Psalm 146: 1 Hallelujah! (Praise Yah!) Praise Yahweh, O my soul! 2 While I live I will praise Yahweh; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. 3 Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help. 4 His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; in that very day his plans perish. 5 Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in Yahweh his God, 6 Who made heaven and earth, 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. Yahweh gives freedom to the prisoners. 8 Yahweh opens the eyes of the blind; Yahweh raises those who are bowed down; Yahweh loves the righteous. 9 Yahweh watches over the strangers; He relieves the fatherless and widow; but the way of the wicked He turns upside down. 10 Yahweh shall reign forever— your God, O Zion, to all generations. Hallelujah! (Praise Yah!)
David penned this psalm. “It might be thought, that he should be exempted from the service of praising God, that it was enough for him to see that his priests and people did it, but that he needed not to do it himself in his own person. Michal thought it a disparagement to him to dance before the ark but he was so far from being of this mind that he would himself be first and foremost in the work.” (Matthew Henry)
“’Praise Yah! Praise Yahweh, O my soul!’— all that is within me. “The first occurrence of the name YAH occurs in Exodus 15:2, where Moses and Israel sing a song regarding their deliverance from Pharaoh’s horsemen." (Hebrew for Christians)—“Yah is my strength and my song. He is my Savior.” (Exodus 15:2) “But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God; yes, let them rejoice exceedingly. Sing to God, sing praises to His name; extol Him who rides on the clouds, by His name YAH, and rejoice before Him.” (Ps 68:3-4) “Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen.” (Revelation 1:7)
“‘While I live I will praise Yahweh; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.’ (2) Some will be thankful while the memory of a deliverance is fresh, and then leave off. The Carthaginians used, at first, to send the tenth of their yearly revenue to Hercules; and then by degrees they grew weary, and left off sending; but we must be constant in our eucharistic sacrifice, or thank offering” (Thomas Watson)- in season and out.
“’Do not put your trust in princes,’ however exalted he may be. There is a work of protection and salvation which no man, however exalted he may be, can perform for you; a work which God alone, who is the Maker of all things, and who never dies, can accomplish.” (Barnes )”Now it was Egypt (Isaiah 30:2; 36:6), now Assyria (2 Kings 16:7), now their own kings or nobles. At the time of the return from the Captivity, too much was expected from Zerubbabel and the other ‘princes.’” (The Pulpit Commentary) — “’nor in the son of man’- (3) Any son of man; any human being, no matter what his rank or power. The phrase is often used to denote man….” (Barnes)— ‘In whom there is no help.’ (3) - rather, 'no salvation' (Jeshuhah, a different Hebrew word from that for ‘help,’ Psalms 146:5, `eezer... The Jews had found dependence on Pharaoh no safeguard against Nebuchadnezzar when Jerusalem was besieged by the latter. Again the princess of the Medo-Persian world-power had been quickly turned away from helping them by the slander of their Samaritan enemies, after their return from Babylon.” (Jamieson, Faussett, Brown)
“Earthly princes offer baubles to allure the soul from the pursuit of an eternal prize. Princes themselves have pronounced their principality to be their own greatest peril. Pope Pius the Fifth said, ‘When I was a monk I had hope of my salvation; when I became Cardinal I began to fear; when I was made Pope I all but despaired of eternity.’ The Psalmist inscribes an antithesis. Princes, though masters of armies, possessors of riches, loaded with honours, revelling in pleasures, are at the mercy of a ruthless Black Prince. Death is tyrant over prince and peasant alike. The very pleasures which are envied are often ministers of death to voluptuous princes.” (Thomas Le Blanc)— “‘His breath goeth forth,’ mortal as he is, when he must yield up his spirit, ‘he returneth to his earth,’ from which the substance of man's body was originally taken, ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ Job_14:1-2; ‘in that very day his thoughts’ perish, all his plans are overthrown, whence it follows that reliance upon human beings is foolish.” (Paul E. Kretzmann) “To trust man is to lean not on a pillar but on a little heap of dust.” (Johannes Paulus Palanterius)
“‘Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in Yahweh his God.’ (5) The God of Jacob, is God's Covenant name in Christ.” (Robert Hawker) “In time, this expression came to be the virtual equivalent of ‘The God of Israel’… the God revealed in the Holy Bible. This final paragraph cannot be read without an acute consciousness of the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ stressed all of these things during his earthly ministry.” (Burton Coffman) “The leper believed Christ’s power, ‘Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.’ Martha believed His will to raise her dead brother, but doubted of His power; since he had now been four days in the grave. He that is confident of both is upon sure ground, and happy indeed.” (John Trapp) “The offices that covenant God hath performed, and is performing, as plainly manifest the Lord Jesus. See Isaiah 61:1, compared with Luke 4:18-19.” (Robert Hawker)
“‘Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps truth forever,’ (6) — “It is a characteristic of these Psalms, to proclaim to all nations which worshipped idols, that ‘the God of Jacob; the God of Zion’; is the Creator and Governor of all things; and to make an appeal to all nations to turn to Him...” (Christopher Wordsworth), that is Jesus.
