1 Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
2 While I live I will praise the Lord;
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 the Lord 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.
The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners.
8 The Lord opens the eyes of the blind;
The Lord raises those who are bowed down;
The Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the strangers;
He relieves the fatherless and widow;
But the way of the wicked He turns upside down.
10 The Lord shall reign forever—
Your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the Lord!
That the final five psalms are intended as a distinct unit is indicated by the fact that each one (and hence the unit as a whole) is framed by the identical exhortation “Praise the LORD!”—reflecting as well as the shared focus of each psalm on the central theme of god’s praise, both its basis and its extent. Given this thematic focus, it became an established practice in early Jewish tradition (continued to this day) to recite these five psalms, together with Psalm 145, as part of the daily morning liturgy. Though none of these five psalms has a heading, early Jewish tradition (in the Septuagint) attributes the first three to the post-exilic prophets Haggai and Zechariah. — Wechsler, page 349
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The psalmist follows a call to praise by exhorting Israel (explicitly referenced as his addressees in v.10) not to trust in princes who are mere mortal men, an din whom there is therefore no salvation. Then, after affirming the blessedness of the one who adheres to this principle (i.e. of trusting/hoping in God rather than in human leaders), the psalmist considers the various ways in which God’s solicitude is expressed towards His people (in vs.6-9), culminating (in v.10) with an allusion to that solicitude as finally and ideally manifest when He establishes His reign over Zion forever (cf. Ezekiel 43:7ff; Zechariah 14:9ff; Revelation 21:2ff). — Wechsler, page 350.
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The God of Jacob (v.5); Your God, O Zion (v.10). The distinctive and trustworthy character described in vs.7-9 belongs to this God exclusively and to no other; the God who is known to Israel and in Zion. This is the exclusivism of the Old Testament. The abstract concept of “deity” is not enough for a man to trust; nor is any other claimant to the title “god.” Only one God is worthy of trust and He is to be found only in Jacob and Zion. — Guthrie, page 544.
strangers (v.9) — foreigners living in Israel, often refugees without personal possessions