Psalm 113: Every Which Way - And Up

I wonder who the intended audience of Psalm 113 was originally.

There are a lot of comparative directionality happening.

It begins with servants and slaves, low status people, praising God, which for some reason, I think about in an upward motion, because there is nowhere for them to pray, but up. It is as if the following 8 verses are their prayer.

In 113:2, we see the directionality of time: “now and forever”.

We have the directionality of geography: “the east to the west” in 113:3, which refers to people across the earth praying to God.

Then we have the verses of verticality, starting in 113:4 with the verb “rūm”, which means “raised up”, above the nations.

God is raised by the nations, high above them. Do they want God to remain high in the heavens, so he wouldn’t interfere with the day-to-day on earth?

(We also see that His Glory is located above the heavens. I would assume that that is a reference to God being greater than all the other gods who may live in heaven and are worshipped by the nations.)

But then, in 113:6, God lowers himself from his place above heaven, to see what is happening in heaven, and on earth. But he doesn’t only lower himself to earth, he goes to the denizens of the gutter and the dwellers of the trash heap, the people of the lowest status on the planet, and allows them to live beside the highest status people on earth.

And similarly, he places the lowest status woman, in the psalmist’s opinion, the barren woman, to live beside the happy mother of children, the highest status woman, again, in the psalmist’s opinion.

It’s as if humans belong along a horizontal-axis, with no one higher or lower than the other, while God traverses the vertical-axis with aplomb.

Is this the prayer of slaves? That God will lift them up from the hell that other humans have created for them? That one day we will all be equal? That God will destroy status? Was this prayed during a time of despair, with eyes looking up to above the heavens, hoping for a better, more equitable, tomorrow?

Or is this the prayer of the wealthy and noble, looking down from their palaces and high-rise castles in the sky, paying lip service to the idea of equality, but comfortable in their knowledge that it isn’t happening yet? Is this their Marie Antoinette moment?

Because if they really did care, they wouldn’t wait for God to lift up the poor: they would do it themselves.