Psalms 146:1-8

1 Praise the LORD ! Let all that I am praise the LORD .

2 I will praise the LORD as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.

3 Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there.

4 When they breathe their last, they return to the earth, and all their plans die with them.

5 But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the LORD their God.

6 He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. He keeps every promise forever.

7 He gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The LORD frees the prisoners.

8 The LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are weighed down. The LORD loves the godly.

Psalms 146:1-8 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.

Footnotes

• [a]. Hebrew of Jacob. See note on 44:4 .