Great is the LORD

vv. 1–2My God, O king; every day, for ever and ever

The psalm opens with a resolve, not a request. אֲרוֹמִמְךָ, I will extol thee, is from רוּם, to be high: I will make thee high. The singer cannot make God any higher than he is. To exalt him is to say so — to give him in speech the height he already has. It is the verb of the Song of the Sea, “he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him” (Ex. 15:2), and the identical form opens Psalm 30: “I will extol thee, O LORD; for thou hast lifted me up” (Ps. 30:1). There the reason comes at once. Here none is given yet. Psalm 145 resolves to exalt before it says why.

My God, O king. The Hebrew is אֱלוֹהַי הַמֶּלֶךְ, my God, the King, and the Authorised Version prints king with a small letter. The address is personal and royal in one breath, and the one making it is a king. Israel had asked for a king once in a way that God called rejection: “they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” (1 Sam. 8:7). David’s last psalm in the book puts the human king where he belongs, under the King, as the Psalm 23 lesson found the shepherd-king confessing that he too was a sheep. The New Testament’s doxology to the King has the same shape — the King, his name, for ever and ever: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen” (1 Tim. 1:17).

I will bless thy name is וַאֲבָרְכָה. When God blesses men, he gives; when men bless God, they speak well of him, in words, out loud. The Psalm 103 lesson heard David tell his own soul to do it. Verse 2 adds the second verb, וַאֲהַלְלָה, I will praise — the root of Hallelujah and of the psalm’s title.

And then the time words, which frame the whole psalm. For ever and ever, לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד, stands at the end of verses 1, 2 and 21. Between the first two comes בְּכָל־יוֹם, every day, which is the first all in a psalm full of them. The eternal and the daily are put side by side on purpose. Praise for ever is not a promise about some other life that excuses this one; it starts on an ordinary day and is kept up on every day after. “Seven times a day do I praise thee” (Ps. 119:164); “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually” (Heb. 13:15); “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thess. 5:18). The Shorter Catechism’s first answer puts the same two ends in one sentence: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever” (WSC 1).

vv. 4–7Thy works, thy acts, the memory of thy great goodness

Unsearchable greatness is not exhausted by one lifetime, so the psalm hands it on. דּוֹר לְדוֹר, generation to generation, is the phrase God used at the bush when he gave his name: “this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Ex. 3:15). Verse 7 picks up the other half of that sentence with זֵכֶר, memory, memorial. What God gave Moses as his memorial is what one generation is to pour out to the next.

That is a command before it is a description. “We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done” (Ps. 78:4). “And these words … thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way” (Deut. 6:6–7). The Passover was built to provoke the question — “What mean ye by this service?” (Ex. 12:26). And the Bible records what happens when a generation does not hear: “there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” (Judg. 2:10). The gap between generations is where faith is lost, and this psalm stands in it.

Count the verbs of speech in these four verses: laud and declare (v. 4), speak or meditate (v. 5, אָשִׂיחָה), say and recount (v. 6), pour forth and sing aloud (v. 7). Seven in four verses. Pour forth, יַבִּיעוּ, is the word for water bubbling up from a spring — “the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook” (Prov. 18:4) — and the day that “uttereth speech” to the next day in Psalm 19:2. Praise of this kind overflows; it is not rationed.

The subjects are named too: his works, his mighty acts, the splendour of his majesty, his wondrous works, his terrible acts, his great goodness, his righteousness. Terrible acts, נוֹרְאֹתֶיךָ, are acts that make men afraid, and Moses joins them to this psalm’s title word: “He is thy praise, and he is thy God, that hath done for thee these great and terrible things” (Deut. 10:21) — thy praise is תְהִלָּתְךָ. Psalm 111, another alphabet, says that God “hath made his wonderful works to be remembered” (Ps. 111:4), with the same pair of words as verses 5 and 7, memory and wonders.

Notice who speaks. I in verse 5; they and then I in verse 6; they in verse 7. The singer does not hand the work over to the congregation, and the congregation does not leave it to the singer.

