Psalm 146:1-9

1 Praise ye Jah! Praise, O my soul, Jehovah.

2 I praise Jehovah during my life, I sing praise to my God while I exist.

3 Trust not in princes -- in a son of man, For he hath no deliverance.

4 His spirit goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, In that day have his thoughts perished.

5 O the happiness of him Who hath the God of Jacob for his help, His hope [is] on Jehovah his God,

6 Making the heavens and earth, The sea and all that [is] in them, Who is keeping truth to the age,

7 Doing judgment for the oppressed, Giving bread to the hungry.

8 Jehovah is loosing the prisoners, Jehovah is opening (the eyes of) the blind, Jehovah is raising the bowed down, Jehovah is loving the righteous,

9 Jehovah is preserving the strangers, The fatherless and widow He causeth to stand, And the way of the wicked He turneth upside down.

Psalm 146:1-9 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.