“‘Who executes justice for the oppressed,’ etc —All judgment being committed to Christ as Mediator, He executes it on the behalf of his oppressed ones, and breaks in pieces their oppressors — ‘who gives food to the hungry’… to such as are in a starving and famishing condition, and hunger and thirst after righteousness, He gives Himself, the Bread of Life, and His grace, the Water of Life; He gives them to eat of the Hidden Manna, and of the Tree of Life; He gives them His Word, His Gospel, which is Milk for babes and Meat for strong men; He gives them his ordinances, which are a feast of fat things, and so He tills and satisfies their hungry souls;— ‘Yahweh gives freedom to the prisoners’ (7)…. His people, who are in a spiritual sense prisoners of sin, Satan, and the law, being shut up and held under by them, He proclaims liberty to them, and the opening the prison to them that are bound; He opens the prison doors, and says to the prisoners, ‘Go forth’; He delivers them from the power of sin, the slavery of Satan, and the bondage of the law, and brings them into a state of liberty, Isaiah 61:1. YEA, all of the prisoners in the grave He will loose at the last day; He has the key of hell and death, and will open those prisons and set them free; they shall come forth, some to the resurrection of life, and others to the resurrection of damnation.— ‘Yahweh opens the eyes of the blind;’ . such who are spiritually blind as to any knowledge of divine things, of God in Christ, of the way of life and salvation by Christ, of the Spirit and His operations, of their state and condition by nature, or of the things of the Gospel; the eyes of many such He opens so as to see their sin and danger, their want of righteousness, and need of Christ, and salvation by Him; this is usually done by means of the ministry of the Word, which is as an eye salve; but the work is Christ's, and a work of almighty power it is; see Isaiah 35:4;— ‘Yahweh raises those who are bowed down; Yahweh loves the righteous;’ (8) not self-righteous persons; these are not loved by God the Father, who preferred a publican to one of them; nor by Christ, who came not to call them to repentance; nor by the Spirit, who reproves and convinces men of self-righteousness; nor by angels, who rejoice at one sinner that repents more than over ninety and nine just persons who in their own opinion need no repentance: but such who are righteous through Christ's righteousness imputed to them, and there are none righteous in any other way; and these Christ loves, not for any righteousness in them...” (Gill)
“Yahweh watches over the strangers; He relieves the fatherless and widow.’ Meaning, all who are destitute of worldly means and help.” (Geneva Study Bible)— “’But the way of the wicked He turns upside down,’ (9) directing their steps, on their persistently crooked way, toward the destruction of hell.” (Paul E. Kretzmann) that is, the second death.
“In contrast to the transitory kingdoms of the world“ (Jamieson, Faussett, Brown)— “‘Yahweh shall reign forever— your God, O Zion, to all generations.’ (10)There shall be no change of dynasty as there is in human governments; but the same King shall reign from age to age.” (Barnes) “There are no changes in the politics.” (Scott) “Rabbi Jarchi refers this very justly to the reign of the Messiah. His giving sight to the blind seems to be the reference in Matthew 11:2; and also Isaiah 35:5-7. Zion here spiritually signifies the NT church, built on the tops of the mountains, and exalted above the hills. Micah 4:1.” (Sutcliffe)
“‘Praise Yah!” Well may we say Hallelujah! HAIL! thou glorious King of Zion, Jesus, before whom every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that thou art, universal Lord, to the glory of God the Father! I would begin every hymn, and close every prayer with Hallelujah. Surely, Lord, every redeemed soul upon earth, as well as those in heaven, thus taught by thee may join the song, for thou art worthy to receive all glory and honour, for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood. I behold, Lord, in princes and everything around, the dying perishing circumstances of all the earth. The children of men must die; mountains shall depart; hills be removed; but Jesus liveth. He that is I AM, amidst all revolutions is I AM still. Precious thought! what a foundation is here for thee, my soul! It is He that hath opened thy blind eyes. It is He that hath loosed thee, out of prison. He that hath been thy help, now is, and ever will be thy Redeemer, thy God, and the lifter up of thine head. Here rest then, and shout Hallelujah! This God is thy God forever and ever: He will be thy guide unto death.” (Robert Hawker)