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What the close of Psa 117:1-2 says of God's truth, viz., that it endureth for ever, the beginning of Ps 118 says of its sister, His mercy or loving-kindness. It is the closing Psalm of the Hallel, which begins with Psa 113:1-9, and the third Hodu (vid., on Ps 105). It was Luther's favourite Psalm: his beauteous Confitemini, which “had helped him out of troubles out of which neither emperor nor king, nor any other man on earth, could have helped him.” With the exposition of this his noblest jewel, his defence and his treasure, he occupied himself in the solitude of his Patmos.
It is without any doubt a post-exilic song. Here too Hupfeld sweeps away everything into vague generality; but the history of the period after the Exile, without any necessity for our coming down to the Maccabean period, as do De Wette and Hitzig, presents three occasions which might have given birth to it; viz., (1) The first celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month of the first year of the Return, when there was only a plain altar as yet erected on the holy place, Ezr 3:1-4 (to be distinguished from a later celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles on a large scale and in exact accordance with the directions of the Law, Neh. 8). So Ewald. (2) The laying of the foundation-stone of the Temple in the second month of the second year, Ezr 3:8. So Hengstenberg. (3) The dedication of the completed temple