Psalms 146:3-10

3 Do not put your trust in princes or other people, who cannot save you.

4 When people die, they are buried. Then all of their plans come to an end.

5 Happy are those who are helped by the God of Jacob. Their hope is in the Lord their God.

6 He made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in it. He remains loyal forever.

7 He does what is fair for those who have been wronged. He gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free.

8 The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord lifts up people who are in trouble. The Lord loves those who do right.

9 The Lord protects the foreigners. He defends the orphans and widows, but he blocks the way of the wicked.

10 The Lord will be King forever. Jerusalem, your God is everlasting.

Psalms 146:3-10 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.