Psalms 146:2-10

2 While I live will I praise Jehovah: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

3 Put not your trust in princes, Nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.

4 His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; In that very day his thoughts perish.

5 Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in Jehovah his God:

6 Who made heaven and earth, The sea, and all that in them is; Who keepeth truth for ever;

7 Who executeth justice for the oppressed; Who giveth food to the hungry. Jehovah looseth the prisoners;

8 Jehovah openeth [the eyes of] the blind; Jehovah raiseth up them that are bowed down; Jehovah loveth the righteous;

9 Jehovah preserveth the sojourners; He upholdeth the fatherless and widow; But the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.

10 Jehovah will reign for ever, Thy God, O Zion, unto all generations. Praise ye Jehovah.

Psalms 146:2-10 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 146

This psalm is entitled by the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, Ethiopic, and Arabic versions, "hallelujah", of Haggai and Zechariah; and by Apollinarius, the common hymn of them: and the Syriac inscription is still more expressive,

``it was said by Haggai and Zechariah, prophets, who came up with the captivity out of Babylon.''

Theodoret says this title was in some Greek copies in his time; but was not in the Septuagint, in the Hexapla: nor is it in any other Greek interpreters, nor in the Hebrew text, nor in the Targum; though some Jewish commentators, as R. Obadiah, take it to be an exhortation to the captives in Babylon to praise the Lord: and Kimchi interprets it of their present captivity and deliverance from it; and observes, that the psalmist seeing, by the Holy Spirit, the gathering of the captives, said this with respect to Israel; and so refers it to the times of the Messiah, as does also Jarchi, especially the Ps 146:10; and which, though they make it to serve an hypothesis of their own, concerning their vainly expected Messiah; yet it is most true, that the psalm is concerning the Messiah and his kingdom, to whom all the characters and descriptions given agree.