▼118:4 Verses 1-4 tell everybody to thank the LORD, because he is good. In verse 2, ‘Israel’ means all the people that live in the land of Israel. In verse 3, ‘the house of Aaron’ means the priests and levites of Israel. Priests were special servants of God who worked in the temple at Jerusalem. The levites also worked in the temple, and in the towns and villages of Israel. The words ‘kind love’ come in all 4 verses. ‘Kind love’ is a special love. In Hebrew, it is ‘hesed.’ It is not human love. It is the love that God showed in his covenant. It is a love that gives help, and never stops.

▼118:7 Verses 5-7 tell us what God did to send help to Israel. Remember, ‘me’ and ‘I’ in these verses is not one person. It is the whole country of Israel. Maybe their leader spoke these words for them. In Hebrew, verse 5 says ‘I was in a small place and I could not get out.’ This place was like a prison. Maybe it was Egypt, maybe it was Babylon. For Christians, maybe it is a bad habit. A habit is something that you cannot stop doing. The answer is the same for everyone: cry (or pray, maybe out loud) to the LORD. Tell him that you want to be free. He will make you free. In verse 7, the enemies may be the Egyptians, the Babylonians or the bad habits. For Jews it may be better to translate verse 7 like this. ‘The LORD was with me. He gave me help. So I saw (the LORD destroy) my enemies.’ The Hebrew language does not have past, present (now) and future like most of our languages. The important thing is this: verse 7 always was true. It is true now. And it always will be true! The words ‘the LORD destroy’ are not in the Hebrew Bible. Most translations include them to give us help to understand the verse.

▼118:9 In verses 8-9, ‘trust’ is an important word. It means ‘believe that someone will give you help.’ It means a lot more than this, also. It means that if someone promises to do something, then they will do it. You can trust them (or rely on them) to do it. The psalm teaches us that we can trust the LORD more than people. We can even trust him more than our leaders!

▼118:13 In verses 9-13, we read that the enemy was all round Israel. They were ‘like (a cloud of) bees.’ Bees are insects that make something sweet and sticky called honey. Bees can sting you, or give you a sharp pain. Thousand of them live together. Often they fly together in a great cloud or ‘swarm.’ To the psalmist, his enemies seemed like this because there were so many of them. But he destroyed them all! It was like a thorn-bush burning. The bush becomes dry when it dies, and burns quickly. He destroyed his enemies quickly. He did it ‘in the name of the LORD.’ These are special words. They mean ‘with everything that the name of the LORD means.’ It means that he is great and powerful; it means that he loves his people and gives them help; it means that he will punish anyone that hurts his people. ‘Punish’ means ‘hurt someone because they have done something wrong.’ So when ‘the enemy pushed me’ then ‘the LORD gave me help’, (verse 13).

▼118:14 In verse 14, ‘saved’ means two different things. For the Jews, it means that the LORD made them safe from their enemies, either Egypt or Babylon. For Christians it means that God will keep them safe after they die. They will go to live with God in his home. We call this home ‘heaven.’

▼118:18 Verses 14-18 tell us that this made the Jews very happy. They sang psalms, or songs, (verse 14). They shouted how great God was in their tents. A tent is a small house made from animal skins. Many Bible students think that the people made these tents with tree branches. This is because they sang the psalm at the feast of tree houses. God had punished them and hurt them a lot, but they were still alive, (verse 18). God punished them when he let the Egyptians or Babylonians become their masters.

God did all this with his ‘right hand’, (verses 15-16). The right hand of God is how the Bible describes God doing things on earth.

Bible students think that the Jews sang Psalm 118 in a special way. The priests said some verses, then the people coming in to the temple answered them with other verses. It is not easy to see who said what in verses 1-18. It is easier in verses 19-20. The people coming in said, ‘Open the gates’, (verse 19). The priests answer from inside the temple gates, ‘Righteous people can go in’, (verse 20). The word ‘righteous’ means ‘very, very good.’ Only God is really righteous, always doing what is right. But he calls his people righteous also. These are the people that love him. They are the people who trust him and obey him. For the Jews, this was the Old Covenant (or the Old Testament). For Christians, it is the New Covenant (or the New Testament). In verse 19, ‘gates of the temple’ is ‘righteous gates’ in the Hebrew Bible. Because God was in the temple, it was righteous too. And its gates were righteous.

▼118:24 Verses 21-24 again tell us what God has done. He saved his people, (verse 21). Like the stone that the builders (men who were building) threw away, Israel was now important, (verse 22). The LORD did something wonderful, or ‘very great’, (verse 23). He did it on ‘this day’, (verse 24). ‘This day’ now means the day when people remember what God did. For Jews it is one of their feasts, Passover, Pentecost or Tree Houses. For Christians, it is Sunday because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday.

▼118:27 Verse 27 is difficult to translate. This is because nobody is sure what the word that we translated ‘branches’ means. Some Bible students think that it means ‘tie up.’ They translate the verse, ‘Tie the animal you are going to offer to God to the horns of the altar.’ The horns were special parts of the altar. The priests killed animals on the altar and burned them there. They believed that this made God happy. Nobody does this now, neither Christians nor Jews.

▼118:29 Verses 25-29 finish the psalm. Verses 25 and 26 give us another example of the people and the priests talking to each other. The people say, ‘LORD, save us and make us do very well.’ The priests bless the people from inside the temple. ‘Bless’ is a special word in the Bible. In the beginning it meant, ‘Have many children. Your animals have many young animals. Your plants grow big and strong.’ Later it meant ‘everything that you do will have a good result.’ The word ‘bless’ does not mean ‘be happy.’ But if everything you do has a good result, then you will be very happy! ‘Blessed’ describes the person that God blesses.