Hallel-Psalms: How Psalms 113-118 Shape Worship
Short answer: The Hallel-Psalms are the six psalms from 113 to 118 that ancient Israel sang together at the great feasts, especially Passover, and that the church has long used in worship. The word Hallel comes from the Hebrew verb halal, meaning to praise or shine, and that call to praise is exactly how Psalm 113 opens: Praise Yah! Praise, you servants of Yahweh, praise Yahweh’s name (Psalms 113:1). These psalms move from God’s exaltation over all nations to His rescue of the lowly, from the exodus to the exodus-shaped hope of the Messiah, and finally to a thanksgiving song and a grand processional cry of praise. They are not a loose collection but a shaped liturgy that taught Israel to remember and to sing.
What the Hallel Is and Where It Came From
The term Hallel (sometimes called the Egyptian Hallel) refers to Psalms 113 through 118. Jewish tradition linked them especially to Passover and the other pilgrimage feasts, and to the singing of the temple courts. The name comes from the repeated summons to praise, the Hebrew halal, which stands behind the familiar word Hallelujah. The psalms are not random; they form a sequence that moves a worshipper through praise, exodus remembrance, trust, thanksgiving, and final triumph. That sequence matters. The Hallel functioned as confessional remembrance, not sentimental mood music.
Where did this grouping come from? The Hebrew Bible never uses the word Hallel as a title, but later Jewish sources describe the custom of singing these psalms at Passover. By the time of Jesus, the meal was wrapped in Scripture, and the singing of the Hallel would at some point have framed the evening. The exact sequence of songs at a first-century Passover is debated among scholars, but the practice of singing praise around the meal is well attested. What we can say plainly is that these psalms were known, sung, and associated with the great acts of God.
Historically, these psalms are tied to moments in Israel’s life that the nation never wanted to forget. The exodus shaped them. The return from exile and the rebuilding of the temple shaped them. The final psalms of the group, 115 through 118, breathe the atmosphere of a people who have known rescue and who gather with thanksgiving in the temple courts. They are congregational psalms, meant to be said and sung by many voices together, not merely read in private.
The Hallel’s function was to give words to the church’s memory. Israel did not merely believe that God had acted; they sang His acts back to Him. That is how a rescued people keeps from forgetting. Calvin and Luther both understood this, and the Reformers recovered the psalms as the church’s hymnbook. For us, the Hallel reminds us that biblical worship is not first of all expressive of how we feel; it is a response to who God is and what He has done.
Psalms 113: The Lord Who Stoops Down to the Lowly
Psalm 113 opens the Hallel with a call to praise that stretches from sunrise to sunset. The name of Yahweh is to be praised because He is exalted above all nations and His glory rises above the heavens. Yet the psalm does not stay in the clouds. It moves from the throne to the ash heap: Praise Yah! Praise, you servants of Yahweh, praise Yahweh’s name (Psalms 113:1). The same God who is high above the nations is the God who looks down on the earth and lifts the poor from the dust.
This is the great paradox of biblical praise. The Most High is not distant but stooping. He does not merely observe human need; He raises the needy from the ash heap and sets them with princes (Psalms 113:7-8). He gives the barren woman a home and makes her a joyful mother of children (Psalms 113:9). These are the very categories of people the ancient world pushed to the margins, and the psalm deliberately names them as the recipients of divine attention. Praise and mercy are not competing themes.
The psalm’s placement at the head of the Hallel is instructive. Before Israel recounts the exodus or gives thanks for deliverance, she first lifts her eyes to the character of God. Praise is grounded in who God is, not merely in what He has done for me lately. The sequence teaches a crucial lesson about worship: our songs should be filled with the greatness and goodness of God’s name, and then the testimony of His deeds flows out from that foundation. The two must never be separated.
Matthew 23 and other passages show Jesus reading the Psalms as Scripture about Himself. This psalm’s portrait of the God who raises the poor and gives the childless woman a home finds its fulfillment in Christ, who came to the lowly, ate with outcasts, and lifted the forgotten. Mary’s Magnificat echoes this exact theology, and the early church understood the Hallel as pointing to the One who embodied God’s stooping love.
Psalms 114: The Exodus as a Cosmic Event
Psalm 114 is brief but explosive. It retells the exodus not as a political liberation but as a cosmic event in which creation itself responded to God. When Israel went out of Egypt, the psalm says, the sea saw it and fled, the Jordan turned back, the mountains skipped like rams, and the hills like lambs (Psalms 114:3-4). This is not journalistic history; it is theological poetry in which the whole created order trembles before the God of Jacob. Even the hardest rock became a pool of water at His presence.
