Psalms is (by FAR) the longest book in the Bible.
Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible.
Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in the Bible. It’s also the middle chapter of the Bible. I’ve heard forever that Psalm 118 is the middle chapter but it really isn’t. I counted them. (You’re welcome.) There are 595 chapters before Psalm 118 and 592 after.
Psalm 116 is divided into 2 psalms in the Septuagint.
ALL of them are labeled in the Septuagint as “Alleluia” psalms The word hallelujah appears at the end of Psalm 116, the beginning AND end of Psalm 117, and in Psalm 118 I cannot find that the word “hallel” appears anywhere. There is a different phrase that can also be translated “praise the LORD” and it is yadah Yah.
Let’s dive in. 🤿
PSALM 116
The opening 9 verses of this psalm hint at a maturing of love for Yahweh.
Verses 1-2: I love the LORD because He heard and answered my prayers.
Verses 3-5: I love the LORD because He rescued me from the fear of death.
Verses 6-7: I love the LORD because He met me at my low point and gave me rest.
Verses 8-9: I love the LORD because he raised me from the dead (at the resurrection) and wiped away every tear and gave me a second, eternal life.
In the Septuagint, this is where the psalm (which is numbered 114) ends. I know. The numbering of the Psalms between the Septuagint and the Masoretic Texts is a bit confusing.
If Psalm 116 was originally 2 psalms, then this is the opening of the next one:
“I believed in you, so I said, “I am deeply troubled, Lord.” In my anxiety I cried out to you, “These people are all liars!”
Psalms 116:10-11 NLT
I wonder if the Apostle Paul was thinking of this when he spoke of the unfaithful in Israel:
“True, some of them were unfaithful; but just because they were unfaithful, does that mean God will be unfaithful? Of course not! Even if everyone else is a liar, God is true. As the Scriptures say about him, “You will be proved right in what you say, and you will win your case in court.”
Romans 3:3-4 NLT
There may be times when you truly are surrounded by liars. There are some very deceitful people in this world and there’s nothing to stop them from having a website and a YouTube channel these days.
There are times when (because of the anxiety the psalmist mentions) you may be fearful and distrusting of people who, though they may be flawed, are not actually intending to deceive or hurt you. Don’t let anxiety and fear keep you in bondage. Verse 16 rejoices that the LORD frees us from the chains. The writer celebrates by praising the LORD without fear or anxiety in front of everybody right in the middle of town!
Hallelujah indeed.
It makes me think of this song by Forrest Frank: No Longer Bound
PSALM 117
Welcome to the shortest chapter in the whole Bible. While it is also the middle chapter any Bible based on the Masoretic Text, it isn’t the actual middle of the Bible. That honor goes to Psalm 103:1-2. There are exactly 15,550 verses before and after that passage.
Psalm 117 is 2 verses long. That’s a short song. It’s like one of those little rural communities that isn’t even a town. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spot in the road. 🚗
As of the time that I write this, the world’s shortest recorded song is called “You Suffer” by the English gridcore (whatever that means) band known as Napalm Death. ☠️ (cheery name 😏) The song was released in 1987 and is verified by the Guiness Book of World Records.
Its entire length is…
1.316 seconds!
Somehow in that one tick of the second hand, they cram in the lyrics:
“You suffer, but why?”
(I’m guessing they never read Job) 😏
Maybe each band member said one of the words all at the same time. It just sounds kinda like a record scratch. You can look it up online if you’re curious. You’re not missing anything if you don’t.
😲 Not missing anything?! The world’s shortest song?! Aren’t you impressed even a little?
Honestly? No.
😌 Well, what about the world’s smallest book?
Oh – now you’re talkin’. What’s the world’s smallest book?
🙂 Teeny Ted From Turnip Town.
You’re pullin’ my leg.
😲 No! I’m serious! Here’s a LINK. It’s only 0.07×0.10mm and it can sit on a human hair. It was etched into crystalline silicone with a laser beam in a university. And you have to have a special microscope to read it.
