The high and humble God
The rich and powerful domesticate religion, making it an opiate to control the masses. But YHWH will have none of it. He sides always with society’s outcasts and most vulnerable against their oppressors.
1 Praise YHWH!
You who serve YHWH
praise YHWH for all he’s shown himself to be.
2 May YHWH’s good name
be blessed both now and forever.
3 YHWH’s name is to be praised
everywhere on earth.
4 YHWH reigns supreme over all the nations
his glory transcending the heavens.
5 Who can compare with YHWH our God?
He’s enthroned on high
6 yet he stoops down low
to behold the heavens and earth.
7 He raises the poor up from the dust
and lifts the wretched from the garbage pile
8 seating them with the very best
the rulers of his people.
9 To the woman grieving her childlessness
he gives a home
making her the happy mother of children.[1]
Jews still use this psalm in celebrating Passover, when God rescued the Israelites from slavery. Beginning a series of five hallel, or praise, psalms, it calls YHWH’s servants to praise him because the name he’s won in all his dealings with Israel is like no other. By calling for universal praise, the psalm is both missionary and polemical, implying that no other power has a prior claim on us.
Everyone in the surrounding nations sought the sort of exaltation they saw in their gods, who were extremely arrogant and aloof. By contrast, though YHWH is the highest of the high, he cares enough for the lowest of the low—implicitly, the enslaved Israelites and their descendants—to bend down and lift them up out of the gutter. In a world that valued wealth and children above all else, garbage pickers and childless women were scorned and shunned. But not by YHWH.
Combining such extremes of exalted majesty and humble condescension in one person was no less shocking in ancient times than it is to us today. And YHWH doesn’t just extract the outcast from their mess. He creates astonishing new possibilities for them, seating them among the nation’s rulers. He empowers the weak and completely reverses their fortunes, underscoring the fact that he’s like no rival god and deserves everyone’s praise everywhere on earth, both now and always.
Jesus’ disciples may well have sung this song the night he washed their feet and wept alone in Gethsemane. But if they did, they didn’t know they sang of him, though they knew they sang of themselves, believing as they did that he’d come to rescue them—a tax collector, a Canaanite, and mere fishermen—to raise them up to rule with him in God’s kingdom.
Prayer:
Jesus, how amazing that you left heaven’s glory to save lost souls like me, that you washed your disciples’ feet, that you died alone, all to raise us up! I’m so grateful that you came not just to save us from ourselves, but also to reign with you forever. I worship you alone. Amen.
In your free moments today, meditate on these words:
Who can compare with YHWH our God?
He’s enthroned on high
yet he stoops down
to behold the heavens and earth.
[1] The Hebrew text ends with “Praise YHWH,” but it seems more likely that that call to praise belongs at the start of Psa. 114 instead. For more on this, see the note at Ps. 114:1.
