This chapter is a grand call to all inhabitants of the world to sing a new song to Hashem, recount His glory among the nations, and recognize Him as the sole King Who guides creation. In this part, we examine the verses in which King David details what that "glory" is that must be told among the nations: the greatness of the Holy One, Blessed be He; the utter nothingness of the gods of the peoples; the majesty and splendor in the works of heaven; and the call to the families of the nations to ascribe glory and strength to Hashem.
כִּי־גָדוֹל יְהֹוָה וּמְהֻלָּל מְאֹד נוֹרָא הוּא עַל־כׇּל־אֱלֹהִים׃ - For Hashem is great and exceedingly praised; He is awesome above all gods.
Radak explains that the "gods" mentioned here refer to the angels, who exalt and praise Hashem. It can also be interpreted as referring to all the forces of creation. One must not deduce from this, Heaven forbid, that other deities exist; rather, any force in creation is called an *el* in the sense of a power: the stars, the constellations, the sun, and the moon. Hashem is great above all these forces, because they all operate solely by His power.
The Malbim explains that this verse elaborates on what was stated earlier: "Recount His glory among the nations." "Gadol" (great) indicates that the Holy One, Blessed be He, is the primary and ultimate cause of everything. We have previously explained the distinction between "gadol" (great) and "ram" (exalted): concerning the nations it is said, "Hashem is exalted above all nations," whereas in relation to Israel it is said, "Great is Hashem." A hot-air balloon is exalted (high up), an airplane is exalted (high up), but a multi-story skyscraper is called great (large). "Ram" means that something is aloft, while "gadol" means that it extends from bottom all the way to the top.
Herein lies the fundamental difference between the Jewish outlook and that of the nations. The nations kicked the Holy One, Blessed be He, upstairs: they elevated Him to such an extent that, as it were, out of His sheer loftiness He no longer sees what transpires below. According to their view, an itch on your back or the overdraft in your bank account is none of the Creator's concern - "do not bring the Holy One down." This perspective is very convenient for them, for if Hashem is merely exalted and distant, one has no moral obligations and no one holding them accountable.
The people of Israel say otherwise: Hashem is great, from below to above. The Holy One, Blessed be He, sees and watches over everything occurring in the lower realms, from the smallest matter to the greatest. To the nations, it seems that the Jewish view diminishes the Creator, but the truth is precisely the opposite. Only regarding limited flesh and blood can one say that he attends to grand matters and has no time for small ones. But for One Who is limitless, there is no obstacle whatsoever to being engaged in the small just as in the great.
An analogy illustrates this: if someone asks what the distance is from here to infinity, you would say infinity. If you travel one hundred kilometers, is the distance now infinity minus one hundred kilometers? That is absurd. Infinity remains infinity. Even if you draw a billion kilometers closer, you are just as far from infinity as before. If so, with respect to the Holy One, Blessed be He, how can one speak of "great" and "small," as if the affairs of the celestial bodies are great and human affairs are small? Relative to the Infinite, everything is zero, everything is nothing. Therefore, just as He created the heavens and spread them forth, so He created man and all that befalls him, watching over him in every single detail. It turns out that the nations are the ones who diminish the Master of the World, because they perceive Him as limited. We say the opposite: with Hashem there is no great and small; the Holy One, Blessed be He, created His world in order to supervise it and direct it, and therefore He knows everything occurring within it and watches over all.
The Malbim explains that "gadol" signifies that He is both the first cause and the ultimate cause. This can be compared to a supply chain: there is a factory that manufactures the goods, a company that transports them to warehouses, a shipping firm that delivers them to supermarkets, and a courier who brings them from the supermarket to your home. The courier who delivered the item to your door is not the one who imported it from the factory. With the Holy One, Blessed be He, it is not so: He is the first cause, the Manufacturer, and He is also the ultimate cause, the One Who feeds you right into your mouth. This is not a chain where Hashem performed His act, finished, and departed; rather, He is the One acting from start to finish.
In simple terms: when you have a complaint that the delivery courier tossed the packages outside your door and broke some of them, you do not complain to the importer; you complain to the courier company. With the Holy One, blessed be He, the responsibility encompasses everything, and any complaint is addressed only to Him. From this, one can understand why it is forbidden to pray to anyone or anything else: one who prays to the intermediate force that channeled bounty to him assumes there is a "final leg" separate from the "initial leg." But we tell him: you are mistaken, there is no first and last. The Holy One, blessed be He, is the manufacturer, He is the importer, He is the distribution company, He is the one delivering it to your home, and He is the one feeding you. Everything comes from Him, blessed be He, and His power extends over all of existence.
