Psalms 146:2-10

2 While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises to 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 the LORD his God:

6 Who made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that [is] in them: who keepeth truth for ever:

7 Who executeth judgment for the oppressed: who giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:

8 The LORD openeth [the eyes of] the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous:

9 The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.

10 The LORD will reign for ever, [even] thy God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise ye the LORD.

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.