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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 113:7 - 113:7
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The thoughts of Psa 113:7 and Psa 113:8 are transplanted from the song of Hannah. עָפָר, according to 1Ki 16:2, cf. Psa 14:7, is an emblem of lowly estate (Hitzig), and אַשְׁפֹּת (from שָׁפַת) an emblem of the deepest poverty and desertion; for in Syria and Palestine the man who is shut out from society lies upon the mezbele (the dunghill or heap of ashes), by day calling upon the passers-by for alms, and by night hiding himself in the ashes that have been warmed by the sun (Job, ii. 152). The movement of the thoughts in Psa 113:8, as in Psa 113:1, follows the model of the epizeuxis. Together with the song of Hannah the poet has before his eye Hannah's exaltation out of sorrow and reproach. He does not, however, repeat the words of her song which have reference to this (1Sa 2:5), but clothes his generalization of her experience in his own language. If he intended that עֲקֶרֶת should be understood out of the genitival relation after the form עֲטֶרֶת, why did he not write מֹושִׁיבִי הַבַּיִת עֲקָרָה? הַבַּיִת would then be equivalent to בַּיְתָה, Psa 68:7. עֲקֶרֶת הַבַּיִת is the expression for a woman who is a wife, and therefore housewife, הַבַּיִת (בַּֽעֲלַת) נְוַת, but yet not a mother. Such an one has no settled position in the house of the husband, the firm bond is wanting in her relationship to her husband. If God gives her children, He thereby makes her then thoroughly at home and rooted-in in her position. In the predicate notion אֵם הַבָּנִים שְׂמֵחָה the definiteness attaches to the second member of the string of words, as in Gen 48:19; 2Sa 12:30 (cf. the reverse instance in Jer 23:26, נִבְּאֵי הַשֶּׁקֶר, those prophesying that which is false), therefore: a mother of the children. The poet brings the matter so vividly before him, that he points as it were with his finger to the children with which God blesses her.