Psalms 118

The psalm opens the way a procession opens - one voice calling, and the crowd answering back. O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever (v. 1), and then the summons goes out in widening circles: Let Israel now say… Let the house of Aaron now say… Let them now that fear the LORD say (vv. 2-4). First the whole nation, then the priests who serve at the altar, then everyone anywhere who fears God - each group given the same single line to sing back: that his mercy endureth for ever. You can almost hear it: a leader chants the call, and section after section of the assembly answers with the refrain. The point of the repetition is not that the worshippers are short of words. It is that this one truth can bear infinite repeating. God's goodness is not a mood that comes and goes; His mercy is not rationed out and then withdrawn. It endureth for ever - and a truth that lasts forever can be said forever without wearing thin.

After the opening chorus, a single voice steps forward to tell what happened: I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place (v. 5). The Hebrew behind distress carries the idea of a narrow, cramped place - being boxed in, hemmed on every side, with no room to move. And the answer is its exact opposite: God set me in a large place, a wide-open space where a person can breathe and stand and walk. That is the shape of the rescue this whole psalm celebrates: from the narrow squeeze of trouble into open ground. Out of that experience comes the confidence of the next verses - The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me? (v. 6). Notice the singer does not claim the danger is gone, nor that his enemies have vanished. He says the LORD is on my side, and that single fact resets the whole equation. The question what can man do unto me? is not bravado; it is arithmetic. When God is the larger fact, the threat is cut down to its true and smaller size.

The danger now comes into full view, and it is total. All nations compassed me about (v. 10) - surrounded, ringed in on every side. The psalm presses the word three times, the way real fear circles back on itself: They compassed me about; yea, they compassed me about… They compassed me about like bees (vv. 11-12). The image of bees is exact - a swarm that comes from everywhere at once, too many to fight, impossible to escape by running. And the honesty of verse 13 is unsparing: Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall. The pressure was not imagined; it nearly worked; the singer was very near to going down. But each surge of the threat is met by the same answer - but in the name of the LORD… but the LORD helped me. That little word but is doing the heaviest lifting in the passage. The enemies are real and the danger is genuine, and then comes the but that turns the sentence: the name of the LORD on one side of it, the swarm on the other, and the swarm does not win.

The rescue is credited to a single image, repeated like a refrain: the right hand of the LORD. Three times in two verses - the right hand of the LORD doeth valiantly. The right hand of the LORD is exalted: the right hand of the LORD doeth valiantly (vv. 15-16). The right hand, in the Scriptures, is the hand of strength and of action; to speak of God's right hand is to speak of His power actually at work, not power held in reserve. And it is set in the tabernacles of the righteous, where the voice of rejoicing and salvation is heard - the rescue has become a song sung in the tents of God's people. What the passage refuses to do is take any credit. The singer fought, the singer survived - but the victory is laid entirely at God's right hand, not his own. This is the instinct of true thanksgiving: when the danger is past, it does not congratulate itself on coming through. It looks at the deliverance and says, that was the right hand of the LORD - and turns the survival into worship.

The passage closes by naming the trouble in a way that does not flinch and does not despair: The LORD hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death (v. 18). Two things are held together here that we usually pull apart. First, the singer does not pretend the suffering came from nowhere, or only from his enemies; he can say the LORD hath chastened me - that God's own hand was somehow in the hard discipline he endured. And the word sore refuses to soften it: this was severe, not a light correction. But then the but returns, the same hinge that turned every earlier verse: but he hath not given me over unto death. The chastening was real and it was severe - and it had a limit. It went right up to the edge of death and stopped there. This is how the psalm has learned to read its own pain: not as proof that God had abandoned him, but as something that, however severe, was held within God's purpose and stopped short of the grave. The discipline did not end in death; it ended, as the next verses will show, at the open gates of the house of God.

The procession finally reaches its destination. Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the LORD (v. 19). The one who was hemmed in and nearly fallen now stands before the gates of God's house and asks to be let in - not to hide, but to give thanks. And the answer comes back as a kind of doorkeeper's reply: This gate of the LORD, into which the righteous shall enter (v. 20). There is a threshold here, and not everyone simply wanders through; it is the gate into which the righteous shall enter. But notice who is doing the entering in this psalm: a man who has just confessed he was chastened sore, thrust at, surrounded - one who can only come in because the LORD heard him and art become my salvation (v. 21). His righteousness is not a trophy he earned; it is bound up with the God who answered him and saved him. He comes to the gate not as the strong, but as the rescued, and he comes to do the one thing the rescued owe: I will praise the LORD.

The psalm crests into joy: This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it (v. 24). The day in view is the day of the rescue and the entering-in - the day the gates opened and the once-cornered worshipper walked through to give thanks. And the singer makes a deliberate claim about it: this is a day the LORD hath made. It did not simply happen; it was given, fashioned, set apart by God for exactly this. The right response to a God-made day of deliverance is not analysis but gladness - we will rejoice and be glad in it. The verse has rung out in worship ever since precisely because it fits more days than its first one. Every day in which God has answered, helped, brought through, opened a gate, is a day He hath made; and the proper thing to do with such a day is not to let it pass unmarked, but to take it as a gift from His hand and be glad in it.

As the procession reaches the altar, the psalm gathers two images that belong to the place: light and sacrifice. God is the LORD, which hath shewed us light: bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar (v. 27). First the light - God has shewed us light, made His face shine on His people, which in the Scriptures is the picture of favour and rescue and life. And then, in the same breath, the sacrifice: an animal is led up and bound with cords to the very horns of the altar, the projecting points at its corners. This is the proper end of a thanksgiving that began in distress - deliverance comes home to the altar, where a life is offered to God in gratitude for a life that was spared. The two halves of the verse belong together: light received, and a sacrifice given in answer to it. After everything - the surrounding enemies, the near-fall, the open gate, the rejected stone - the worshipper does not simply walk away relieved. He brings an offering. And then comes the last word, the same word the psalm opened with, closing the circle: O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever (v. 29). The song ends exactly where it began - inside the mercy that has no end.