The heavens are the LORD’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.
This psalm was written when God's people lay under heavy affliction, and they cry out to Him not for their own honor but for His name's sake, lest the heathen mock Him and say, Where is their God? From their distress they take courage and boast in the madness of idol-worship, magnifying their own blessedness in being chosen by God.
AI summary
Commenting on Psalm 115:1-18
The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's. There he specially reigns, and manifests his greatness and his glory: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. He hath left the world during the present dispensation in a great measure under the power and will of men, so that things are not here below in the same perfect order as the things which are above.
In these verses, I. We are earnestly exhorted, all of us, to repose our confidence in God, and not suffer our confidence in him to be shaken by the heathens' insulting over us upon the account of our present distresses.
Commenting on Psalm 115:9-18