3Do not trust in princes,
         In mortal man, in whom there is no salvation.

4His spirit departs, he returns to the earth;
         In that very day his thoughts perish.

5How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
         Whose hope is in the LORD his God,

6Who made heaven and earth,
         The sea and all that is in them;
         Who keeps faith forever;

7Who executes justice for the oppressed;
         Who gives food to the hungry.
         The LORD sets the prisoners free.

8The LORD opens the eyes of the blind;
         The LORD raises up those who are bowed down;
         The LORD loves the righteous;

9The LORD protects the strangers;
         He supports the fatherless and the widow,
         But He thwarts the way of the wicked.

10The LORD will reign forever,
         Your God, O Zion, to all generations.
         Praise the LORD!

Parallel Verses

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
I will praise the LORD while I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
I want to praise the LORD throughout my life. I want to make music to praise my God as long as I live.

King James Bible
While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Praise the Lord, O my soul, in my life I will praise the Lord: I will sing to my God as long as I shall be. Put not your trust in princes:

Darby Bible Translation
As long as I live will I praise Jehovah; I will sing psalms unto my God while I have my being.

English Revised Version
While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

Webster's Bible Translation
While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises to my God while I have any being.

World English Bible
While I live, I will praise Yahweh. I will sing praises to my God as long as I exist.

Young's Literal Translation
I praise Jehovah during my life, I sing praise to my God while I exist.

Cross References

Psalm 63:4 So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name.

Psalm 104:33 I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

Isaiah 38:20 "The LORD will surely save me; So we will play my songs on stringed instruments All the days of our life at the house of the LORD."

Commentary

Matthew Henry's Whole Bible Commentary

PSALM 146

This and all the rest of the psalms that follow begin and end with Hallelujah, a word which puts much of God's praise into a little compass; for in it we praise him by his name Jah, the contraction of Jehovah. In this excellent psalm of praise, I. The psalmist engages himself to praise God (v. 1, 2). II. He engages others to trust in him, which is one necessary and acceptable way of praising him. 1. He shows why we should not trust in men (v. 3, 4). 2. Why we should trust in God (v. 5), because of his power in the kingdom of nature (v. 6), his dominion in the kingdom of providence (v. 7), and his grace in the kingdom of the Messiah (v. 8, 9), that everlasting kingdom (v. 10), to which many of the Jewish writers refer this psalm, and to which therefore we should have an eye, in the singing of it.

Verses 1-4

David is supposed to have penned this psalm; and he was himself a prince, a mighty prince; as such, it might be thought, 1. 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, v. 1, 2. He considered his dignity as so far from excusing him from it that it rather obliged him to lead in it, and he thought it so far from lessening him that it really magnified him; therefore he stirred up himself to it and to make a business of it: Praise the Lord, O my soul! and he resolved to abide by it: "I will praise him with my heart, I will sing praises to him with my mouth. Herein I will have an eye to him as the Lord, infinitely blessed and glorious in himself, and as my God, in covenant with me." Praise is most pleasant when, in praising God, we have an eye to him as ours, whom we have an interest in and stand in relation to. "This I will do constantly while I live, every day of my life, and to my life's end; nay, I will do it while I have any being, for when I have no being on earth I hope to have a being in heaven, a better being, to be doing it better." That which is the great end of our being ought to be our great employment and delight while we have any being. "In thee must our time and powers be spent." 2. It might be thought that he himself, having been so great a blessing to his country, should be adored, according to the usage of the heathen nations, who deified their heroes, that they should all come and trust in his shadow and make him their stay and strong-hold. "No," says David, "Put not your trust in princes (v. 3), not in me, not in any other; do not repose your confidence in them; do not raise your expectations from them. Be not too sure of their sincerity; some have thought they knew better how to reign by knowing how to dissemble. Be not too sure of their constancy and fidelity; it is possible they may both change their minds and break their words." But, though we suppose them very wise and as good as David himself, yet we must not be too sure of their ability and continuance, for they are sons of Adam, weak and mortal. There is indeed a Son of man in whom there is help, in whom there is salvation, and who will not fail those that trust in him. But all other sons of men are like the man they are sprung of, who, being in honour, did not abide. (1.) We cannot be sure of their ability. Even the power of kings may be so straitened, cramped, and weakened, that they may not be in a capacity to do that for us which we expect. David himself owned (2 Sa. 3:39), I am this day weak, though anointed king. So that in the son of man there is often no help, no salvation; he is at a loss, at his wits' end, as a man astonished, and then, though a mighty man, he cannot save, Jer. 14:9. (2.) We cannot be sure of their continuance. Suppose he has it in his power to help us while he lives, yet he may be suddenly taken off when we expect most from him (v. 4): His breath goes forth, so it does every moment, and comes back again, but that is an intimation that it will shortly go for good and all, and then he returns to his earth. The earth is his, in respect of his original as a man, the earth out of which he was taken, and to which therefore he must return, according to the sentence, Gen. 3:19. It is his, if he be a worldly man, in respect of choice, his earth which he has chosen for his portion, and on the things of which he has set his affections. He shall go to his own place. Or, rather, it is his earth because of the property he has in it; and though he has had large possessions on earth a grave is all that will remain to him. The earth God has given to the children of men, and great striving there is about it, and, as a mark of their authority, men call their lands by their own names. But, after a while, no part of the earth will be their own but that in which the dead body shall make its bed, and that shall be theirs while the earth remains. But, when he returns to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish; all the projects and designs he had of kindness to us vanish and are gone, and he cannot take one step further in them; all his purposes are cut off and buried with him, Job 17:11. And then what becomes of our expectations from him? Princes are mortal, as well as other men, and therefore we cannot have that assurance of help from them which we may have from that Potentate who hath immortality. Cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils and will not be there long.

