Psalms 135
Psalm 135 belongs to the Hallelujah psalms - it opens and closes with the same cry, Praise ye the LORD - and it is, more than almost any other, a psalm built out of other Scripture. Line after line echoes earlier passages: the call to the servants who stand in God's house, the confession of His sovereignty over heaven and sea, the roll-call of the exodus and the conquest, the great satire of the idols.
The psalmist has so soaked himself in the words God's people had already sung and remembered that, when he sits down to praise, those words rise up and become his own song. This is what worship sounds like in a heart that has been filled with the whole story.
The psalm moves in clear waves. It begins with the summons itself - Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the name of the LORD; praise him, O ye servants of the LORD (v. 1) - and gives the reason in a single, warm line: for the LORD is good… for it is pleasant (v. 3). It grounds that goodness in two things: a people chosen and held close, Israel for his peculiar treasure (v. 4), and a sovereignty that knows no rival, Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places (v. 6).
Then it turns to history - Egypt struck, kings slain, a land given - and shows that the God being praised is the God who has actually acted to save.
The psalm's sharpest moment is its portrait of the idols, set deliberately against the living God who did whatsoever he pleased. The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not (vv. 15-16) - a god with every feature of life and not one of its powers. And out of that picture comes the line that turns the satire back on the worshipper: They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them (v. 18).
We are formed into the likeness of whatever we worship; trust a dead thing and the soul grows deaf, trust the living God and it comes alive. So the psalm ends where it began, calling every house and every God-fearer to the one fitting response: Bless the LORD… Praise ye the LORD (vv. 19, 21).
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 135:1-7Praise Ye the Name of the LORD
1Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the name of the LORD; praise him, O ye servants of the LORD. 2Ye that stand in the house of the LORD, in the courts of the house of our God, 3Praise the LORD; for the LORD is good: sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant. 4For the LORD hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar treasure. 5For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. 6Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places. 7He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries.
The psalm does not ease into its subject; it begins at full voice and stays there: Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the name of the LORD; praise him, O ye servants of the LORD (v. 1). Three times in the first breath the call goes out, and it is addressed to servants - those who stand in the house of the LORD (v. 2), who have a place near Him and know Him by name.
But notice that the psalm refuses to leave the command bare. It gives a reason, and the reason is not duty but delight: Praise the LORD; for the LORD is good: sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant (v. 3). Two grounds are laid side by side. We praise because the LORD is good - the object of praise deserves it, being good at the root of His being. And we praise because it is pleasant - the act itself is sweet, fitting, the thing the soul was made to do.
There is no grudging worship here, no praise wrung out by obligation. The psalmist has discovered what the servants of God always eventually discover: that to praise the One who is good is not a burden laid on the worshipper but a gladness opened up to him. The command and the joy turn out to be the same thing.
And the New Testament takes that very phrase and lays it over the whole company of those redeemed in Christ. Writing to scattered believers, the apostle Peter says they are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Pet. 2:9) - and notice that the purpose of being God's treasure is exactly the purpose of this psalm: to shew forth the praises of God.
Paul writes that Christ gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works (Titus 2:14). The treasure the psalm sings of being chosen is, in the fullness of time, a treasure purchased - a people made God's own not only by election but by the giving of His Son. The same astonishing word that David could speak over Israel is spoken now over everyone gathered to Christ: his peculiar treasure.
What He purposes, He performs - in every sphere there is, top to bottom. The Hebrew Scriptures returned to this confession again and again, and the apostle Paul gathered it up into a single phrase about the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will (Eph. 1:11). The same freedom the psalmist praised over creation, Paul saw at work in redemption: a God whose good pleasure is not thwarted, who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think (Eph. 3:20).
And the Son shared that freedom and lived from it - What things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise (John 5:19), and to the wind and the sea, when even the deep places seemed to threaten, He simply said, Peace, be still (Mark 4:39), and was obeyed. The God of verse 6, who did whatsoever He pleased in the seas and all deep places, is the God we see standing in a boat, doing exactly that.
The psalm makes the great claim - whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he - and then immediately points to the evidence hanging over the worshipper's head: He causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain; he bringeth the wind out of his treasuries (v. 7). The sovereignty just confessed is not an abstraction kept in heaven; it is at work in the weather. The mist that rises off distant horizons, the lightning that splits a storm sky, the wind that comes from nowhere a man can name - the psalmist sees all of it as the doing of God, drawn out of His treasuries as a king draws supply from his storehouses.
The image is worth pausing on. To the ancient world, weather was the special turf of the storm-gods, the very thing the idols were supposed to control. The psalm quietly hands all of it back to the LORD: He, and no carved image, sends the rain and rides the wind. There is comfort in this for anyone who has felt small under a vast sky. The forces that seem most impersonal and beyond all human reach - cloud and storm and wind - are not random and not masterless.
They rise and break and blow at the bidding of the God who is good, the same God who chose a people for His treasure. The weather, rightly seen, is one more reason for the praise verse 1 commands.
