Psalm 115:12

Psalm 115 opens by giving all the glory to God’s name, for the sake of his mercy and his truth (Psalm 115:1). The nations ask where Israel’s God is (Psalm 115:2), and the psalm answers, “Our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased” (Psalm 115:3). The idols of the nations are made by human hands: “They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not” (Psalm 115:4–8). Then come three calls to trust, to Israel, to the house of Aaron and to all who fear the LORD, and each is told, “he is their help and their shield” (Psalm 115:9–11).

Verses 12 to 18 give the answer to that trust. The God of Israel sees, remembers, speaks blessing and acts, everything the idols were shown to be powerless to do. The blessings go to the same three groups who were called to trust him.

Psalm 115 belongs to Psalms 113 to 118, known as the Egyptian Hallel, which Israel sang at its great feasts, Passover above all, and also Pentecost and Tabernacles, remembering God’s deliverance from Egypt. The psalm names no occasion. It may come from a time when the nations taunted Israel about its God, perhaps during or after the exile in Babylon.

“The LORD hath been mindful of us” uses zâkar, the ordinary verb for remembering. When Scripture says that God remembers, his remembering leads to his acting, as when he remembered his covenant with his people in Egypt and came to deliver them (Exodus 2:24). The idols have eyes that “see not”, while the LORD has kept his people in mind all along. “Hath been mindful” looks back over all he has already done for them, and “he will bless” looks forward with the confidence that comes from it.

The name LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, is God’s own covenant name, tied to the verb hayah, “to be”. It names him as the self-existent and eternal God, who is faithful to his promises and present with his people. The psalms speak of his faithfulness to his covenant (Psalm 25:10), and Moses calls him the faithful God who keeps covenant (Deuteronomy 7:9).

“He will bless” stands three times in verse 12. The verb bârak comes from a root meaning to kneel. Said of people toward God it means to bless him in worship, and said of God toward people it means to give them good. Israel knew that good in many forms: provision, protection, children, peace, victory and the continuing covenant, as the blessings of Deuteronomy 28 show. Saying it again and again makes the promise sure.

Verse 13 brings in the third group of verse 11, “them that fear the LORD”. The word yârêʼ describes a person who fears: fearing, reverent. To fear the LORD is to stand in awe of his holiness and power, and that awe shows itself in trust and obedience. Scripture calls it the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10) and of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), and says that it prolongs life (Proverbs 10:27). In Luke’s Gospel, God’s mercy is on them that fear him (Luke 1:50).

yâçaph means to add or augment, and it is often used of continuing to do something. Literally the LORD “will add upon you”, and the KJV’s “more and more” carries the sense of blessing added to blessing. The promise reaches “you and your children”. The word bên means a son, and in its wider sense a child or descendant, so the blessing runs on into the generations after.

In Israel a growing family was a sign of God’s favour and a strength to the household, and childlessness was a deep grief. This promise goes back to the first blessing on mankind, to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), and to God’s promise to bless Abraham and his seed (Genesis 12:2) and to multiply them “as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore” (Genesis 22:17). The blessings promised for obedience in Deuteronomy 28:1–14 cover the same ground.

“Ye are blessed of the LORD” speaks to the same people called to trust in verses 9 to 11. The verb is bârak again, and here it declares what they already are, people on whom the LORD’s favour rests. The source of that favour is named in full: the LORD “which made heaven and earth”. The verb ʻâsâh means to do or make, in the broadest sense, and “heaven and earth” together mean the whole creation, as in the first verse of the Bible (Genesis 1:1).

This is why the blessing can be trusted. The idols were made by human hands, and the LORD made everything there is. The gods of the nations around Israel were often tied to one region or to one power in nature, while the LORD made all of it, as Genesis 1 tells. Through Isaiah he declares that he is the first and the last (Isaiah 44:6–8). Every good gift comes down from above (James 1:17), and in the law the LORD promised to open the heavens in blessing on his people (Deuteronomy 28:12). The Maker of all has power to bless every part of life, and his blessing rests on those who trust him.

The word for heaven, shâmayim, is a plural noun meaning the heavens or the sky. The KJV’s “The heaven, even the heavens” doubles it for emphasis: the whole of the heavens belongs to the LORD, from the sky we see to the place where he dwells. The nations placed their gods in the sky and among its lights, and this verse claims every part of it for him, as verse 3 has already said: “Our God is in the heavens”. In Isaiah he says that heaven is his throne (Isaiah 66:1).

