Psalms 117:1-2: Why Are the Goyim Praising God?[1]
By Mitchell First
MFirstAtty@aol.com
In Hallel, has only two verses:
1) Praise Hashem all goyim; Laud him all the umim.
2) For his ḥesed is great[2] עלינו and the emet of Hashem is forever, Halleluyah.
Why are the nations of the world to be praising God? Because his ḥesed is great on the Israelites? Does this make sense? I first read about this interpretive issue in Rabbi Hayyim Angel’s excellent article in Through an Opaque Lens (2006). I am writing this article to collect more sources and expand the discussion. I will also offer a different solution than the various solutions proposed by Rabbi Angel.
Admittedly it is possible to read the two verses as independent of one another. But in the simplest reading they are connected by that explanatory word כי (=for) and the author is asking the nations of his time to praise God because of the extravagant ḥesed that God has provided to the nation of Israel.
A Sage in the Talmud (Pes. 118b) realizes this difficulty and reads the verse as follows: “Praise Hashem all nations”- for the great acts and wonders which God does for the nations; how much more so should we praise Him, for his chesed is great on us…” In other words, this Sage suggests that the second part of the verse refers to Israelites praising God, even though that is not mentioned in the verse.[3]
How do our commentaries deal with our issue?
Rashi writes that we should reinterpret the word כי so that it instead means “even though.” This drastically changes the meaning of the verse. R. Angel explains: “Rashi intimates that the nations are generally unhappy about God’s distinctive relationship with Israel. The Psalmist…calls to the nations to rise above their initial antagonism.”
It is true that כי has multiple meanings and “even though” is one of them. But this is still far from a plain sense reading of the verse.
Rashbam has an interesting approach to our verse (found in his comm. to Deut. 32:43). The nations are being told to believe in and praise God. If they do, he will give them great ḥesed just like he gave to Israel. This is clever but it does not read well into the verse.
Radak solves the difficulty a different way. The verse is talking about the messianic era. He cites Tzefaniah 3:9: “Then I will turn to the peoples…that they may all call the name of Hashem to worship Him with one shoulder.”[4] Radak adds that the nations did not believe that God could liberate the Israelites from being subjugated. On seeing that he did, they will praise him.
Malbim suggests a specific context for the psalm. In the late 8th century BCE Sancheriv exiled the Israelites and exiled non-Israelites with them. Eventually, God will return the Israelites together with these non-Israelites. Since God’s rescue of the Israelites will benefit these non-Israelites, they will praise him. There are of course no clues to any of this in these two verses.
The Daat Mikra commentary (composed by Amos Chacham) takes the approach that when Israel is downtrodden, the nations mock the God of Israel. See, e.g., Ps. 115:2: “Why should the nations say now: ‘Where is their God?’.” Conversely, when Israel is succeeding, the nations are impressed and praise him. It cites Ezekiel 36:23: “I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am Hashem… when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.” Thus, Daat MIkra interprets the background to Psalms 117:1-2 to be that the nations have seen that God saved Israel.
Another approach is to deny the legitimacy of the question. It seems that there are many other verses in the book of Psalms where the nations of the world are called upon to praise God for saving Israel. This approach is taken by R. Feivel Meltzer in his Pnei Sefer Tehillim (1982), p. 332.[5]
For example, at Ps. 98: 2-4, we have: “Hashem has made His salvation known and revealed His righteousness to the nations. He has remembered His love and his faithfulness to Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout for joy to Hashem all the earth…”
Also, at Ps. 100:1-3: “Make a joyful sound to Hashem, all the lands. Serve Hashem with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Know that Hashem is God: it is He that made us, we are His,[6] we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.”
Finally, there is the approach that the word aleinu in the phrase: “For his ḥesed is great aleinu“ is broad enough to include the ḥesed performed for non-Israelites as well. In the time of the Rishonim, R. Moshe Ibn Gikatilah took this approach.[7] In more modern times, among those who took this approach are Rav S.R. Hirsch and the Iyun Tefillah commentary in the Siddur Otzar Ha-Tefillot.[8]
This is a simple way to read the phrase, but is this approach a sensible approach? Here is the weakness with it. If ḥesed is being performed for Israelites and non-Israelites- for example, God provides rain– why would the goyim praise the God of Israel? If the goyim are living in proximity to the Temple, we could understand that they would praise the God of Israel. But if the goyim are living anywhere else, it is hard to imagine that they would think that the God that they are supposed to praise is the God of Israel.[9] It seems evident that it is only ḥesed performed for Israelites that will trigger the goyim to praise the God of Israel.
