1 Hallelujah!
Praise Jehovah, my soul.
2 I will praise Jehovah while I live,
I will harp to Jehovah as long as I exist.
3 Trust not in nobles,
In a son of Adam, who has no deliverance [to give].
4 His spirit goes forth, he returns to his earth,
In that same day his schemes perish.
5 Blessed he who has the God of Jacob for his help,
Whose hope is on Jehovah his God!
6 Who made heaven and earth,
The sea--and all that is in them;
Who keeps troth for ever;
7 Who executes judgment for the oppressed;
Who gives bread to the hungry.
Jehovah looses captives;
8 Jehovah opens the eyes of the blind;
Jehovah raises the bowed down;
Jehovah loves the righteous;
9 Jehovah preserves the strangers;
Orphans and widows He sets up;
But the way of the wicked He thwarts.
10 Jehovah shall be King for ever,
Thy God, O Zion, to generation after generation.
Hallelujah!
The long-drawn music of the Psalter closes with five Hallelujah
psalms, in which, with constantly swelling diapason, all themes of
praise are pealed forth, until the melodious thunder of the final
psalm, which calls on everything that has breath to praise Jehovah.
Possibly the number of these psalms may have reference to the five
books into which the Psalter is divided.
This is the first of the five. It is largely coloured by earlier songs,
but still throbs with fresh emotion. Its theme is the blessedness of
trust in Jehovah, as shown by His character and works. It deals less
with Israel's special prerogatives than its companions do, while yet it
claims the universally beneficent Ruler as Israel's God.
The singer's full heart of thanksgiving must first pour itself out
in vows of perpetual praise, before he begins to woo others to the
trust which blesses him. Exhortations are impotent unless enforced by
example. Ver. 2 is borrowed with slight variation from Psalm civ. 33.
The negative side of the psalmist's exhortation follows in vv.
3, 4, which warn against wasting trust on powerless men. The same
antithesis between men and God as objects of confidence occurs in
many places of Scripture, and here is probably borrowed from Psalm
cxviii. 8. The reason assigned for the dehortation is mainly man's
mortality. However high his state, he is but a "son of Adam" (the
earth-born), and inherits the feebleness and fleetingness which
deprive him of ability to help. "He has no salvation" is the literal
rendering of the last words of ver. 3_b_. Psalm lx. 11 gives the same
thought, and almost in the same words. Ver. 4 sets forth more fully
man's mortality, as demonstrating the folly of trusting in him. His
breath or spirit escapes; he goes back to "his earth," from which he
was created; and what becomes of all his busy schemes? They "perish"
as he does. The psalmist has a profound sense of the phantasmal
character of the solid-seeming realities of human glory and power.
But it wakes no bitterness in him, nor does it breathe any sadness
into his song. It only teaches him to cling the more closely to the
permanent and real. His negative teaching, if it stood alone, would
be a gospel of despair, the reduction of life to a torturing cheat;
but taken as the prelude to the revelation of One whom it is safe to
trust, there is nothing sad in it. So the psalm springs up at once
from these thoughts of the helplessness of mortal man, to hymn the
blessedness of trust set upon the undying God, like a song-bird from
its lair in a grave-yard, which pours its glad notes above the grassy
mounds, as it rises in spirals towards the blue, and at each gives
forth a more exultant burst of music.
The exclamation in ver. 5 is the last of the twenty-five "Blesseds"
in the Psalter. Taken together, as any concordance will show,
beginning with Psalm i., they present a beautiful and comprehensive
ideal of the devout life. The felicity of such a life is here
gathered up into two comprehensive considerations, which supplement
each other. It is blessed to have the God of Jacob on our side; but
it is not enough for the heart to know that He bore a relation to
another in the far-off past or to a community in the present. There
must be an individualising bond between the soul and God, whereby
the "God of Jacob" becomes the God who belongs to the single devout
man, and all the facts of whose protection in the past are renewed in
the prosaic present. It is blessed to have Jehovah for one's "help,"
but that is only secured when, by the effort of one's own will, He
is clasped as one's "hope." Such hope is blessed, for it will never
be put to shame, nor need to shift its anchorage. It brings into any
life the all-sufficient help which is the ultimate source of all
felicity, and makes the hope that grasps it blessed, as the hand that
holds some fragrant gum is perfumed by the touch.
