This is a psalm of trust. The people exiled in Babylon did not have a Temple or sanctuary. Their God does not accept any figure or image, and it is also a defeated God. The powerful Babylonian gods are present. Where is the God of Israel? God must act to honor his Name (v. 1) and for the exiled who have lost faith. The answer is clear: our God is in heaven and created the earth. Your gods are on earth, but they are worthless, as the seven negatives of verses 5-7 explain. God made us in his image and likeness (Gn 1:26).
We must constantly criticize the idols of ordinary people, as well as the idols of those who claim to be free of all bias. Here is a thought from the poet Paul Claudel: “Blessed are you, O my God, who freed me from all the idols and who made me adore you alone, and not Isis or Osiris, or Justice, Progress, Truth, Divinity, Humanity, the Laws of Nature, of Art, or Beauty. And who has not allowed these things to exist, things that are not, or the vacuum left by your absence? I know you are not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Lord, I have found you! The one who finds you no longer tolerates death.”
“I believe in God, though I do not see him,” a Jewish man wrote in the Warsaw ghetto. In times that are hostile to faith, it is good for us to pray with this psalm.