Psalm 145

Psalms 145:1-2

The Hebrew title, which the reader floor does not show, names this psalm Tehillah leDavid, a Praise of David, the only place in the whole book where the word tehillah stands as a title's own label, and it gives the entire Hebrew Psalter its name, Tehillim, the Praises. Delitzsch marks the fittingness of a whole book of praise-songs taking its name from its own last Davidic psalm. The opening vow, every day will I bless thee, for ever and ever, twice over in two verses, sets the scale the rest of the psalm fills in.

Psalms 145:3-4

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised: Greatness unsearchable is the ground the whole acrostic stands on, a claim too large for one voice, so the next line hands the praise on: one generation shall praise thy works to another. Henry reads the handoff as the psalm's own account of how the faith survives, not by a single singer's lifetime but by each generation declaring what it received to the one that follows.

Psalms 145:5-7

The singer's own resolve, I will speak, I will declare, widens by verse 7 into men shall speak and shall abundantly utter, one voice becoming a chorus across the three verses. Barnes notes the movement from majesty and terrible acts toward great goodness and righteousness, the psalm turning from what God does to what he is before it reaches the compassion formula that follows. The utterance itself is called abundant, a word the older writers take as the psalm describing its own overflow.

Psalms 145:8-9

This line repeats the Lord's own self-description to Moses at Exodus 34:6, gracious, slow to anger, of great mercy, the oldest and most quoted formula of God's character in the whole Old Testament, and the acrostic places it at its own center. Verse 9 pushes the formula past Israel to its widest reach, good to all, his tender mercies over all his works, no creature named as excluded. Delitzsch calls this the hinge of the psalm, the character named here is the ground for every specific mercy the later verses list.

Psalms 145:10-13

The praise moves from the saints who choose to bless him to all thy works, a wider circle again, and the subject shifts from mercy to kingdom, thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. Henry reads the kingdom language as reaching past any earthly throne David held, a dominion that outlasts every generation named in verse 4's handoff. The four verses build steadily from private thanksgiving to a claim about the whole created order and the reign that holds it.

Psalms 145:14

Between the mem line just closed and this samekh line, the Hebrew acrostic is missing its nun verse entirely, leaving the psalm twenty-one lines for twenty-two letters. The Septuagint and a Psalms scroll from Qumran both supply the missing line, the Lord is faithful in all his words, and holy in all his works, a reading many modern translations restore at this point though the site's own floor text does not carry it. Delitzsch and Barnes both discuss the gap; the line as it stands, upholding the fallen and raising the bowed down, reads naturally as the missing verse's own claim of faithfulness put into action.

Psalms 145:15-16

Every living thing waits on this one hand, the sentence moving from all in verse 15 to every living thing in verse 16, no creature's food excepted. Spurgeon reads thou openest thine hand as deliberately unclenched, provision given rather than dispensed by measure, and the verse has long stood behind table graces in both Jewish and Christian household prayer, a use the psalm's own words invite without the text naming any liturgy.

Psalms 145:17-20

The Lord is righteous in all his ways: Righteous in all his ways answers the compassion formula of verse 8 from the other side, mercy and justice named as one character rather than two. The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him qualifies its own promise at once, in truth, ruling out a merely formal prayer, and the pairing that closes the stanza, preserveth all them that love him but all the wicked will he destroy, sets the psalm's warmest lines beside its plainest warning without softening either. Gill takes the nearness of verse 18 as the psalm's own definition of what calling on the Lord means, a true cry rather than a formula.

Psalms 145:21

The last Davidic psalm closes by widening its own circle one final time, from my mouth to all flesh, the single acrostic voice handing praise to every creature that can speak it. Spurgeon reads the closing for ever and ever as the psalm's own bridge into what follows, the five psalms that end the Psalter each opening and closing on the same note this verse strikes last.