Psalm 138: I Give You Thanks with My Whole Heart

Psalm 138 begins the last Davidic collection in the Psalter. After this psalm there are seven more under David's name (139-145) and then the great closing Hallel of 146-150 brings the book to its doxological end. The placement is not accidental. The editors of the Psalter have arranged the final movement as David, then full chorus. The man who began the Psalter weeping in caves now opens the final movement giving thanks. "I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart." The Hebrew "odekha" is the same root that gives us Judah, the tribe of praise. The collection that began with kingship in Psalm 2 and trouble in Psalm 3 ends with a king whose primary posture is no longer anxiety but gratitude. Whatever else this signals, it signals that thanksgiving is a destination, not a starting point.

Verse 1 contains a phrase that has fascinated translators: "Before the gods I sing your praise." The Septuagint reads "angels" (Greek "angelon"). The Targum reads "judges." The Hebrew "elohim" can mean either heavenly beings or earthly authorities, and the ambiguity is probably the point. Whether David is singing in the divine council, before the gods of the nations, or before the magistrates of his own court, he is staking a public claim. Praise is not a private hobby. It is testimony delivered in the presence of every other power that might compete for our allegiance. Verse 2 anchors the testimony in the temple direction ("toward your holy temple"), and v3 names the answered prayer that triggered the song: "On the day I called, you answered me. You made me bold with strength in my soul." "Tarhiveni nephshi oz," you enlarged my soul with strength. The answer to prayer was not just rescue. It was an expanded interior.

The middle of the psalm widens the audience to the kings of the earth. Verses 4-6 envision foreign rulers hearing the words of YHWH and singing of the ways of the LORD. This is not conquest. It is conversion of hearing. The kings join because they have heard, not because they have been compelled. And the reason the LORD is worth their hearing is the inversion in v6: "Though the LORD is exalted, he regards the lowly. The haughty he knows from afar." Nearness and distance reverse what we expect. The proud think they have God's attention because of their height. Actually it is their height that puts them at a distance. The lowly, the "shaphal," are the ones the high God draws close to. This is the same theology Mary will sing in Luke 1:51-52 when she echoes Hannah from 1 Samuel 2.

The psalm ends with a confession that became one of the most quoted lines in Christian devotion. "The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me. Your hesed, O LORD, endures forever. Do not abandon the works of your hands." The Hebrew is "Adonai yigmor ba'adi." The verb "yigmor" comes from "gamar," to complete or finish. Paul reaches for the same theology in Philippians 1:6: "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." Whether Paul had Psalm 138:8 in mind or not, the logic is the same. The God who started the work is the God who finishes it. The psalm closes with a plea, not a triumph: "do not abandon the works of your hands." Even the king at the head of the final Davidic collection still asks not to be abandoned. Faith does not graduate from that prayer. It deepens into it.