I would like to offer a different approach, one that is not mentioned by Rabbi Angel.[10]
I know from my own extensive writings on the acrostics in the book of Psalms that the fifth book (chaps. 107-150) dates to the early Second Temple period. (Probably the fourth book does too.) See my Esther Unmasked (2015), pp. 207-230.[11] With this background, we can suggest that the author of chapter 117 viewed the Jewish worship in the Temple as beneficial to all the nations. That is why he may be asking the nations to praise God for his goodness to the people Israel. God let the people of Israel rebuild their Temple.
Something like this approach is mentioned in the Soncino: “If, as the modern commentators hold, it is of post-exilic date, it proves that universalism was strong in the heart of the Jews when they were struggling to rebuild a national life, and that this task was undertaken in no chauvinist spirit.” I am sure that others prior to the Soncino suggested something like this as well.
I have also thought of a way that could help us decide whether “For his ḥesed is great aleinu“ includes ḥesed to non-Israelites and I have not seen the following argument elsewhere.
We can look at the rest of the verse: “and the emet of Hashem is forever…” “Emet” has two possible meanings here: “truth” or “trustworthiness.” Many give it a truth-related meaning here.[12] But I think that it is more likely that it means “trustworthiness.” Let us look at Psalm 100. Psalm 100 ends: “Ki tov Hashem le-olam ḥasdo ve-ad dor va-dor emunato.” This verse is somewhat similar to 117:2, just that it has the word emunato, instead of emet. This suggests that “trustworthiness” is the meaning of the emet of 117:2.[13] A reference to God’s trustworthiness seems to me to be more suggestive of keeping promises to Israelites than it is of keeping promises to both Israelites and non-Israelites.
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I will close with the fascinating (and obviously homiletical) interpretation of R. Isaac of Volozhin (d. 1849). I will present it the way it is summarized in the ArtScroll Tehillim commentary, in the comments to Psalms 117:2: “Once, a Russian prince asked Rav Yitzchak (Reb Itzaleh) of Volozhin to explain why non-Jews instead of Jews, are expected to praise God for his kindness to Israel. Rav Yitzchak replied without hesitation: ’You princes plan countless anti-Semitic schemes with which to destroy us, but our Merciful God always manages to foil your plots. Your secret councils are so well guarded that we Jews don’t even realize all the ways in which you intended to harm us, nor how God has saved us. Only you gentiles see clearly how God’s kindness to us was overwhelming[14]; therefore only you can praise him adequately!’ ”[15]
[1] I would like to thank Sam Borodach for reviewing the draft of this article.
[2] The implication of gavar here is that the ḥesed is so great that it is beyond measure. We see this from Psalm 103:11. See the Soncino and Daat Mikra there. I have seen the suggestion that because God’s ḥesed to Israel has been so great and beyond measure, the Psalmist believes that Israel cannot adequately discharge its responsibility to praise God by itself. He therefore invites the rest of the world to praise God as well.
[3] See also Midrash Tehillim 117:2 which splits our two verses into three different voices.
[4] The last two words are a metaphor for “together;” i.e., joined by a single yoke.
[5] He cites the earlier scholar Yechezkel Kaufmann who takes this approach and who laughs at those who think that 117:1-2 is an anomaly.
[6] I am translating according to the kri, not the ketiv.
[7] He is cited in Ibn Ezra. He writes that God’s ḥesed to all is that he keeps us alive and sustains us.
[8] P. 447. I am sure that others took this approach in modern times as well. This approach to verses 117:1-2 is also perhaps implicit at Midrash Tehillim 117:1 in the statement by R. Tanchum about rainfall: “rainfall brings joy to the entire world.” See Rabbi Angel’s article.
[9] A few centuries later, there were Gentiles known as “Godfearers” who lived close and far and who feared and praised the God of Israel. But there is little evidence that the book of Psalms is dated later than the Persian period and there is no evidence for Gentile “Godfearers” as early as the Persian period unless one gives this meaning to the “yirei Hashem” mentioned at Psalms 115:11, 118:4, and 135:19.