But the psalmist passes swiftly from celebrating trust to magnify
its object, and sets forth in an impressive series the manifold
perfections and acts which witness that Jehovah is worthy to be the
sole Confidence of men.
The nine Divine acts, which invite to trust in Him, are divided into
two parts, by a change in construction. There is, first, a series
of participles (vv. 6-7_b_), and then a string of brief sentences
enumerating Divine deeds (vv. 7_c_-9). No very clear difference in
thought can be established as corresponding to this difference in
form. The psalmist begins with God's omnipotence as manifested in
creation. The first requisite for trust is assurance of power in the
person trusted. The psalmist calls heaven and earth and sea, with all
their inhabitants, as witnesses that Jehovah is not like the son of
man, in whom there is no power to help.
But power may be whimsical, changeable, or may shroud its designs in
mystery; therefore, if it is to be trusted, its purposes and methods
must be so far known that a man may be able to reckon on it. Therefore
the psalm adds unchangeable faithfulness to His power. But Power,
however faithful, is not yet worthy of trust, unless it works according
to righteousness, and has an arm that wars against wrong; therefore
to creative might and plighted troth the psalmist adds the exercise
of judgment. Nor are these enough, for the conception which they
embody may be that of a somewhat stern and repellent Being, who may be
reverenced, but not approached with the warm heart of trust; therefore
the psalmist adds beneficence, which ministers their appropriate food
to all desires, not only of the flesh, but of the spirit. The hungry
hearts of men, who are all full of needs and longings, may turn to this
mighty, faithful, righteous Jehovah, and be sure that He never sends
mouths but He sends meat to fill them. All our various kinds of hunger
are doors for God to come into our spirits.
The second series of sentences deals mainly with the Divine
beneficence in regard to man's miseries. The psalmist does not feel
that the existence of these sad varieties of sorrow clouds his
assurance in God's goodness. To him, they are occasions for the most
heart-touching display of God's pitying, healing hand. If there is
any difference between the two sets of clauses descriptive of God's
acts, the latter bring into clearer light His personal agency in
each case of suffering. This mighty, faithful, righteous, beneficent
Jehovah, in all the majesty which that name suggests, comes down to
the multitude of burdened ones and graciously deals with each, having
in His heart the knowledge of, and in His hand the remedy for, all
their ills. The greatness of His nature expressed by His name is
vividly contrasted with the tenderness and lowliness of His working.
Captives, blind persons, and those bowed down by sorrows or otherwise
appeal to Him by their helplessness, and His strong hand breaks the
fetters, and His gentle touch opens without pain the closed eyes
and quickens the paralysed nerve to respond to the light, and His
firm, loving hold lifts to their feet and establishes the prostrate.
All these classes of afflicted persons are meant to be regarded
literally, but all may have a wider meaning, and be intended to hint
at spiritual bondage, blindness, and abjectness.
The next clause (ver. 8_c_) seems to interrupt the representation
of forms of affliction, but it comes in with great significance in
the centre of that sad catalogue; for its presence here teaches that
not merely affliction, whether physical or other, secures Jehovah's
gracious help, but that there must be the yielding of heart to Him,
and the effort at conformity of life with His precepts and pattern,
if His aid is to be reckoned on in men's sorrows. The prisoners will
still languish in chains, the blind will grope in darkness, the bowed
down will lie prone in the dust, unless they are righteous.
The series of afflictions which God alleviates is resumed in ver. 9
with a pathetic triad--strangers, widows, and fatherless. These are
forlorn indeed, and the depth of their desolation is the measure of the
Divine compassion. The enumeration of Jehovah's acts, which make trust
in God blessed in itself, and the sure way of securing help which is
not vain, needs but one more touch for completion, and that is added
in the solemn thought that He, by His providences and in the long run,
turns aside (_i.e._ from its aim) the way of the wicked. That aspect
of God's government is lightly handled in one clause, as befits the
purpose of the psalm. But it could not be left out. A true likeness
must have shadows. God were not a God for men to rely on, unless the
trend of His reign was to crush evil and thwart the designs of sinners.
The blessedness of trust in Jehovah is gathered up into one great
thought in the last verse of the psalm. The sovereignty of God to
all generations suggests the swift disappearance of earthly princes,
referred to in ver. 4. To trust in fleeting power is madness; to
trust in the Eternal King is wisdom and blessedness, and in some
sense makes him who trusts a sharer in the eternity of the God in
whom is his hope, and from whom is his help.