And with all this, He is "greatly to be praised," because everything is done with ultimate wisdom and kindness, so that in every single detail of reality one can perceive the Creator's goodness, wisdom, and abundant lovingkindness. And corresponding to what was said, "among all the peoples His wonders," it now says, "He is feared above all gods." Do not say that the forces of nature are fixed in an unalterable manner - that this is how Hashem created His world and so it shall remain forever. With a human being of flesh and blood, the craftsman who built a wardrobe does not remain holding it upright, and the builder does not remain holding up the balcony after finishing it. But with the Holy One, blessed be He, this is not so. All the forces of nature, which seemingly operate through inertia - there is no such thing: "He who renews in His goodness, each day continually, the work of creation." Hashem is the active cause operating within them at every moment, and if He wishes, at any instant He can alter them and nullify their vitality and existence. If the Creator's will were to withdraw for even a single moment from a specific thing or from nature as a whole, the world would revert to nothingness and void. The existence of the world depends upon His will at every single moment.
כִּי כׇּל־אֱלֹהֵי הָעַמִּים אֱלִילִים וַיהֹוָה שָׁמַיִם עָשָׂה׃ - For all the gods of the nations are idols, but Hashem made the heavens.
Metzudat Tzion explains that elilim ("idols" or "nothings") is a compound of two words: el (god/power) and lo (not) - that is, "not-god." There is no substance to them and no benefit in them, just as Iyov said to his friends, "You are all physicians of no value (elil)" - physicians who try to heal with remedies that possess no real substance, powerless healers.
The Malbim adds: the nations ascribe divinity to the host of heaven - to the sun, the moon, and the stars - believing that they possess independent power. To this the verse responds that they are mere nonentities. Their power is allotted and limited by Hashem, they have no independent power whatsoever, and they operate solely through His force, for "Hashem made the heavens." Hashem made the heavens, and within those heavens He formed the sun, moon, and stars; consequently, everything functions through His power and His influx, and everything depends entirely upon Him.
הוֹד־וְהָדָר לְפָנָיו עֹז וְתִפְאֶרֶת בְּמִקְדָּשׁוֹ׃ - Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.
The Radak explains that "splendor and majesty are before Him" refers to the celestial bodies, for they recognize Hashem's greatness and render splendor and majesty before Him. It is well known that the Rambam writes that the stars and celestial spheres possess a soul - not like a human soul, of course, but he defines them as animate beings. In the past, people found this difficult to grasp: how could a lump of earth or rock be called a possessor of a soul? Yet the matter is true from two perspectives. The first perspective is spiritual: everything in nature has an underlying force that strikes it and says, "Grow!" When we say that cosmic influences flow through the celestial bodies along their orbits, the intention is not the physical lump of matter called Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, or Mars, but rather their spiritual force. Thus, one born under a certain astrological sign might tend toward anger, another toward piety, and another toward righteousness. This spiritual force is the inner dimension of the soul of that celestial reality.
The second perspective: today we know that nothing in nature is truly inanimate. It appears to the eye as inanimate, but it is composed of atoms, and the atom is not motionless: electrons and neutrons are in constant movement. Thus, what appears to you as inert possesses continuous internal motion. From this, one can better understand what we noted earlier: that if Hashem withdraws His will from an object, it becomes nothingness and void in an instant. For if electrons and protons were to cease their rotation for a moment, the mass would collapse. It is said that the Eiffel Tower, if considered strictly by its actual matter rather than the empty space within its atoms, is smaller than a tennis ball. It is motion that creates the illusion of volume, much like a rapidly spinning fan creates the appearance of a solid disk. If that movement were to collapse into the nucleus of the atom, very little would remain. If so, should Hashem withdraw His will and all electrons cease their motion, everything would instantly collapse and vanish from existence. From this we can also appreciate the idea of celestial bodies having an active soul: that inner driving force generating their internal motion, unseen from the outside.
From here the Malbim teaches: realize that Hashem is the One who made the heavens and all their celestial bodies; therefore, do not worship any of these forces thinking it possesses power of its own. It holds no real power. And since Hashem is the Primary Cause, one can turn directly to Him, without any need to address those intermediate forces through which He channels His influence. They must not even be called "helpers," for the Holy One, blessed be He, needs no help; rather, as the Ramchal phrases it, they are merely "officials of nature." When the King Himself is standing right beside you, would you turn to an official? Speak directly to the King.
