Hallel is a thank-you song. Why does the middle of it ask for help?
Most of Hallel looks back at something God already did. The psalm before this one is about leaving Egypt. Then this one opens with "Not to us" and asks, "Why should the nations say, Where is their God?" That is not what you say the day after a rescue. It is what you say while you are still waiting for one.
The Gemara points the same way. It says this Hallel holds five things: the Exodus, the splitting of the sea, the giving of the Torah, the dead coming back to life, and the hard times before the Messiah. It files "Not to us" under the last one. Rabbi Yochanan says the verse is about being ruled by foreign kingdoms. In another version of his words, it is about the war of Gog and Magog. Yechezkel (Ezekiel) prophesies against Gog, from the land of Magog.
A midrash on Hallel, collected in Otzar Midrashim (a collection of smaller midrashim), gives each part its own time. "When Israel went out of Egypt" is for the Exodus. "Not to us" is for "these generations," meaning the generations saying it now.
The Seder follows the same line. Abarbanel (Don Yitzchak Abarbanel, a Torah commentator who was driven out of Spain in 1492) wrote his Haggadah commentary in 1496. He says the first two psalms of Hallel were said about the Exodus. The second half, he says, is about the future, the time of exile. So the two halves are not joined, and the meal sits between them. This is his reading. The Mishnah only says where the first part stops.
Radak ties the halves together another way. He reads the first line as: as You did kindness for our fathers in taking them out of Egypt, do the same for us in every generation, even though we are not worthy.
So in these sources, this is the point where Hallel stops only looking back. It uses the Exodus as the reason to ask again.
Pesachim 118a,Otzar Midrashim, Midrash on Hallel,Mishnah Pesachim 10:6-7,Zevach Pesach (Abarbanel) on the Haggadah, Hallel,Radak on Tehillim 115:1,Yechezkel 38:2Why does the psalm say God should help us for His own name, and not for us?
People usually ask for help because they need it. This psalm says the opposite: not for us, but for Your name. Rashi says the first part means: not for our sake, and not because our deeds earn it. Radak adds that even the generation that left Egypt would not have been saved on its own merit. It was saved for God's name and His covenant with the fathers.
The Gemara has God answer in the same words. When Israel stood at the Sea and said "Not to us," a voice of divine inspiration replied with a line from Yeshayahu (the prophet Isaiah): "For My sake, for My sake I will act, for how could it be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another." Rashi on that verse says what would be profaned: God's name, if He destroyed Israel, because His enemies would say their idols had won.
So why would God's name be at risk? Radak on the next verse says: if You leave us in the hands of Your enemies, they will say, "Where is their God?" Yechezkel says the same from God's side. When Israel went into exile, the nations said, "These are Hashem's people, and they had to leave His land." That, Yechezkel says, profaned God's name.
Then God says through Yechezkel: "Not for your sake do I act, House of Israel, but for My holy name." He says the nations will know who He is when He shows His holiness through Israel before their eyes. In these verses, how the world sees Israel is how it sees God. The psalm's question, "Where is their God?", is the same worry.
The tone is different. In the psalm, the people say "not to us" about themselves, as humility. In Yechezkel, God says "not for your sake" as a rebuke, and tells Israel to be ashamed of its ways.
The Vehu Rachum prayer tells Moshe's version of this argument. And none of these sources says why God's honor matters in itself. Yeshayahu just says that it does.
Rashi and Radak on Tehillim 115:1,Radak on Tehillim 115:2,Pesachim 117a,Yeshayahu 48:11, with Rashi,Yechezkel 36:20-23 and 36:32Nobody I know bows to a statue. Why does the psalm spend five verses on them?
Verses 4 to 8 describe idols. Verses 5 to 7 list what they cannot do: speak, see, hear, smell, touch, walk, or make a sound in their throats. Ibn Ezra adds a sting. The people who make idols are better off than the statues, since they can at least feel and speak.
The word for idols, atzabim, is tied to itzavon, sorrow. Ibn Ezra and Radak both say so. Idols bring sorrow to the people who serve them, because they cannot help. Radak says those who trust them are never saved by them.
That shows what the psalm cares about: whether the thing can help. Then the psalm turns. Verse 8 ends with people who trust idols. Verse 9 calls on Israel: trust in Hashem. The Hebrew root for trust, bet-tet-chet, appears four times in verses 8 to 11. Verses 9, 10 and 11 each end the same way: "their help and their shield is He."
Radak spells out the contrast. He reads the verse as a call: not like those who trust in idols. You, trust in Hashem, because you can see that in every generation before you He was Israel's help and shield.
The verse about the makers, "Like them will be those who make them, everyone who trusts in them," is read by Ibn Ezra and Radak as a prayer: may they become like them. Metzudat David (a commentary on Tehillim from the 1700s) calls it a curse on the makers.
All of these sources are about idols made by hand. None says what takes a statue's place today. What they give you is the psalm's test: can it speak, see, hear and help? Whether anything in your own life fails it is a question for you, not for the sources.
Tehillim 115:4-11,Ibn Ezra on Tehillim 115:4, 115:5 and 115:8,Radak on Tehillim 115:4, 115:8 and 115:9,Metzudat David on Tehillim 115:8