This is a pattern you can use on the days praise will not come. When worship feels flat or forced, the problem is usually not that you need to squeeze harder at the emotion; it is that you have stopped looking. The psalm's method is to set the goodness and the works of God in front of the eyes until the heart catches up. So when you cannot feel like praising, do what the psalm does: rehearse what is true.
He is good. He chose you. He rules what you cannot. He holds the weather and the deep places and your own small life. Praise is not the spark you have to generate from nothing; it is the fire that catches when you put the right fuel in front of it. Sing praises unto his name; for it is pleasant - and you will most often find it pleasant on the far side of remembering who He is.
Psalm 135:8-14His Mighty Acts in Egypt and the Land
8Who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast. 9Who sent tokens and wonders into the midst of thee, O Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his servants. 10Who smote great nations, and slew mighty kings; 11Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan: 12And gave their land for an heritage, an heritage unto Israel his people. 13Thy name, O LORD, endureth for ever; and thy memorial, O LORD, throughout all generations. 14For the LORD will judge his people, and he will repent himself concerning his servants.
Having confessed that God does whatsoever he pleased (v. 6), the psalm now shows it - not in theory but in the history that made a nation. Who smote the firstborn of Egypt, both of man and beast. Who sent tokens and wonders into the midst of thee, O Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his servants (vv. 8-9). The praise is not built on a vague sense that God is mighty somewhere; it is anchored in particular acts on particular days.
The sovereignty of verse 6 has a face, and the face is the exodus - the night the firstborn of Egypt fell, the tokens and wonders that broke the grip of the greatest power on earth and brought a company of slaves out free. This is how the Bible characteristically grounds its worship: not in abstract attributes but in remembered deeds. Israel did not praise a God of mere ideas; it praised the God who did something, who acted in the open where it could be seen and told and handed down.
There is a discipline here for every worshipper. Faith is fed less by trying to feel reverent in general than by recalling, specifically, what God has actually done - in Scripture, and in one's own life. The psalm praises by remembering, and the remembering keeps the praise from floating free of solid ground.
The roll-call of God's acts moves from rescue to inheritance: Who smote great nations, and slew mighty kings; Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og king of Bashan, and all the kingdoms of Canaan: And gave their land for an heritage, an heritage unto Israel his people (vv. 10-12). The named kings - Sihon and Og - were not symbols but real rulers who stood in Israel's way, and the psalm remembers them by name because the deliverance was concrete.
But the weight of the passage falls on the last line, and on one word repeated: an heritage, an heritage. The land was not seized as plunder; it was given, and given as an inheritance - the settled, lasting possession a father hands down to his children. This is the language of belonging, not of conquest for its own sake. The God who chose Israel for his peculiar treasure (v. 4) now gives that treasured people a home of their own, a place to live and rest and pass down through the generations.
Underneath the military memory is a tender intention: God was not merely defeating enemies; He was settling His children. And the doubling of the word presses the point that this was no temporary loan but a true inheritance - the kind of secure, given-for-keeps gift that the New Testament will take up and stretch into an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away (1 Pet. 1:4) for all who are made God's own.
The recital of the mighty acts rises into a confession about the One who did them: Thy name, O LORD, endureth for ever; and thy memorial, O LORD, throughout all generations (v. 13). The acts belong to the past - Egypt struck, kings slain, the land given long ago - but the name does not fade with the events. It endureth for ever. A memorial is what keeps a thing from being forgotten, and the psalmist's point is that God's renown is not a monument that crumbles but a living memory carried forward by all generations. Each generation hears the deeds, learns the name, and hands both on.
This is precisely why the psalm has spent its verses rehearsing old history: the remembering is the memorial. To praise God for what He did in Egypt is to keep His name enduring into one more generation. And then verse 14 turns the eternal name toward the present and the future: For the LORD will judge his people, and he will repent himself concerning his servants. The God whose name endures is not finished acting; He will still vindicate His people and relent in compassion toward His servants.
The same God who moved in the exodus is moving still - which means the praise the psalm commands is not nostalgia for a closed chapter but confidence in a God who is the same across every generation that remembers His name.
There is something here to carry into your own life of faith: keep a memory. Most of us forget far too quickly the particular things God has done - the prayer that was answered, the door that opened, the help that came when we had run out of our own resources. The psalm models a discipline of remembering, because a God remembered is a God praised, and a God praised is a God trusted for what comes next.
So make your own short roll-call. What has God actually done - in Scripture, and in the days of your own life? Name the deeds, as the psalmist names Sihon and Og. Thy name, O LORD, endureth for ever - and one of the ways it endures is when you refuse to forget, and turn your memory into praise.
Psalm 135:15-21They That Make Them Are Like Unto Them
15The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. 16They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; 17They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths. 18They that make them are like unto them: so is every one that trusteth in them. 19Bless the LORD, O house of Israel: bless the LORD, O house of Aaron: 20Bless the LORD, O house of Levi: ye that fear the LORD, bless the LORD. 21Blessed be the LORD out of Zion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.