“But the earth hath he given to the children of men.” nâthan is the common verb for giving, used very widely, and here God is the giver. “Children of men” joins bên, son, and ʼâdâm, a human being or mankind, so the phrase means “sons of man” or “sons of Adam”, the whole human race. The earth is God’s gift to all mankind, as it was at the beginning, when he told the man and woman to fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:28) and put the man in the garden to work it and keep it (Genesis 2:15). Psalm 8 says that he made man to have dominion over the works of his hands (Psalm 8:6–8).

mûwth is the verb to die. The word for praise, hâlal, first meant to be clear, then to shine and to boast, and in worship to celebrate. It is loud, glad, public praise. The name of God in this verse is Yâhh, the short form of Yᵉhôvâh used in poetry, with the same meaning. To “go down into silence” is to go down to the grave, and dûwmâh means silence, used figuratively of death.

The Old Testament speaks of the dead going down to Sheol, a place of silence, where the praise of God’s people in the land of the living, with breath and voice in the congregation, comes to an end. Psalm 6:5 says that in death there is no remembrance of God, and the same words about the grave stand in Isaiah 38:18–19. The dead are like the idols here, silent toward God. That makes the present life precious, because it is the time God has given for praising him, and Ecclesiastes urges that whatever our hand finds to do be done with all our might (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

“But we” sets the living people of God beside the silent dead. The verb is bârak once more. In verses 12 to 15 it carried God’s blessing down to his people, and now it carries his people’s blessing up to him. When we bless the LORD we kneel before him in worship and declare how good and great he is. Our adoration and thanks acknowledge the blessedness that is already his.

The vow runs “from this time forth and for evermore”. ʻôwlâm properly means what is hidden, the vanishing point, and so time out of mind, past or future. The praise begins now and goes on without end, because God himself is eternal and always worthy of it. Psalm 145 vows the same daily praise (Psalm 145:2) and ends, “My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD” (Psalm 145:21). This praise is also public, offered in the gathered worship of God’s people, where it answers the nations who asked where Israel’s God was. Hebrews calls believers to offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually (Hebrews 13:15).

The psalm ends with “Praise the LORD”, in Hebrew the familiar Hallelujah, made from hâlal and Yâhh. The same verb and the same name stood in verse 17, of the dead who give God no praise. So the last word of the psalm is the very praise the dead have gone silent from, spoken now by the living.

The blessings of these verses come to their fullness in Jesus Christ. In him God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3–14), under the new covenant he promised through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Christ is the seed of Abraham to whom the promises were made (Galatians 3:16), and Paul says that those who belong to Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs of the promise (Galatians 3:29), and that the children of the promise are counted as the seed (Romans 9:6–8). Christ gives his sheep eternal life (John 10:28), and he came that they “might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

The house of Aaron points to him. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), our great high priest (Hebrews 4:14) and a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:17). He also lived the perfect fear of the LORD, obedient to death on the cross, and God has highly exalted him (Philippians 2:8–11). Through him small and great come to God on the same footing, for in Christ Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female are all one (Galatians 3:28). The increase of verse 14 went on in the early church, where the number of the disciples multiplied (Acts 6:7, Acts 9:31), and in the much fruit of those who abide in Christ (John 15:5), and it ends in a countless multitude from every nation, kindred, people and tongue (Revelation 7:9–10).

The Maker of heaven and earth is revealed in the Son: “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3), and “by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth” (Colossians 1:16–17). The Word became flesh and dwelt among the children of men (John 1:14). He calmed the storm with a word (Mark 4:39), and after his resurrection he declared that “all power is given ... in heaven and in earth” to him (Matthew 28:18). We wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13).

The praise of verse 18 belongs to him too. The Father seeks true worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23), every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:8–11), and every creature will give blessing and honour to him that sits on the throne and to the Lamb for ever (Revelation 5:13). That is where “for evermore” leads.

These verses show us a God who remembers his people before they call on him. He blesses the nation, its priests and everyone who fears him, the least as much as the greatest, and he keeps adding to their lives and to their children’s. His blessing is as sure as his work in creation, because the One who blesses is the One who made heaven and earth. He keeps the heavens for himself and has put the earth into our hands as a gift.

They also show what that blessing is for. It comes down from God and goes back to him as praise. Our life on earth is the season he has given for that praise, and in Christ, who rose from the dead, it carries on past the grave into the worship of heaven. The psalm’s last line belongs to everyone who has received his blessing: “But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for evermore. Praise the LORD.”