The Soncino commentary to 115:11 observes that many modern expositors understand the “yirei Hashem” references to be to “pious Gentiles who come to worship in the Temple.” But the Daat Mikra commentary mentions several possible interpretations: 1) Israelites who took on extra stringencies, 2) another term for all Israelites, 3) converts, and 4) ḥasidei umot ha-olam. Another suggestion is that ”yirei Hashem” are Israelites who serve God out of fear, in contrast to “Beit Aharon,” Israelites who serve God out of love. See The Complete ArtScroll Siddur, p. 635 (citing Maharal). I thank Michael Alweis for pointing out the interpretive issue of “yirei Hashem” to me.
[10] Of course, his article was limited to responses by traditional Orthodox sources.
[11] The title of the article I am referring to here is: “The Pe/Ayin Order In Ancient Israel and Its Implications for the Book of Tehillim.”Earlier than this, I had similar shorter articles in Biblical Archaeology Review (July-Aug. 2012) and in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 38 (2014). Basically I concluded that the acrostics in the first book of Psalms (chapters 1-41) were composed with the older pe preceding ayin order and that the ayin preceding pe order (reflected in the acrostics of the fifth book) did not begin to be used in ancient Israel until the post-exilic period. (The acrostics in the book of Psalms are only found in the first and fifth books.) See in particular the Daat Mikra commentary to Psalms 34:18, n. 9. (Psalms 34:16-18 makes much better sense assuming an original pe preceding ayin order.)
Although Bava Batra 14b attributes the book of Psalms to David and others who lived earlier than him, Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah 4:4 preserves the views of both Rav and R. Yochanan that Ezra was one of the ten figures involved in the composition of Psalms. A similar passage is found at Kohelet Rabbah 7:19. Also, the scholar Avi Hurvitz has shown that the Hebrew of the fourth and fifth books of Psalms is later than that of the earlier books. (Note that the word Halleluyah is only found in the fourth and fifth books.) In modern times, Malbim (intro. to Psalms) and Daat Mikra (intro. to Psalms, pp. 13 and 47) are willing to accept that parts of Psalms date to the early Second Temple period. The commentary of Rashbam on most of Psalms (discovered in the 1990’s in a library in Russia, but not yet fully published) takes this position as well. (For the passages, see the 1997 article by I. Ta-Shema in Tarbitz 66, p. 418. When Ta-Shema wrote his article, the identity of the author of this commentary was not yet known.) It bears emphasizing that at Psalms 126:1 we have the phrase “shivat Tziyon” and at 137:1 we have the phrase “al naharot Bavel sham bakhinu.” See also R. Hayyim Angel, Vision from the Prophet and Counsel from the Elders (2013), pp. 210-18.
[12] See, e.g., the 1917 Jewish Publication Society of America translation (included at the top in the Soncino): “And the truth of the Lord endureth forever.”
[13] At Psalms 146:6, we have ha-shomer emet le-olam. Here too emet seems to have a trust-related meaning. See Daat Mikra.
[14] In their translation in this work, ArtScroll translates the ki gavar phrase as “For His kindness to us was overwhelming.” That is why this phrase is used here. But see n. 2 above.
[15] The commentary is getting this story from Ḥiddushei HaGriz HaLevi on the Torah, Yitro 18:10. See similarly the Iyun Tefillah commentary in the Siddur Otzar Ha-Tefillot, p. 447.
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Is there any possibility that our two-verse chapter is only the remnant of a larger lost psalm? Daat Mikra rejects this. It points out that that there are three psalms that only have three verses: 131, 133 and 134. It admits that there are some Masoretic texts which join chapter 117 with either 116 or 118. But the texts that are generally more reliable (including the Aleppo Codex) have 117 as a separate chapter. In the Septuagint, it is also a separate chapter. Also, there is a Halleluyah at the end of 116 and another one at the end of 117. These words always indicate either a beginning or end of a chapter. Daat Mikra nevertheless concludes that Psalm 117 serves as an introduction to Psalm 118. This may be another way to determine the meaning of the aleinu of 117:2. But I will leave this potential direction to others.