Psalms 118 Footnotes

Ps 118 The psalm has no superscription positing a historical occasion for its composition. In one view, it fits the return from Babylonian captivity. The nation (represented by the speaker) had been severely disciplined for sin, being surrounded almost to extinction by the nations. But the Lord delivered his people, and the nation returned to building God’s program and came to praise him for letting them live. In another view, this psalm was a ceremony celebrating a victory of the king in battle; the flavor is that of the Davidic psalms. The psalm is part of the “Great Hallel” (see note on Pss 113–118) designated for use at the festivals of Israel. Pss 117–118 were sung after the Passover meal. These would have been the psalms (“hymn” in many English versions) that Jesus and the disciples sang in the upper room after the institution of the Lord’s Supper, before they went out to the Mount of Olives (Mt 26:30).

118:5-12 In recounting his distress, the psalmist reported that all the nations surrounded him (the Israelites, whom he represented), but that he destroyed them in the name of the Lord. The verb in vv. 10-11 is literally, “cut off,” not a military word but the word meaning “to circumcise.” The psalm could refer simply to military action in the Lord’s cause. The reference to circumcision could also mean that the enemies were “converted” to a respect for the Lord, in a change of heart, through his powerful intervention (his “name”). Historically, the Jews were released from their captivity by the kindness of the Persian rulers, who supplanted their Babylonian captors.

118:22 This familiar verse is the heart of the worshipers’ praise. In one view, the stone was Israel, represented by its king, and the builders were the world empires—Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon—who could move puppet states around at will. Judah, which they considered trivial, had again become the capstone of God’s building program. Alternatively, one thinks of David who was not considered a likely candidate for Israel’s anointed ruler (1Sm 16:1-12). Because the psalms were generalized for community use, the language could apply to a variety of situations in which a faithful worshiper had been passed over in the search for leadership. In the NT Jesus expounded on this passage (Mt 21:42; Mk 12:10; Lk 20:17): he, the true Israel, is the stone that the builders—the Judean religious authorities and the Roman occupiers—rejected. Now, in the light of his resurrection and ascension, he is the centerpiece of God’s new structure for his kingdom (Ac 4:11).

118:25 The prayer of the worshipers entering the sanctuary was that the Lord would bring them full and complete salvation or deliverance. Their words “LORD, save us,” in Hebrew, are hoshi‘ah na’, which came into the liturgy of the church through Greek as “Hosanna.”