The Radak continues: "Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary" refers to the heavens, which are His holy abode, as it says, "to the heavens, His holy abode." They declare the strength and splendor of Hashem, as it says, "The heavens declare the glory of God."
As already explained, the phrase "the heavens declare" is metaphorical: when one wants to recognize the greatness of the Creator, he should gaze at the heavens. Sometimes, when a person wants to gauge someone's expertise, he looks at the work he produced, and through it, he discovers his mastery. One sees a breathtaking painting produced by an artist, authentic, true to life, an absolute wonder - not like today's paintings, where an artist scribbles a few strokes on canvas and tells you it is "abstract," leaving you to guess what the artist intended and what was going through his mind.
A story is told about Bialik, who used to host a "cultural Shabbat," an Oneg Shabbat, holding court almost like a rebbe. People would gather at Habima and similar venues, sitting and discussing his writings with the author and listening to his musings. In those days, people still sought culture, though eventually they too realized it was an empty culture. At any rate, someone asked him: "Is it true that in such-and-such story, you meant to hint at this particular idea?" - attributing all kinds of deep hidden intentions to him. Bialik replied: "Really? I had no idea; you are revealing great novelties to me about my own intentions!" It turns out people read into things intentions that never existed. But when one sees a magnificent painting, there is no need to search for what the artist intended; the mastery is right there to see, and it is obvious that it was not just a random scribble.
A story is told of an art gallery owner in Tzfat who kept a cloth on which he would wipe his paintbrushes. Two tourists walked in, browsed through the paintings, and suddenly caught sight of that cloth with its medley of colors. "Wow, I don't believe it! How much is this?" - pure excitement. The owner told them: "Listen, this is still a work in progress; you can see I haven't signed it yet, and this is no ordinary piece, so the price is entirely different." "Of course, of course," they replied, "one can see the richness of variety here." They came back later and paid top dollar. We live in a generation of falsehood. A person scribbles something - a young child could scribble better - and if someone scoffs at it, they tell him he simply does not understand art. The Emperor's New Clothes! One can shout that the king is naked, and they will only say: "You just don't understand art."
A father once shared these thoughts with his daughter who was studying art, and she repeated them to her teacher, a highly educated woman who had studied at Bezalel, became a ba'alat teshuvah, and had known the entire art scene from within. The teacher told her: "Your father does not even know how right he is, and I could give him a whole lecture on the falsehood of the art world. People spin elaborate stories about art: someone scribbles a mess, makes something completely meaningless, and all it takes is for someone to act impressed and say the right 'wow' for everyone to believe a masterpiece was created. In the past, to be an artist, you had to be authentic, to paint something alive; knowing how to recreate reality in a painting - that was art."
Once there was an exhibition at the Israel Museum. An artist displayed various "creations" - stacking random items on top of each other, soldering and fastening them together, and presenting it as art. It is said that one visitor became fed up; he took off his shoe, placed his ID card beside it, scattered a few coins, and said: "I want to see which of the visitors dares to say this is not part of the exhibition! After all, it's an art installation." And how is that any worse than someone hanging a shirt on a hanger inside a half-open refrigerator and calling it an installation? Go figure out what the shirt is supposed to express. So much nonsense and vanity, and then they try to sell the idea that one needs special sophistication to grasp such profundity. That is the world of falsehood we live in.
To return to our subject: all of this reality, anyone who observes it can perceive the Divine within it. Just as one who sees an extraordinary painting says, "The artist is remarkable; what talent he had to depict something so authentically!" so too one who gazes at the heavens and the celestial bodies sees tremendous artistry. One who gazes at the stars in their orbits and paths sees tremendous artistry. One who gazes at man sees with what wondrous craftsmanship he is formed - having nothing superfluous and lacking nothing, with the Holy One, blessed be He, having created within him everything necessary for his existence and life. All of this declares the glory of God. "The heavens declare" does not mean literal speech, such that one might claim, "I didn't hear anything." Rather, look at the heavens and see that they proclaim the glory of God from within themselves, and the Craftsman is recognized through His craft. This is the meaning of "Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary": the stars are those before Him; they sanctify His Name and recount His strength and beauty.
The Malbim addresses the duality here: what is the difference between hod (splendor) and hadar (majesty), and between oz (strength) and tiferet (beauty)? Hod is an internal quality, the inner beauty of reality. Hadar is the evident exterior, through which something is adorned and appears beautiful on the outside. Similarly, oz is internal strength, whereas tiferet is the external manifestation discernible to others, by which one takes pride in the inner strength within him.
