the idol has hands that cannot handle, the LORD is a hand that helps; where the idol is a lifeless thing you must protect, the LORD is the living One who protects you. Trust, the psalm insists, is only as good as its object - and here the object is a God who helps and shields.
The threefold call to trust is answered by a threefold promise of blessing. The LORD hath been mindful of us: he will bless us; he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron (v. 12). First the past - He hath been mindful, He has not forgotten His people - and then, three times over, the future: he will bless. The same three groups summoned to trust in verses 9-11 are now named as the objects of God's blessing, as if to say that the trust and the blessing belong together. Then verse 13 throws the doors wide: He will bless them that fear the LORD, both small and great. The blessing is not reserved for the important, the influential, the high-ranking. It runs to the small as surely as to the great - the obscure believer and the famous one, the child and the elder, the overlooked and the celebrated, all gathered under the same promise. This is the generosity of the living God against the stinginess of the idols: where the dead images take devotion and give nothing back, the LORD takes the trust of His people and answers it with blessing poured out on every last one of them, no matter how small. And the ground of it all is that opening word: He hath been mindful of us. He remembers. He has His people in mind, down to the least of them.
The blessing widens out to its largest frame: Ye are blessed of the LORD which made heaven and earth. The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD'S: but the earth hath he given to the children of men (vv. 15-16). The One who blesses is identified by His greatest work - He is the LORD which made heaven and earth. This is the final answer to the idols of verse 4, which were themselves made by human hands: the God of Israel is not made, He is the Maker, and the whole of heaven and earth is His. And then a remarkable generosity: while the heavens remain the LORD's own dwelling, the earth hath he given to the children of men. The Maker of all has entrusted the earth to human hands - not to be hoarded or ruined, but as a gift to be lived on and cared for under Him. There is a quiet dignity restored here. The idolater debases himself before the work of his own hands; but the one who trusts the living Maker is handed a world to steward. The God who keeps the heavens as His throne does not grasp the earth jealously; He gives it. And the right response to such a Giver is exactly what verse 1 asked - not to seize the gift as if we made it, but to give the glory back to the One who made and gave it all.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 115 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for atsab (v. 4, the word behind “idols,” rooted in toil and pain), for the satire of the senseless images in verses 5-7, and for the threefold imperative batach (“trust”) in verses 9-11.
- Psalm 115 ↔ Acts 14 · 1 Corinthians 10 · 1 John 5 · John 11Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Psalm 115 to the rest of Scripture - the idol-satire (vv. 4-8) echoed in the apostolic call to turn from vanities to the living God (Acts 14:15) and to flee idolatry (1 Cor. 10:14; 1 John 5:21), and the silence of the dead (v. 17) answered by the One who is the resurrection, and the life (John 11:25).
- Psalm 115 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 115 - the emphatic doubling of “not unto us” in verse 1, the structure of the idol-satire, and the force of he is their help and their shield repeated through the threefold call to trust in verses 9-11.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Not Unto Us, but Unto Thy Name
- John 12:28Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.The cry of verse 1 - glory to God’s name - on the lips of the One who refused to seek His own.
- Isaiah 48:11For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it... and I will not give my glory unto another.The same jealousy for God’s name that verse 1 honours - glory belongs to Him alone.
- Daniel 4:35he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven... and none can stay his hand.The God of verse 3 who hath done whatsoever he hath pleased, confessed by a humbled king.
- Ephesians 1:11who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.The freedom of God in verse 3 - he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased - carried into the New Testament.
They That Make Them Are Like Unto Them
- Acts 14:15turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven and earth.The psalm’s contrast between dead idols (vv. 4-8) and the living God, preached by the apostles at Lystra.
- Isaiah 44:9-10They that make a graven image are all of them vanity... Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is profitable for nothing?The fullest version of verse 4’s satire - a god made by the hands that should be worshipping.
- Psalm 135:15-18The idols of the heathen are silver and gold... They that make them are like unto them.A near-twin of verses 4-8, including the law of verse 8 that the worshipper grows like what he worships.
- 1 John 5:21Little children, keep yourselves from idols.The warning of verse 8 made tender - the closing charge of John’s letter to those who know the living God.
He Is Their Help and Their Shield
- John 11:25-26I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.The answer to verse 17’s silence of the dead - spoken at a tomb by the One with power over the grave.
- Psalm 84:11For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory.The same picture of God as shield that the threefold call of verses 9-11 leans on.
- Genesis 1:1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.The Maker of verse 15 - the LORD which made heaven and earth, against idols that are themselves made.
- Revelation 1:18I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.The for evermore of verse 18 secured - the silence of the grave broken by One who lives.