Against the living God who smote Egypt and gave a land, the psalm now sets the gods who can do nothing at all, and the contrast is merciless. The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men's hands (v. 15). That single phrase, the work of men's hands, settles the matter before the satire even begins: a god you manufactured cannot be greater than the hands that made it.
Then comes the catalogue, organ by organ: They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not; They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths (vv. 16-17). The idol is built in the shape of a living thing and possesses not one of its powers. It has the mouth of a speaker who cannot speak, the eyes of a watcher who cannot see, the ears of a listener who cannot hear, and - the final, damning detail - neither is there any breath in their mouths. No breath: the very mark of life, the thing God breathed into the first man, is precisely what the idol lacks.
The wit is sharp, but the point underneath is deadly serious. To worship such a thing is to pour out prayer and fear and hope on something that cannot return a single one of them. It cannot hear the prayer, cannot see the need, cannot lift a finger to help. Set this beside verse 6 - the LORD who did whatsoever he pleased - and the difference is simply the difference between the living and the dead.
Worship is never a one-way transaction - whatever you give your ultimate trust to is quietly reshaping you into its own image. Centuries later the apostles met this very contrast in the flesh. When the people of Lystra tried to offer sacrifice to them as gods, Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes and cried out, urging the crowd to turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein (Acts 14:15) - the psalm's exact distinction between dead images and the living Maker.
The closing line of John's first letter takes the warning and makes it tender: Little children, keep yourselves from idols (1 John 5:21). And the deepest answer is not a warning but a person. The God who is no carved image is the One the New Testament shows walking among us - of whom the officers said, Never man spake like this man (John 7:46), where idols are silent; who declared, I am the light of the world (John 8:12), where idols are blind.
To trust Him is to be remade into His likeness, the very reversal of verse 18.
Having exposed the dead idols and the deadness they breed, the psalm turns back to the living God and ends as it began - with a summons to praise, now widened to take in everyone. Bless the LORD, O house of Israel: bless the LORD, O house of Aaron: Bless the LORD, O house of Levi: ye that fear the LORD, bless the LORD (vv. 19-20). The call goes out in widening circles: first the whole nation, the house of Israel; then the priests, the house of Aaron; then the wider tribe of temple servants, the house of Levi; and finally the broadest circle of all, ye that fear the LORD - a phrase that reaches past Israel to anyone, of any background, who has come to reverence the true God.
No one near to God is left out of the summons, and the gate is opened wide enough to include the God-fearer who was never born into the household at all. Then the psalm gathers every voice into one closing blessing: Blessed be the LORD out of Zion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD (v. 21). It ends on the same two words it began with - Praise ye the LORD - so that the whole psalm is enclosed, front and back, in the single cry of hallelujah. Everything between the two shouts - the goodness, the sovereignty, the mighty acts, the folly of the idols - has been one long argument for the praise that frames it.
The psalm does not merely command worship; it builds the case for it, and then lets the case break out, at the last, into the simple, fitting word it started on.
So the question to sit with is honest and a little uncomfortable: what am I actually leaning on to make me safe, secure, significant? And then - what is it making me into? If you have given yourself to something that cannot finally see you or help you, you may already feel the deadness it breeds: the numbness, the restlessness, the dulled ability to hear God. The psalm's remedy is not to try harder at feeling alive but to change the object of your trust.
Bless the LORD, the closing verses say - the living God, who sees and hears and acts, the One in whom the dead come alive. Trust the living One, and by the same law that deadens the idolater, you will be made like Him - your eyes opened, your ears unstopped, your heart quickened. You become like what you worship; so worship the One who is life.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Praise Ye the Name of the LORD
- 1 Peter 2:9a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.The “peculiar treasure” of verse 4 laid over the whole company redeemed in Christ.
- Ephesians 1:11who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.The freedom of God in verse 6 - whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he - carried into the New Testament.
- Exodus 19:5then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine.The original promise behind verse 4 - the very word the psalm reaches back to gather.
- Mark 4:39and he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased.The God of verse 6 who did whatsoever he pleased in the seas, seen doing exactly that.
His Mighty Acts in Egypt and the Land
- Exodus 12:29the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.The night behind verse 8 - the mighty act the psalm reaches back to remember.
- Psalm 136:17-22To him which smote great kings... Sihon king of the Amorites... and Og the king of Bashan... and gave their land for an heritage.A near-twin recital of verses 10-12, set to the refrain of God's enduring mercy.
- 1 Peter 1:4To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.The given heritage of verse 12 stretched into the lasting inheritance of those made God's own.
- Deuteronomy 32:36For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants.The promise verse 14 quotes - the God who vindicates and relents toward His own.
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. 15-18) and the living God, preached by the apostles at Lystra.
- Psalm 115:4-8Their idols are silver and gold... They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.The near-twin of verses 15-18, including the law of verse 18 that the worshipper grows like what he trusts.
- 1 John 5:21Little children, keep yourselves from idols.The warning of verse 18 made tender - the closing charge of John's letter to those who know the living God.
- Isaiah 44:9They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their delectable things shall not profit.The fuller satire behind verse 15 - a god fashioned by the hands that ought to be worshipping.