Why Psalm 118 is the theme tune to Matthew's Gospel

Partly inspired by what I misheard at Cornhill Summer School 2025.

Psalm 118 is one of the best-loved hits in the Hebrews’ ancient songbook, the Psalms, and also one of the most re-interpreted.

It has been heavily used in both Jewish and Christian liturgy since ancient times. It is heavily referenced in the Rabbinical literature. Depending how generous you are with what counts as an ‘allusion’, you can count between twenty and sixty quotes and allusions to Psalm 118 in the New Testament. It has been frequently set and re-set to music, memorised, sung, interpreted and re-interpreted.

But why should we care about an old song and its ensemble of interpretations? At least part of the answer that its long history of usage includes another Biblical text which urgently appeals to us today: the Gospel of Matthew.

If we can understand why Matthew referred to Psalm 118, not once, not twice, but five times, all in the space of five chapters, we might understand a little better the story that Matthew wants to tell us.

To understand why it’s so important for Matthew, first, let’s get on the same page on what the psalm actually says.

A story in four characters

The psalm features four characters: a hero, a congregation, some enemies, and the Lord.

The hero narrates the psalm’s central block, from verse 5 to verse 21. He is a warrior hero: he ‘cuts off’ his enemies. He is nearly defeated, but is eventually victorious, and ascribes his victory to the Lord. He then approaches the ‘gates through which the righteous shall enter’, and appeals to go through so that he can praise the Lord there.

When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord;he brought me into a spacious place.
The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid.What can mere mortals do to me?
The Lord is with me; he is my helper.I look in triumph on my enemies.
It is better to take refuge in the Lordthan to trust in humans.
It is better to take refuge in the Lordthan to trust in princes.
All the nations surrounded me,but in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
They surrounded me on every side,but in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
They swarmed around me like bees,but they were consumed as quickly as burning thorns;in the name of the Lord I cut them down.
I was pushed back and about to fall,but the Lord helped me.
The Lord is my strength and my defense;he has become my salvation.
Shouts of joy and victoryresound in the tents of the righteous:
“The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!The Lord’s right hand is lifted high;the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!”
I will not die but live,and will proclaim what the Lord has done.
The Lord has chastened me severely,but he has not given me over to death.
Open for me the gates of the righteous;I will enter and give thanks to the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lordthrough which the righteous may enter.
I will give you thanks, for you answered me;you have become my salvation.

Having heard the hero’s account, the final section is dominated by the congregation. They thank the Lord for his saving work, which they describe thus: ‘the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.’ This implies that the hero had initially faced rejection, before being vindicated. The people show their praise by bringing a sacrifice bound with branches up to the altar, and finally the psalm is book-ended by repetition of the opening motif: ‘give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever!’

The stone the builders rejectedhas become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,and it is marvelous in our eyes.
The Lord has done it this very day;let us rejoice today and be glad.
Lord, save us!Lord, grant us success!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.From the house of the Lord we bless you.
The Lord is God,and he has made his light shine on us.
With boughs in hand, join in the festal processionup to the horns of the altar.

There is potentially a fifth character, the ‘builders’ who rejected the stone. Interpreters often identify these ‘builders’ either with the enemies or with the congregation, though not always. The text doesn’t say.

Apart from the Lord, none of these four (or five) characters are named in the text.

This is where the intrigue lies: who are these characters? Who are the enemies? Who is the congregation? And who is this embattled hero, this ‘stone the builders rejected’ which has become ‘the chief cornerstone’?

If I were to enumerate all the solutions that have been proposed to this puzzle, reading this essay would give you piles. But in order to understand some of the context in which Matthew was writing, permit me briefly to introduce two of the most popular Jewish interpretations.

Moses

The first is Moses. Psalm 118 lays on thick the references to the Song of the Sea in Ex 15.

The central line, ‘the Lord is my strength and song, he has become my salvation!’ is a direct quote from Ex 15:2. Like Ex 15, the psalm uses the divine name frequently. Not only that, but the psalm, like Ex 15, prefers the relatively unusual form YH rather than the more common YHWH. The psalm echoes Ex 15 also in its references to the right hand of the Lord doing mighty things, his chosen hero being hard-pressed by foreign nations and enjoying the Lord’s ‘salvation’, and by the hero’s response, ‘praising’ and ‘exalting’ the Lord.