The psalm’s opening line is key: When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign language (Psalms 114:1). The emphasis falls on God’s people being drawn out from a foreign and oppressive place and made His sanctuary. The psalm then personifies creation to declare that the God of the exodus is the Lord of all the earth. If the sea flees and the mountains skip, then no power, human or natural, can stand against His purpose to save.
This psalm also reaches backward and forward. It celebrates what God did at the Red Sea, but its imagery becomes a pattern for all future deliverance. The prophets use similar language of mountains melting and seas drying up when God comes to save. The Hallel, sung at Passover, would have carried this exodus memory directly into the meal that celebrated that same deliverance year after year. It was not a relic of the past; it was a rehearsal of God’s saving character.
For the Christian, Psalm 114 teaches us to read the exodus as a template for redemption. The New Testament presents Jesus as the greater Passover, and the Exodus as the pattern of salvation from sin and death. When we sing or read this psalm, we are not merely remembering an ancient event; we are learning the grammar of God’s rescue, which reaches its climax in the cross and resurrection. The creation that trembled at the exodus will one day rejoice at the final deliverance of God’s people.
Psalms 115 and 116: Trust and Thanksgiving in the Face of Death
Psalm 115 turns from the exodus to a contrast between the living God and dead idols. It opens with a plea that glory belong to God’s name alone, Not to us, Yahweh, not to us, but to your name give glory, for your loving kindness, and for your truth’s sake (Psalms 115:1). The psalm then mocks the idols of the nations: they have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see, and those who make them become like them (Psalms 115:4-8). The point is devastating. Trusting in lifeless things makes a person lifeless.
But the psalm does not end in despair. It calls Israel, the house of Aaron, and all who fear Yahweh to trust in Him, for He is their help and their shield. The living God blesses and remembers His people. This is not abstract theology; it is a pastoral answer to the fear that God has forgotten. The psalm’s structure moves from a confession of God’s glory to a confident assurance that He will bless those who trust Him, and it ends with a call for the dead to be silent while the living praise Him.
Psalm 116 is a personal thanksgiving song that many believe was sung by an individual after being rescued from grave danger. It begins, I love Yahweh, because he listens to my voice, and my cries for mercy (Psalms 116:1). The psalmist recounts being surrounded by the cords of death and the snares of Sheol, and then crying out to the Lord, who heard him and delivered him. The tone is intimate and grateful, a single voice answering the congregation’s praise with a personal testimony.
The climax of Psalm 116 is its promise to walk before the Lord in the land of the living and to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. This psalm has long been a favorite at funerals and in times of illness because it gives words to the experience of deliverance from death. It does not deny that death is real or that suffering is severe, but it testifies that God hears and rescues. In the Hallel, this personal note ensures that the community’s praise is not impersonal; it makes room for the individual to give thanks.
Psalms 118: The Stone the Builders Rejected and the Coming King
Psalm 118 is the final and perhaps most influential psalm of the Hallel. It opens with the familiar call, Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever (Psalms 118:1). It then recounts a national deliverance in which the nations surrounded Israel, but in the name of Yahweh they were cut off. The psalm’s central image is the stone the builders rejected that has become the head of the corner. This is a psalm of vindication after rejection, of a rejected one who is finally exalted.
This psalm also gives us the line that Jesus Himself quoted when He stood before the religious leaders: the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone (Matthew 21:42). Jesus applied the psalm to Himself, identifying Himself as the rejected and vindicated stone. The crowds who welcomed Him into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday may well have sung this psalm, shouting the very words that echo in it. The Hallel is not merely background to the passion narratives; it is woven through them.
Psalm 118 also contains the great processional cry, Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever (Psalms 118:1). This recurring refrain frames the psalm and ties it back to Psalm 136, the great Hallel of thanksgiving. The psalm moves from the individual’s distress to the community’s corporate celebration, and it ends with a call for the whole congregation to bless the Lord. It is a resurrection-shaped psalm before the resurrection, a song of victory after danger.
For the church, Psalm 118 is a resurrection psalm. The rejected stone has been raised, and the day of rejoicing belongs to the Lord. When we sing it, we join the ancient pilgrims and the early Christians in declaring that God’s steadfast love endures forever, not as a vague sentiment but as a confessed fact grounded in the vindication of the rejected King.
How the Hallel Points to Jesus
The Hallel’s connection to Jesus is not a later invention; it is embedded in the Gospel accounts. The Gospels tell us that Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn after the last supper (Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26). The traditional identification of that hymn with the Hallel is ancient and widely held, though we should be careful not to overstate certainty. What is clear is that the themes of the Hallel, praise to the God who stoops, deliverance from bondage, and the vindication of the rejected one, are the themes of Jesus’ own mission.
