1 I will exalt you, my God, the King. I will praise your name forever and ever. 2 Every day I will praise you. I will extol your name forever and ever. 3 Great is Yahweh, and greatly to be praised! His greatness is unsearchable. 4 One generation will commend your works to another, and will declare your mighty acts. 5 Of the glorious majesty of your honor, of your wondrous works, I will meditate. 6 Men will speak of the might of your awesome acts. I will declare your greatness. 7 They will utter the memory of your great goodness, and will sing of your righteousness. 8 Yahweh is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great loving kindness. 9 Yahweh is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works. 10 All your works will give thanks to you, Yahweh. Your saints will extol you. 11 They will speak of the glory of your kingdom, and talk about your power; 12 to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, the glory of the majesty of his kingdom. 13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Your dominion endures throughout all generations. Yahweh is faithful in all his words, and loving in all his deeds. 14 Yahweh upholds all who fall, and raises up all those who are bowed down. 15 The eyes of all wait for you. You give them their food in due season. 16 You open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing. 17 Yahweh is righteous in all his ways, and gracious in all his works. 18 Yahweh is near to all those who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. 19 He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. He also will hear their cry, and will save them. 20 Yahweh preserves all those who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. 21 My mouth will speak the praise of Yahweh. Let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.
This is also a Psalm of David, and the last of the series in this part of the collection. It is entitled simply, "Of Praise," or, in the Hebrew, "Praise by David," or "Praise of David;" that is, one of David's songs of praise. It is an "alphabetical" psalm; that is, each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The arrangement in this respect is complete, except that the Hebrew letter nun (נ n, "n") is omitted, for which no reason can be assigned, unless it was from a desire that the psalm might consist of three equal parts of seven verses each. In the Septuagint, Syriac, Arabic, Latin Vulgate, and Aethiopic versions, this omission is attempted to be supplied by inserting between Psalm 145:13-14 a verse which in Hebrew would begin with the Hebrew letter nun (נ n, "n"), - נאמן, etc.: - "Faithful is the Lord in all his words, and holy in all his works." This is taken from Psalm 145:17 of the psalm by the change of a word in the beginning - "faithful" for "righteous," נאמן for צדיק. There is no authority for this, however, in the MSS., and it is evidently an attempt to supply what seemed to be an omission or defect in the composition of the psalm. The verse is not in the Chaldee Paraphrase, or in the version of Aquila and Theodotion; and it is certain that as early as the time of Origen and Jerome it was not in the Hebrew text. The Masorites and the Jewish commentators reject it. The sense is in no way affected by the insertion or omission of this, since the verses of the psalm have no necessary connection in meaning - the composition, as in most of the alphabetical psalms, being made up of independent sentiments suggested in part at least by the necessity of commencing each verse with a particular letter.
The psalm does not admit of any particular analysis, and it is impossible now to ascertain the occasion on which it was written.
God is praised for his unsearchable greatness, Psalm 145:1, Psalm 145:2; for his majesty and terrible acts, Psalm 145:3, Psalm 145:6; for his goodness and tender mercies to all, Psalm 145:7-9; for his power and kingdom, Psalm 145:10-13; for his kindness to the distressed, Psalm 145:14; for his providence, Psalm 145:15-17. He hears and answers prayer, Psalm 145:18-20. All should praise him, Psalm 145:21.
This Psalm is attributed to David by the Hebrew and all the Versions. It is the last of the acrostic Psalm; and should contain twenty-two verses, as answering to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; but the verse between the thirteenth and fourteenth, beginning with the letter נ nun, is lost out of the present Hebrew copies; but a translation of it is found in the Syriac, Septuagint, Vulgate, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Anglo-Saxon. See below. It is an incomparable Psalm of praise; and the rabbins have it in such high estimation, that they assert, if a man with sincerity of heart repeat it three times a-day, he shall infallibly enjoy the blessings of the world to come. It does not appear on what particular occasion it was composed; or, indeed, whether there was any occasion but gratitude to God for his ineffable favors to mankind.
INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 145
David's Psalm of praise. This psalm is rendered by Ainsworth "a hymn of David"; and the whole book of Psalm is from hence called "the Book of Hymns"; see Ephesians 5:19; It seems to have been a psalm David took great delight in, and it may be that he often repeated and sung it, as it was made by him with great care and contrivance, in a very curious manner, as well as he was assisted in it by divine inspiration; for it is wrote in an alphabetical order, each verse: beginning with the letter of the alphabet in course, and goes through the whole, excepting one letter; and very probably it was composed in this form that it might be the more easily committed to memory, and retained in it. The Jews have a very high opinion of it; their Rabbins say, that whoever says this psalm thrice every day may be sure of being a child of the world to come. This is mentioned by Arama and Kimchi; and which the latter explains thus, not he that says it any way, but with his mouth, and with his heart, and with his tongue. It seems to have been written by David after the Lord had granted him all his requests put up in the preceding psalms, and had given him rest from all his enemies; and when he turned his prayers into praises; for this psalm is wholly praise from one end to the other; and so are all the five following ones; they begin and end with "hallelujah": nor is there a single petition in them, as I remember; so that it may in some sense be said, "here the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended". It no doubt, as Cocceius observes, belongs to the Messiah and his kingdom, which is everlasting, Psalm 145:13.
(Psalm 145:1-9) David extols the power, goodness, and mercy of the Lord.
(Psalm 145:10-21) The glory of God's kingdom, and his care of those that love him.
Hymn in Praise of the All-Bountiful King
With Psalm 144:1-15 the collection draws doxologically towards its close. This Psalm, which begins in the form of the beracha (ברוך ה), is followed by another in which benedicam (Psalm 145:1-2) and benedicat (Psalm 145:21) is the favourite word. It is the only Psalm that bears the title תּהלּה, whose plural תּהלּים is become the collective name of the Psalm. In B. Berachoth 4b it is distinguished by the apophthegm: "Every one who repeats the תהלה לדוד three times a day may be sure that he is a child of the world to come (בן העולם הבא)." And why? Not merely because this Psalm, as the Gemara says, אתיא באלף בית, i.e., follows the course of the alphabet (for Ps 119 is in fact also alphabetical, and that in an eightfold degree), and not merely because it celebrates God's care for all creatures (for this the Great Hallel also does, Psalm 136:25), but because it unites both these prominent qualities in itself (משׁום דאית ביה תרתי). In fact, Psalm 145:16 is a celebration of the goodness of God which embraces every living thing, with which only Psalm 136:25, and not Psalm 111:5, can be compared. Valde sententiosus hic Psalmus est, says Bakius; and do we not find in this Psalm our favourite Benedicite and Oculi omnium which our children repeat before a meal? It is the ancient church's Psalm for the noon-day repast (vid., Armknecht, Die heilige Psalmodie, 1855, S. 54); Psalm 145:15 was also used at the holy communion, hence Chrysostom says it contains τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα, ἅπερ οἱ μεμυημένοι συνεχῶς ὑποψάλλουσι λέγοντες· Οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ πάντων εἰς σὲ ἐλπίζουσιν καὶ σὺ δίδως τὴν τροφὴν αὐτῶν ἐν εὐκαιρίᾳ.
Κατὰ στοιχεῖον, observes Theodoret, καὶ οὗτος ὁ ὕμνος σύγκειται. The Psalm is distichic, and every first line of the distich has the ordinal letter; but the distich Nun is wanting. The Talmud (loc cit.) is of opinion that it is because the fatal נפלה (Amos 5:2), which David, going on at once with סומך ה לכל־הנפלים, skips over, begins with Nun. On the other hand, Ewald, Vaihinger, and Sommer, like Grotius, think that the Nun-strophe has been lost. The lxx (but not Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, nor Jerome in his translation after the original text) gives such a strophe, perhaps out of a MS (like the Dublin Cod. Kennicot, 142) in which it was supplied: Πιστὸς (נאמן as in Psalm 111:7) κύριος ἐν (πᾶσι) τοῖς λόγοις αὐτοῦ καὶ ὅσιος ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἔργοις αὐτοῦ (according with Psalm 145:17, with the change only of two words of this distich). Hitzig is of opinion that the original Nun-strophe has been welded into Psalm 141:1-10; but only his clairvoyant-like historical discernment is able to amalgamate Psalm 145:6 of this Psalm with our Psalm 145. We are contented to see in the omission of the Nun-strophe an example of that freedom with which the Old Testament poets are wont to handle this kind of forms. Likewise there is no reason apparent for there fact that Jeremiah has chosen in Lamentations 2:1, Lamentations 3:1, and Lamentations 4:1 of the Lamentations to make the Ajin-strophe follow the Pe-strophe three times, whilst in Lamentations 1:1 it precedes it.
*More commentary available by clicking individual verses.