Accordingly, he explains: from the internal splendor (hod) and external majesty (hadar) that are before Him, there descends below "strength and beauty in His sanctuary." From the internal splendor descends internal strength, and from the external majesty descends external beauty, and through these the Holy One, blessed be He, guides the world. It emerges that hod and oz correspond to the natural order of providence, while hadar and tiferet correspond to the miraculous providence, through which, as it were, the Holy One, blessed be He, is glorified in His great power.
הָבוּ לַיהֹוָה מִשְׁפְּחוֹת עַמִּים הָבוּ לַיהֹוָה כָּבוֹד וָעֹז׃ - Ascribe to Hashem, families of the peoples, ascribe to Hashem glory and strength.
What is there to bring to Hashem? Rashi explains that the continuation of the verse provides the explanation: "Ascribe to Hashem glory and strength" - we honor Hashem for His glory, for His strength, and for the way He directs the world. The Radak explains "Ascribe to Hashem" with your mouths, meaning to give praise to the Creator.
The Malbim explains: you, families of the nations, must not attribute any power to any other force in creation, but to Hashem alone. He adds that there were nations that acknowledged the existence of Hashem, yet claimed that He created the world and then transferred its governance to the celestial bodies. We discussed this concept at length in the Book of Iyov, the notion that the Holy One, blessed be He, placed His governance in the hands of the celestial order, which was Iyov's contention. In their view, Hashem created the world but does not guide it; creation and governance are two separate matters, and since the act of creation He no longer involves Himself with it. Rather, He is like a king secluded in his inner chambers, who appointed a government and ministers to manage the realm according to the laws he established.
According to this view, they indeed honor Hashem because He is the Creator and Fashioner of everything, but they believe there is no reason to fear Him, since He exercises no direct influence. And if there is anything to fear, one must fear the ministers, lest one fall out of favor with one of them and be denied sustenance. This was the motive for practicing idolatry and worshipping the celestial bodies: they believed these were the officials who determine what one receives. Regarding this, the verse declares: ascribe to Him glory and strength. "Glory" because Hashem created everything, and "strength" because He is the active ruler, possessing the power to change nature and to dispense reward and punishment. Corresponding to these two dimensions, the passage continues:
הָבוּ לַיהֹוָה כְּבוֹד שְׁמוֹ שְׂאוּ־מִנְחָה וּבֹאוּ לְחַצְרוֹתָיו׃ - Ascribe to Hashem the glory due His name; bring an offering and come into His courtyards.
In Yosef Tehillot, the author cites the Midrash recounting that when the nations requested to receive the Torah, the Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: "Bring Me your books of lineage; I want to see that you have pure ancestry." This is the meaning of "Ascribe [bring] to Hashem, families of the peoples": just as My children present themselves according to their families, by their ancestral houses, with unblemished lineage, so must you bring a book of genealogy showing that you have clear lineage - so-and-so, the son of so-and-so - without a mixture of forbidden unions and illegitimacy. How magnificent this is: if you can present "families of the peoples," then "ascribe to Hashem glory and strength," and "strength" refers specifically to the Torah. You wish to receive the Torah? Bring records of pure lineage, and then you will receive strength, as it is written: "Hashem will give strength to His people."
The book Tehillot Maharit explains this Midrash further. The Rambam writes in his introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah and in the Yad HaChazakah that our faith is not based on signs and wonders, nor on philosophical speculation. The Jewish people did not believe in Moshe Rabbeinu because of the signs and wonders he performed. Why? Because a sign or wonder can potentially be performed through sleight of hand or sorcery, and therefore we are not swayed by them. Furthermore, another person could come along and perform a wonder that supersedes the first, leading people to believe the latest sign. Faith built on such a foundation is merely temporary, lasting only until someone else appears and performs a different wonder.
On what, then, is our faith established? "Rather, we knew all this through direct sight" - sixty myriads of adult men witnessed the revelation of the Shechinah on that glorious and awe-inspiring day. This cannot be refuted unless Hashem were to reveal Himself once again before the eyes of all Israel, which will never happen. As the Rambam formulates it in the Yad HaChazakah: "Our own eyes saw, and not a stranger's; our own ears heard, and not another's." It is not founded on signs and wonders, but on the Revelation at Mount Sinai, a divine revelation witnessed by millions of people. If we count six hundred thousand men between the ages of twenty and sixty, add those younger than twenty and older than sixty, add the women, and add the mixed multitude, we easily arrive at five million people at a minimum. There are calculations that yield far higher figures, but regardless, it was a divine revelation that we all saw with our own eyes.