Psalms 113 describes the God who lifts the poor and gives the childless woman a home. Jesus embodies this in His ministry to the outcast, the sick, and the forgotten. Mary’s song in Luke 1 echoes the same theology, magnifying the God who scatters the proud and lifts the humble. The Hallel’s portrait of a God who stoops is not a vague sentiment but a pattern fulfilled in the incarnation. The One who was rich became poor so that we might become rich.
Psalms 114 celebrates the exodus, and the New Testament presents Jesus as the greater Passover. John the Baptist calls Him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Paul writes that Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. The exodus memory in the Hallel becomes the framework for understanding the cross as the definitive rescue from sin and death. The old deliverance was a pattern; the new deliverance is the reality to which it pointed.
Psalms 118 gives us the rejected stone and the coming King. Jesus applied this psalm to Himself, and the apostles returned to it repeatedly. Peter quotes it in Acts 4:11 at the very trial where he and John are threatened, declaring that salvation is found in no one else. The Hallel’s final psalm is thus a resurrection psalm, celebrating the vindication of the One whom the builders rejected. To sing it is to confess that God has raised Him and given Him the name above every name.
Singing the Hallel Today: Faithful Application
The Hallel invites us to recover the practice of corporate praise shaped by Scripture. These psalms were not designed for private sentiment alone; they were sung by a congregation. In our churches, reading or singing the Hallel can anchor worship in God’s saving acts rather than in our moods. It also teaches us to praise God for who He is before we list what we want from Him. The opening call of Psalm 113 sets the tone for the whole collection.
The Hallel also teaches us to preach and pray with both the individual and the community in view. Psalm 116 gives one voice to personal testimony, while Psalm 118 gathers the whole congregation. A healthy church makes room for both. We need the corporate declaration that God’s love endures forever, and we need the personal thanksgiving of a believer who has been rescued. The Hallel models a worship that refuses to choose between them.
Finally, the Hallel trains us to read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture without flattening it. These psalms are not merely predictions of Jesus; they are the prayers of Israel, and they remain the church’s prayers because the church has been grafted into Israel’s story. When we sing them, we join a people who have known God’s deliverance and who look forward in hope to the final redemption that the exodus and the resurrection both anticipate.
Biblical fidelity check
What the Hallel passages do establish is a pattern of praise grounded in God’s character and His saving acts. They call a community to remember the exodus, to trust in Yahweh rather than idols, to give thanks for deliverance, and to celebrate the vindication of the rejected one. The psalms are clear that God is exalted above the nations and yet stoops to the lowly, and that His loving kindness endures forever. They also establish that these psalms were sung in Israel’s worship and that the New Testament applies key lines from them to Jesus.
What the passages do not establish is a precise first-century Passover liturgy or a detailed prophecy chart. A common misreading is to treat every image in these psalms as a direct prediction of Jesus, but that flattens the text. The exodus language in Psalm 114 refers first to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, and the rejected stone in Psalm 118 refers first to Israel’s national experience. The New Testament uses these texts typologically, not mechanically. Faithful Christians differ on how tightly to tie the Hallel to the Last Supper, and we should be honest about that difference rather than pretending certainty we do not have.
Other passages that speak to Psalms 113:1-9
Psalm 113 begins the Hallel and continues to shape worship through the related psalms and through later Scripture. For help preaching these texts, see How do I preach biblical poetry and Psalms? and How To Preach The Psalms: A Scripture-First Sermon Academy Guide. For the wider biblical-theological arc, see Psalms Bible Study: Seeing Jesus in Psalms. And for the musical settings of these psalms, see Music and instruments in the Psalms: A Biblical Guide.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Hallel-Psalms?
The Hallel-Psalms are Psalms 113 through 118, a group of praise and thanksgiving psalms that ancient Israel sang at the major feasts, especially Passover. The name comes from the Hebrew halal, meaning to praise. They move from God’s exaltation over the nations in Psalm 113 to the vindication of the rejected stone in Psalm 118, forming a unified liturgy of remembrance and celebration.
Did Jesus sing the Hallel at the Last Supper?
The Gospels say Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn after the meal (Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26). Many scholars and church traditions identify that hymn with the Hallel, since these psalms were associated with Passover. We cannot be absolutely certain of the exact songs sung that night, but the themes of the Hallel fit the moment of Jesus’ passion and His own self-understanding as the rejected and vindicated stone.
How should Christians use the Hallel today?
Christians can read, pray, and sing these psalms in corporate worship and personal devotion. They teach us to praise God for who He is before listing our requests, to remember His saving acts, and to give thanks in both community and personal testimony. They also provide a biblically grounded way to read the Old Testament as pointing to Christ without ignoring its original context.