The Lord is my strength and my defense;he has become my salvation.He is my God, and I will praise him,my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
The Lord is a warrior;the Lord is his name.
Pharaoh’s chariots and his armyhe has hurled into the sea.The best of Pharaoh’s officersare drowned in the Red Sea.
The deep waters have covered them;they sank to the depths like a stone.
Your right hand, Lord,was majestic in power.Your right hand, Lord,shattered the enemy.

In short, the psalm is absolutely reeking with references to the Song of the Sea, Moses’ classic number-1 hit. No ancient Jew, for whom the psalm was originally written, could have failed to smell it.

The Midrash Tehillim, a Jewish commentary on the psalter composed in the early medieval period, even ascribes the psalm to Moses, claiming that he sang it on the first Pesach (Passover). Certainly, the psalm has featured heavily in Jewish celebrations of both Pesach and Sukkoth (another exodus-inspired festival) since ancient times.

However, perhaps surprisingly, Moses is not the most common Jewish reading of the hero of Psalm 118. That accolade goes to the next great hero of the Hebrew Scriptures: David.

David

Although, unlike many other psalms, this one is not explicitly described as being ‘of David’, very many Jewish interpreters associate this psalm with that improbable king. For instance, the Targum — an Aramaic paraphrase and commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures — explicitly reads David, Samuel and Saul into the psalm. David has also been a favourite reading of some Christian readers, including John Calvin.

Why is this? One reason might be the psalm’s context in the psalter. The psalter is divided into five books, and contemporary scholars theorise that in the second Temple period, editors arranged these five books thematically.

Books I and II tell how God had a covenant with David, and Book III laments that the covenant with David has failed, perhaps because David failed to keep the commands of the Torah. The task of Books IV and V is to show that God will restore his Davidic kingdom and fulfil his promises.

Psalm 118 sits in this final block, as the last psalm of Book IV. This suggests we should expect David, or a type of David, to feature: a returning king, coming back to fulfil his destiny to rule as an intermediary between God and his people. (Presumably, this time, he’s got to be a true keeper of the Torah in order for this to work.)

Notice that a Davidic interpretation is inherently implicitly also a Messianic interpretation. David is dead. God promised that he would establish an everlasting throne in Jerusalem, where a human mediator would rule on his behalf, and God and his people could live together in peace forever. David, for all his merits, has conspicuously failed to deliver on this promise. So, if this psalm looks back to David, it must also look forward to the one who will fulfil God’s promises to David.

So in this traditional Davidic interpretation, it’s understood that God is going to choose someone who will re-establish that Davidic throne, and this time it’s going to really work. Which means this time, it’s going to be really different.

Jesus

On the face of it, the New Testament authors seem to have nothing to do with the traditional interpretations. Instead of Moses or David, they exclusively identify the hero of Psalm 118 with Jesus. What are they up to?

One reason the New Testament authors went ham for Psalm 118 is simply because it was well-known. I mentioned that it was used heavily at Pesach and Sukkoth. As a result, lots of Jews were very familiar with its ideas and its language. Many ordinary people would have memorised it.

But that in itself doesn’t explain why the New Testament authors used it. They didn’t refer to Scripture arbitrarily, but they subverted shared interpretations in order to tell a new story. The cleverest instance of this is in the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew first gets his reader tuned in to Psalm 118 as Jesus enters Jerusalem on the back of a colt. Matthew quotes the crowds quoting Psalm 118, shouting ‘Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ In case we missed the application, he pairs this with his own quotation from the prophecy of Zechariah: Jesus is the coming king who will fulfil God’s promises. The crowd also wave him in with branches, typical of Sukkoth celebrations and a reference to Ps 118:27.

A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

So now we know Jesus is the returning king, we’re expecting his imminent victory over his enemies, right? That’s what Psalm 118, and its traditional Mosaic and Davidic interpretations, suggests, and so it’s clearly what Matthew wants us to think. But that’s when things take a sudden turn.