No other nation in the world possesses a tradition recounting a divine revelation witnessed by a multitude, and you will never hear of such a claim. The Torah itself promises this: "For ask now of the earliest days that were before you... Did ever a people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live? Or has anything ever happened like this great thing, or has anything like it been heard?" The Holy One, blessed be He, says: Go and investigate; I promise you that no nation in the world will ever make a similar claim. This is the strongest possible proof, for all other religions recount miracles performed in secret. That man walked on water - how many saw it? At the last supper he divided bread among many and it sufficed - how many saw it? Even if we were to grant that it happened, through sorcery anything is possible, but how many actually witnessed it? With us, it was an event that took place before the eyes of millions.
And an event witnessed by millions cannot be fabricated or denied. If someone comes and tells me of a wonder he saw, I can respond: I never heard of this, my father never told me about it, so why should I believe you? But when an event occurs before millions of witnesses, how could anyone claim such a thing happened without my father having passed down the tradition? It is simply impossible. That is why the nations never even attempted to fabricate such a story, for one cannot convince an entire populace of a public event that not a single one of their ancestors remembers.
And this is the principle stated by the Ramban: fathers do not bequeath a falsehood to their children. And if you say, do not the Christians also transmit from father to son? True, what the father tells his son is true: he transmits that this is what he heard. He heard people say that he walked on water; he heard stories about his birth. I believe him that this is what he heard, but this is nothing more than rumor, for he is not reporting something he actually witnessed. A wise person once remarked that the Christians were very clever in constructing an unfalsifiable model, for if you ask who was there that night, they will tell you: what do you expect, documentation from the bedroom? From the outset, they built a narrative that cannot be challenged. But who says it is true? Prove to me that it is true. There is no such possibility.
If someone comes and claims that the Torah has been superseded, I am willing to accept it, but on one condition: that the very One Who gave it in that assembly comes and revokes it. Let there be a renewed Revelation at Mount Sinai, six hundred thousand men, five million people, and let Him say to them, "I am the Lord your God," and here are updates to what I told you back then. Wonderful, we would be willing to accept it. But the Rambam states: this will never happen. Hashem will never reveal Himself again to provide updates, and therefore that revelation is stronger than all else. This is Judaism: it begins with "And you shall know this day," not "And you shall believe." All religions are based on belief, while Judaism is based on knowledge. The Torah repeats this time and again: "the trials, the signs, and the wonders that Hashem did before your eyes," "which Hashem did before your eyes." You saw it. These are not mere stories, but something you witnessed and can know to be true.
Accordingly, if we believe in the tradition of our fathers and value their standing, when my father sits with me at the Seder night and tells me: Know that there was the Giving of the Torah, there was the Exodus from Egypt, there was the Splitting of the Reed Sea - and how does he know? Because his father told him, and his father because his grandfather told him, and so on, all the way back to the Revelation at Mount Sinai and the Exodus from Egypt. If we believe that a father conveys the truth to his son, we have complete faith in all those events that our ancestors experienced, for a father does not bequeath a lie to his son.
"However, if we consider ourselves wiser than our fathers," says the author of Tehillot Maharith, like those modern opinions that cast doubt on the customs of our forefathers - those who are constantly seeking ways to discredit all the stories: "No, it did not really happen, there is no proof, we will conduct research that refutes it." The practitioners of biblical criticism, who have merely paid a fleeting "visit" to Scripture and already imagine they know how to read it. They are wise in their own eyes, and this leads them to deny the Torah of Hashem. For the transmission of the Torah is strictly person to person, and if you claim that your father lied to you, then we have no Torah at all.
In these verses, King David details what honor is to be recounted among the nations: Hashem is "great," from below to above, the First and Ultimate Cause, Who watches over the small just as over the great, for in relation to the Infinite there is no large or small. All the gods of the nations are idols, limited forces possessing no intrinsic power of their own, whereas Hashem made the heavens. The inner and outer majesty and splendor descend into strength and glory, and from them emanate the natural guidance and the miraculous guidance. Therefore, the call goes out to the families of the nations to ascribe to Hashem honor and strength: honor for having created, and strength because He directs all and has the power to alter nature. And "strength" refers to nothing other than Torah, which the lineage of Israel was privileged to receive by virtue of the Revelation at Mount Sinai - which our own eyes saw, and not a stranger's - and by virtue of the tradition of fathers who do not bequeath a falsehood to their children.