Psalms 138:4

"All the kings of the earth shall give thee thanks, O Jehovah,

For they have heard the words of thy mouth.

Yea, they shall sing of the ways of Jehovah;

For great is the glory of Jehovah.

For though Jehovah is high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly;

But the haughty he knoweth from afar."

"All the kings of the earth shall give thee thanks" (Psalms 138:4). The implication here is undeniable that the thanksgiving of all the kings of the earth is here predicated upon their hearing of how God had answered the psalmist's prayer. McCaw commented on this that, "It is hardly likely that a private individual could think of some purely personal experience as exercising a convincing influence over the kings of the earth. But if the individual were a king himself, such a hope is possible."[4] It is considerations such as this that strongly favor the superscription's ascription of this psalm to David.

"Everything here centers about the prospect of having the kings of the earth offer their praises to the Lord for what he had done to David."[5]

Barnes understood Psalms 138:4 here as prophetic. "This refers to a time, of which frequent prophetic mention is made in the Scriptures."[6] However, this does not diminish the propriety of understanding these as the words of David. Even the thanksgiving of kings and world rulers who became Christians in the age of the gospel was due solely to what God did for David in bringing into our world the greater Son of David as the Saviour of all men.

"Great is the glory of Jehovah" (Psalms 138:5). There is a dramatic shift of persons here. There is a double reference to Jehovah in Psalms 138:4, in which the psalmist addresses Jehovah in the second person; and here adjacent to Psalms 138:4 we have the third person. Of course, critics go wild about things like this, although they should be familiar with the fact that shifts of this kind are common in the Bible. By "emending" (that means changing) the text Briggs "corrected" this usage of persons.[7] However, as Dahood pointed out, the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely, those from "Cave 11" support the Hebrew text of the Old Testament in this passage.[8] In our opinion, scholars have been at times very careless with their emendation.

"Jehovah is high ... he hath respect unto the lowly ... the haughty he knoweth from afar" (Psalms 138:6). "Notwithstanding all God's greatness and glory, he condescends to look upon the lowly and supply them. Hence, David feels sure that God will not overlook him. But God keeps proud men at a distance, does not draw near them, much less make his abode with them, but leaves them to themselves until they are ripe for punishment."[9]