Context & Key Themes
Psalm 135 is a grand hallelujah psalm — anonymous, expansive, and thoroughly liturgical. It opens and closes with praise and fills the space between with a sweeping survey of who the Lord is: the one who chose Israel, who rules over all creation, who acted decisively in history, whose name endures forever, and whose people the idols of the nations cannot touch. The psalm draws heavily from the Psalter’s own treasury as well as from Deuteronomy and Exodus, making it a kind of mosaic of Israel’s confessional heritage. Its logic is simple and relentless: the Lord is great, the nations’ gods are nothing, therefore praise Him without end.
Key Verse
“For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.”
— Psalm 135:5–6
Summary
The psalm opens with a threefold call to praise directed at the servants of the Lord who stand in His house and courts — picking up directly from where Psalm 134 left off with the night watch. Praise the Lord, for He is good; sing to His name, for it is pleasant. The reasoning begins immediately: the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel as His own possession. Election is the first ground for praise — not Israel’s worthiness, but God’s sovereign choice and delight in His people.
From election the psalm moves to sovereignty. The Lord is great; He is above all gods. Whatever He pleases, He does — in heaven and earth, in seas and deeps. This is total, unqualified authority. The evidence follows: He makes clouds rise, produces lightning, brings wind from His storehouses. He struck down Egypt’s firstborn, sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh, defeated many nations and killed mighty kings — Sihon, Og, and all the kingdoms of Canaan — and gave their land as a heritage to Israel. The historical recitation is not nostalgia. It is the documentation of a God who acts, who intervenes, whose pleasures become events in real history.
Then the pivot: Your name, O Lord, endures forever. Your renown throughout all ages. The Lord will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants. And in contrast to the eternal, living, acting Lord stands the absurdity of the nations’ idols — silver and gold, the work of human hands. Mouths that do not speak. Eyes that do not see. Ears that do not hear. No breath. And the psalm’s sharpest observation: those who make them become like them, and so do all who trust in them. Worship shapes the worshiper in the direction of what is worshiped.
The psalm closes with a final cascade of blessing — Israel, Aaron, Levi, all who fear the Lord — and the benediction: blessed be the Lord from Zion, He who dwells in Jerusalem. Praise the Lord.
Reflection
The line about idolmakers is one of the most penetrating in all of scripture and one the New Testament will echo: those who make them become like them. Worship is not a neutral act. Whatever a person gives their ultimate attention, trust, and devotion to will shape them — over time — into its image. The idol has no breath, no voice, no sight, no responsiveness. And the person who pours their life into something that cannot see them, cannot hear them, cannot speak to them, will find themselves slowly becoming less able to perceive, to hear, to respond. This is not merely ancient polemic against stone statues. It is a precise description of what happens when any created thing is treated as ultimate.
The alternative the psalm offers is not just different content for worship but a categorically different kind of object: the Lord who does whatever He pleases, in heaven and earth and seas and deeps — the Lord whose name endures forever, who vindicates His people, who dwells in Jerusalem. To worship this God is to be drawn toward life, toward responsiveness, toward a being who sees and hears and speaks and acts. The worshiper is shaped accordingly. Praise the Lord.