Wow! And who did this? China? 🇨🇳 America? 🇺🇸 Japan? 🇯🇵
😏 The Canadians. 🇨🇦
The Canadians have too much time on their hands. It’s all those long winters. 😉☃️❄️
Anyway – there actually IS something super interesting about tiny little Psalm 117.
“Praise Yahweh, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For his loyal love is mighty on our behalf, and the faithfulness of Yahweh is forever. Praise Yah!”
Psalms 117:1-2 LEB
Did you catch it?
😳 Uhhh… I guess… not? Was I supposed to see something? Maybe I blinked.
The Hebrew word for nations means “Gentiles.”
🤔 Yeah…. And?
Did you notice the pronoun in the middle?
(Rereading)
😅 Uhhhh… our? That’s a pronoun right?
Yes. The psalmist is telling the Gentiles to praise Yahweh then he says “for His loyal love is mighty on OUR behalf.” Now, I could be wrong on this, but it sounds to me like the writer of this teeny psalm is identifying himself with the Gentiles. Could this have been written by a Gentile who trusted in Yahweh, the God of Israel?
😲🤯
PSALM 118
This is the Triumphal Entry psalm. This is what the crowds were singing when Jesus rode into Jerusalem. Compare:
“Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.”
Psalm 118:25-26 ESV
“And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
Matthew 21:9 ESV
The word “hosanna” means “save now!”
And here’s an interesting detail. Look at this!
“God is the Lord, and He has revealed Himself to us; appoint a feast for yourselves, decked with branches.” Psalm 117:27 LXX
Here’s the amazing thing: these crowds were probably singing the Septuagint (LXX) version of this. And why were there crowds in Jerusalem? They were having an appointed feast. Passover. And what were they waving and strewing on the road? Branches. Scripture is being fulfilled before their very eyes. No wonder the Pharisees were so nervous. Jesus is ticking all the Messiah boxes. And this is just the start…
Imagine Jesus singing this psalm to Himself as He rides along on the donkey…
“The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.”
Psalm 118:6-7 ESV
“I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord. The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death.”
Psalm 118:17-18 ESV
Look at this one…
“The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation.”
Psalms 118:14 NASB2020
In Hebrew, this literally says Yah (short for Yahweh) has become Yeshua (Jesus).
🤯
There is no getting around this.
Jesus was not some random Jewish teacher who was enlightened or some such nonsense. He was Yahweh, the uncreated Creator of Heaven and Earth as a human man. He encoded His coming in written words on clay tablets and sheepskin scrolls across millennia of human history and then revealed Himself by fulfilling the impossibly specific prophesies He gave.
You can’t fake this. Humans didn’t invent this. There’s no way an anonymous psalmist wrote Psalm 118 and plotted to have it fulfilled a thousand years in the future. No one is telling the Jerusalem crowds to say these words from this Psalm as Jesus enters the gates as the stone that the builders (the nation’s leaders) are in the act of rejecting. No human can orchestrate it. There is only one explanation and it is a supernatural one.
I’ll leave you with this:
“The Lord is God, and He has given us light; Bind the festival sacrifice to the horns of the altar with cords.”
Psalms 118:27 NASB2020
This is the same verse I used earlier from the LXX about the feast “decked with branches.” In the Masoretic Text instead of branches we get binding the sacrifice to the horns of the altar. And while it obviously makes us think of Jesus the sacrifice, bound to the cross as the altar, there’s kind of a problem with that. Nowhere in all of those detailed instructions to the priests on how to do sacrifices do we ever read about them binding a sacrifice to the horns of the altar. And why would you do that anyway? The animal is humanely killed before being placed on the altar. It’s not like it’s going to escape. And you’re going to have rope stretched over a blazing fire? They’re gonna burn instantly. It makes no sense.
No. I think the Septuagint rendering is more faithful to the original Hebrew and there is one way I can see to bring these two texts together. Jesus, the sacrifice, was “decked with branches even to the horns of the altar.”
These are branches too…
To The Reader 