Ps 115 (The Silence of the Idols)

Why should nations ask

                “Where / pray / is their god?”

In fact / our God / is in heaven

                He does anything / he pleases

Their idols / are silver and gold

                Made by / human hands

They have mouths / but cannot speak

They have eyes / but cannot see

They have ears / but cannot hear

They have noses / but cannot smell

Their hands / they cannot feel with them

Their feet / they cannot walk with them

They cannot produce sounds / in their throats

Like them / their makers become

anyone who trusts in them.

The psalmist opened with glory being given to Yhwh’s name. Here, we begin to grasp ‘where’ Yhwh is—where that praise ‘goes’ when it is given to Yhwh.

For the nations, Yhwh is nowhere because he has no idol in his temple. For them, a Temple without an idol is simply a building. It holds no sacred Presence or power. It is just part of the mundane world. For them, Israel’s worship of Yhwh is absurd; it makes no sense. While they may not equate their gods with them idols, they cannot conceive of a god receiving praise who does not have an idol. For the nations, the idols were this bond between heaven and earth. The idols “made present” this heavenly and divine realm.

For the psalmist, though, Yhwh is “somewhere” and, more importantly, in some mysterious way, his lack of an idol highlights his ever-greater power than the other gods. He is in heaven, and, because that is his ‘realm’ it means that he dwells in supreme power. This is important to pause over. For the psalmist heaven is not simply the place where the divine dwells (as if it was just ‘stacked on top’ of earth in a two-story building). It is the place of authority and power. The ‘higher’ one ascends toward heaven, the closer one moves into a sphere that controls the earth. In other words, being in ‘heaven’ is not being ‘far from earth’. It’s the other way around. Being in heaven means being more intimately and profoundly in control of earth. We saw this dynamic above—the more that is ‘given’ to heaven, the more is poured out onto the earth. We could think of it as if the ‘soil’ of earth’s power, vitality and life is not actually beneath our feet but above our heads. And the more we “seed” heaven with our praise and devotion, the more “fruit” it produces.

For the psalmist, the idols invert this in some fashion. They are made “from man” and “from the earth”. Although they have all the senses generally necessary to perceive and control the world, they cannot use them. They are ‘entirely earthly’ and therefore without power. The nations begin with earth and then move to heaven. In a way, they see their gods as “part of earth”, both in their idols and literally in their being contained within the cosmos. Israel begins with Yhwh above the heavens, and understands heaven and earth within Him.

Just as “we” should not receive glory (in verse 1), but Yhwh should, so too are idols not proper receivers of glory because they are not divine but created things of the cosmos. The closing line, though, points to the profound effect of improper glory-giving. If the nations give glory to impotent, created things, then they will have cut themselves off from heaven. And to be cut off from heaven, is to be cut off from power to such an extent that their senses will deaden. As we will see later, the dead cannot praise Yhwh and they enter Silence. It is profoundly important—the nations are, on earth, living in a Sheol existence of Silence, becoming like their dead and silent idols.