Immediately after this, Jesus tells the Parable of the Tenants. He implies that the well-educated, respectable religious leaders are complicit in murder and enemies of God. It’s a shocking teaching, and it doesn’t go down well. Perplexingly, Jesus quotes Psalm 118 again in the midst of this teaching.

Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the Scriptures:
“The stone the builders rejectedhas become the cornerstone;the Lord has done this,and it is marvelous in our eyes”?
‘Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.’

Matthew depicts Jesus continuing to teach in the Temple while sparring with the religious elites. Jesus caps off what was already a dreadful day by declaring seven devastating woes on the religious leaders. As he finally exits the Temple, he leaves another ominous quote from Psalm 118 hanging in the air: ‘For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’

This doesn’t make sense at all. According to the Psalm 118 storyline, we were supposed to be seeing Jesus cutting down his enemies and arriving at the Temple to celebrate with God’s people. But now he’s doing the opposite: he’s cutting down God’s people and then leaving the Temple mired in controversy.

Jesus then, after taking a private seminar for his disciples, invites them to what he knew would be his last supper. Matthew shows the reader how Judas had already betrayed Jesus behind his back. And yet, Matthew doesn’t let up. He points out that they are celebrating their Pesach meal, and at the end, he points out that they finished with a hymn.

Why these apparently irrelevant details? He’s begging you to put two and two together. His Jewish readers would have immediately clocked that the hymn in question was Psalm 118, ritually sung at the end of the Pesach meal.

So even at the very moment Jesus’ total defeat in shame and misery is sealed, they’re still singing this song about a victorious returning king, coming to re-establish David’s throne forever?

The point that Matthew wants us to clock is the point Jesus made to the religious leaders in the Parable of the Tenants: ‘the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.’ He really is the perfect Moses and the perfect David that God has promised. But before his great victory, he needs a great rejection. The surprise is that neither Jesus’ rejection nor his victory look anything like what anyone expected.

Rather than being hard-pressed by foreign nations and defeating them in battle, Jesus is oppressed by his own people, the Jews. (We should understand this in the context that Matthew’s Gospel was written primarily for an audience of Jews, hence why he expects them to pick up on all the references to Psalm 118.)

But this oppression is only the surface layer: his real fight was his fight with the spiritual powers of sin and death. By going to the cross, he consented to be hard-pressed.

And his Resurrection is his victory. Through it, he shows that he has defeated death. Now he is ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he rules as the perfect David, as the one who could both act as a human intermediary between God and humanity, and as one who could truly keep God’s law. He is also the perfect Moses, who, by God’s power, led his people out of captivity to sin and death in order to worship God. The old covenants are broken, but God has remained faithful and delivered on them anyway, and in doing so has created a new people, the Church, who will enter the gates of righteousness because Jesus has opened the way.

For a contemporary Jewish reader of Matthew’s Gospel, the references to Psalm 118 would automatically have conjured all the associations with Moses and David, and as a result, all the Messianic secondary meanings, that he needed to make his point. He could have expected his original readers to join the dots.

For a contemporary reader, particularly one like me that didn’t get an old-fashioned Biblical education, it might take a bit more work to spot the links. But isn’t it worth it? This psalm helps us to understand the message of Matthew’s Gospel: Jesus fulfils God’s promises in a way that nobody expected.

Conclusion

As I’ve discovered, Matthew’s way is far from the only way of reading Psalm 118. That’s to be expected: as I noted at the start, none of the characters apart from the Lord are named in the text. It’s up to us as readers to impose allegories onto the text, if that is what we choose to do.

And that is what interpreters from ancient times have strove to do. Indeed, Matthew didn’t ignore or overwrite previous interpretations: he used Psalm 118 precisely because he knew that if he put Jesus into Psalm 118, his readers would have made the link to Moses and David themselves. In order to get Matthew’s subversive new reading, you’ve got to be fluent in the rich tradition of old readings.

Therefore I will keep reading. As I’ve encountered Psalm 118 recently, I’ve re-discovered how understanding one Biblical text can shed dramatic new light on another. If God is willing, perhaps this will help me to see him once again in sharp relief.