It says God gave people the earth. Isn't the earth God's?
Tehillim 24:1 says: "The earth and everything in it belongs to Hashem." Our verse says Hashem gave the earth to people. The Gemara (Berakhot 35a-35b) settles the clash with the blessing before food, and the Modim prayer tells that teaching. Other sources read our verse in other ways.
Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, Provence, around 1200) and Ibn Ezra read the verse as a job description. Ibn Ezra says a person is God's appointed manager over everything on earth, and that people who think human rule on earth is the same as God's rule in heaven are wrong. Radak says people must know they are managers and He is the owner, who can remove them from the post.
A midrash (Shemot Rabbah 12:3) compares the verse to a king who decrees that people of Rome may not go down to Syria and people of Syria may not go up to Rome. At creation God made that kind of decree: heaven for Him, earth for people. When He gave the Torah, He canceled it. Those below go up, those above come down, and He says: I will be the first. Then it cites Sinai: Hashem came down on the mountain, and Moshe was told to go up.
So the sources do not read the verse as a deed of ownership. They read it as a job as God's manager, or as a border that God opened when He gave the Torah. A Chassidic reading on the Sparks section goes further and calls it a task: to make the earth into heaven. None of them reads it as permission to do whatever you like.
Tehillim 24:1,Berakhot 35a-35b,Ibn Ezra and Radak on Tehillim 115:16,Shemot Rabbah 12:3,Shem MiShmuel, Vayetzei 10:6On Rosh Chodesh we skip a chunk of Hallel. Why does this part stay in?
On Rosh Chodesh, Hallel is cut short. The blessing before Hallel tells why: saying it on Rosh Chodesh is a custom, and the skipping shows that. This question is narrower. Why is the cut right before these verses?
Rashi (the main commentator on the Gemara, France, 1000s) explains the Gemara's word for skipping with the practice of his own community: "like us, who skip Lo Lanu and start from Hashem zecharanu yevarech." So the cut fell right where this prayer begins.
The Mishnah Berurah (a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, the main code of Jewish law, written around 1900) calls this the common custom. The Rambam (Maimonides, Egypt, 1100s) skips more, as the Mah Ashiv prayer tells, but he too keeps these verses.
Why here? The Lo Lanu prayer gives the answer of the Eliyah Rabbah (a commentary on Jewish law from around 1700): the skipped section and this one are alike in most of what they say, and Ahavti and Mah Ashiv are alike in some of it. You can see it in the text. The verses just before ours tell Israel, the house of Aharon and those who fear Hashem to trust in Hashem. Ours bless the same three groups.
So one of each matching pair is dropped. None of these sources says why the first one is dropped and the second one kept, and not the other way around.
Rashi on Taanit 28b,Mishnah Berurah 422:12,Rambam, Laws of Megillah and Chanukah 3:8,Eliyah Rabbah on Orach Chaim 422:12,Tehillim 115:9-13Who is God blessing here, and why three groups?
The verse names three groups: Israel, the house of Aharon (the priests), and "those who fear Hashem." The verses just before ask each of the same three to trust in Hashem. So these verses answer that call to trust with a blessing for each of the three.
Who are "those who fear Hashem"? The Hodu prayer of Hallel lays out what Rashi, Radak and Ibn Ezra say. Two more readings are worth adding. Metzudat David says they are the pious of the nations.
Meiri lists both kinds of reading. His main one: the three groups are three ranks inside Israel, the masses, the tribe set apart for Torah, and the sages. He also records the view about the pious of the nations.
Next: "the small with the great." The sources split on what it means. Ibn Ezra: the small get a blessing equal to the great. Radak: He blesses the small for the sake of the great. Malbim: the special blessing given to the great then lands on the small too.
Then comes "May Hashem add to you, to you and your children." Is that a wish or a promise? Radak says it can be read either way, as a prayer or as a prophecy.
The commentators leave several questions open: who the third group is, what "small and great" means, and whether the last blessing is a wish. The sources do not settle them.
Tehillim 115:9-13,Metzudat David and Meiri on Tehillim 115:11,Ibn Ezra, Radak and Malbim on Tehillim 115:12-14