Calvin's Commentary

1. Praise Jehovah, O my soul! 2. I will praise Jehovah in my life; I will sing psalms to my God so long as I shall have being. 3. Trust not in princes; in the son of man in whom there is not safety. 4. His breath shall go forth; he shall return to his earth, in that day his thoughts [285] shall perish. 5. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in Jehovah, his God.

1. Praise Jehovah. The five last Psalms close with the same word with which they begin. [286] But having in general called upon all to praise God, he addresses himself, or, which is the same thing, his soul, only that under the name of soul he addresses his inward self more emphatically. We may infer from this, that the influence which moved him was not volatile and superficial, (as many will blame themselves with remissness on this point, and then immediately lapse into it again,) but a staid and constant affection, followed up by activity, and proved by its effects not to be feigned. As David felt, that good endeavors are frustrated or hindered through the craft of Satan, he thinks it proper to apply a stimulus for exciting his own zeal, in the first place, before professing to be a leader or teacher to others. Although his heart was truly and seriously in the work, he would not rest in this, until he had acquired still greater ardor. And if it was necessary for David to stir himself up to the praises of God, how powerful a stimulant must we require for a more difficult matter when we aim at the divine life with self-denial. As to the religious exercise here mentioned, let us feel that we will never be sufficiently active in it, unless we strenuously exact it from ourselves. As God supports and maintains his people in the world with this view, that they may employ their whole life in praising him, David very properly declares, that he will do this to the end of his course.

3. Trust not in princes This admonition is appropriately inserted, for one means by which men blind themselves is that of involving their minds through a number of inventions, and being thus prevented from engaging in the praises of God. That God may have the whole praise due to him, David exposes and overthrows those false stays on which we would otherwise be too much disposed to trust. His meaning is, that we should withdraw ourselves from man in general, but he names princes, from whom more is to be feared than common men. For what promise could poor people hold out, or such as need the help of others? The great and wealthy, again, have a dangerous attraction through the splendor attaching to them, suggesting to us the step of taking shelter under their patronage. As the simple are fascinated by looking to their grandeur, he adds, that the most powerful of the world's princes is but a son of man This should be enough to rebuke our folly in worshipping them as a kind of demigods, as Isaiah says, (Isaiah 31:3,) "The Egyptian is man, and not God; flesh, and not spirit." Although princes then are furnished with power, money, troops of men, and other resources, David reminds us, that it is wrong to place our trust in frail mortal man, and vain to seek safety where it cannot be found.

This he explains more fully in the verse, which follows, where he tells us how short and fleeting the life of man is. Though God throw loose the reins, and suffer princes even to invade heaven in the wildest enterprises, the passing of the spirit, like a breath, suddenly overthrows all their counsels and plans. The body being the dwelling-place of the soul, what is here said may very well be so understood; for at death God recalls the spirit. We may understand it more simply, however, of the vital breath; and this will answer better with the context -- that as soon as man has ceased to breathe, his corpse is subject to putrefaction. It follows, that those who put their trust in men, depend upon a fleeting breath. When he says that in that day all his thoughts perish, or flow away, perhaps under this expression he censures the madness of princes in setting no bounds to their hopes and desires, and scaling the very heavens in their ambition, like the insane Alexander of Macedon, who, upon hearing that there were other worlds, wept that he had not yet conquered one, although soon after the funeral urn sufficed him. Observation itself proves that the schemes of princes are deep and complicated. That we may not fall, therefore, into the error of connecting our hopes with them, David says that the life of princes also passes away swiftly and in a moment, and that with it all their plans vanish.

5. Blessed is he, etc. As it would not have been enough to reprove the sin, he submits the remedy upon which the proper correction of it depends; and this is, that the hopes of men are only stable and well-founded when they rest entirely upon God. For even the wicked sometimes come the length of acknowledging the folly of trust in man. Accordingly they are often angry with themselves for being so inconsiderate as to expect deliverance from men; but by neglecting the remedy, they are not extricated from their error. The Psalmist having condemned the infatuation, which we have seen to be natural to us all, wisely subjoins that they are blessed who trust in God. Jeremiah observes the same order. (Jeremiah 17:5, 7.)

"Cursed is he that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm," etc.;

and then -- "Blessed is the man whose hope the Lord is." When David pronounces those blessed whose help is the Lord, he does not restrict the happiness of believers to present sense, as if they were only happy when God openly and in outward acts appeared as their helper, but he places their happiness in this -- that they are truly persuaded of its being entirely by the grace of God they stand. He calls him the God of Jacob, to distinguish him from the multitude of false gods in which unbelievers gloried at that time; and there was good reason for this; for while all propose to themselves to seek God, few take the right way. In designating the true God by his proper mark, he intimates that it is only by an assured faith of adoption that any of us can rest upon him; for he must show himself favorable to us before we can look for help from him.

Footnotes:

[285] Horsley prefers translating "his false deceitful show," instead of "his thoughts." He observes, that the original word is literally "his glitterings." Parkhurst would render the original word "splendours, glories," "which," says he, "makes an excellent sense."

[286] That is, with the word "Hallelujah," the Hebrew for "Praise Jehovah." Hence they have been called, "Hallelujah Psalms."

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Psalm 146 Commentaries: Barnes • Calvin • Clarke • Darby • Gill • Geneva • Guzik • JFB • Keil / Delitzsch • KJV Translators' • Henry's Concise • Matthew Henry • Scofield • TSK • Treasury of David • Wesley

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