Psalms 146:1-7

1 Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, my soul.

2 While I live, I will praise the LORD. I will sing praises to my God as long as I exist.

3 Don't put your trust in princes, Each a son of man in whom there is no help.

4 His spirit departs, and he returns to the eretz. In that very day, his thoughts perish.

5 Happy is he who has the God of Ya`akov for his help, Whose hope is in the LORD, his God:

6 Who made heaven and eretz, The sea, and all that is in them; Who keeps truth forever;

7 Who executes justice for the oppressed; Who gives food to the hungry. The LORD frees the prisoners.

Psalms 146:1-7 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.