The New Testament keeps the chain going. Mary: “his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation” (Luke 1:50). Paul’s doxology, “Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages” (Eph. 3:21), is in the Greek to all the generations. Timothy’s faith “dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice” (2 Tim. 1:5), and “from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures” (2 Tim. 3:15). Peter’s first sermon ends, “the promise is unto you, and to your children” (Acts 2:39), and the Lord’s Supper is itself a declaration handed on — “ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come” (1 Cor. 11:26). That is why the Confession describes the visible church as all who profess the true religion “and of their children” (WCF 25.2). The children are not an audience for the church’s praise; they are the next generation of verse 4.

vv. 8–10Gracious, full of compassion, good to all

Verse 8 is a quotation. When God passed before Moses on the mountain he proclaimed his own name: “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Ex. 34:6). Israel never stopped repeating it. Psalm 103 keeps Moses’ order, “merciful and gracious” (103:8). Psalm 145 reverses the first pair — gracious, and full of compassion — as Joel does (Joel 2:13) and as Jonah does, which is worth a minute.

Each word is worth having. חַנּוּן, gracious, is from חנן, favour given to someone who has no claim on it; the Psalm 130 lesson found the same root in supplications. רַחוּם, full of compassion, is related to רֶחֶם, womb: the love of a mother for the child she carried. Isaiah sets the compassion beside a mother’s womb — “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” (Isa. 49:15) — and David makes it a father’s: “Like as a father pitieth his children” (Ps. 103:13). אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם, slow to anger, is literally long of nostrils — anger pictured as hot breath, and God slow to draw it. And וּגְדָל־חָסֶד, of great mercy, is the covenant word of the Psalm 136 lesson, hesed, the love that has bound itself by promise.

Jonah quoted this list as a complaint. “I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil” (Jonah 4:2) — and for that reason he had run to Tarshish, because he did not want Nineveh spared. God’s answer ends the book: “And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:11). And also much cattle. That is verse 9: The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.

טוֹב־יְהוָה לַכֹּל, good to all, is a sentence about the whole creation. “O LORD, thou preservest man and beast” (Ps. 36:6). Our Lord made it the ground of an ethic: the Father “is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful” (Luke 6:35–36). Paul made it the starting-point of a sermon to pagans who did not know the God who had been feeding them: he “left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons” (Acts 14:17).

Verse 10 then divides the choir. All thy works shall praise thee — יוֹדוּךָ, shall give thee thanks, the verb of Psalm 136’s O give thanks — and thy saints shall bless thee. The works thank him by being what he made them: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). The saints bless him in words. And saints is חֲסִידֶיךָ, thy hesed people — those who have received his covenant love and live in it. Creation’s mute praise becomes speech in them, and Paul says the creation is waiting for that: “the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19).

vv. 11–13The glory of thy kingdom

Here the psalm reaches its centre and says the word it has been circling. מַלְכוּת, kingdom, appears four times in three verses and nowhere else in the psalm. Verse 1 called God the King; verses 11 to 13 say what he rules. The speakers are the saints of verse 10, and their subject is the glory of thy kingdom and thy power.

Then verse 12 says what the speaking is for: לְהוֹדִיעַ לִבְנֵי הָאָדָם, to make known to the sons of men. The saints are not talking to themselves. And in that verse the pronoun changes. Up to now they have spoken to God — thy kingdom, thy power. Now they turn round to the world and speak about him: his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. Praise has become proclamation, in the middle of a sentence.

The psalms say it often. “Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people” (Ps. 96:3); “Say among the heathen that the LORD reigneth” (Ps. 96:10). The New Testament gives it a commission. “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations” (Matt. 28:18–19): the kingdom announced, the nations taught. The Canons of Dort put verse 12 into the language of the church’s mission: the promise of the gospel, “together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction” (Canons of Dort 2.5). To make known to the sons of men has no narrower audience.

Verse 13 is the claim the proclamation rests on: Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom — literally a kingdom of all ages — and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. A pagan king said it almost word for word after God humbled him: “his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation” (Dan. 4:3). Daniel then saw the kingdom given to one “like the Son of man”: “his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:13–14). Gabriel told Mary of her Son, “of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33), and Peter calls it “the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:11). The word for dominion, מֶמְשָׁלָה, is the one Psalm 136 used for the sun and moon to rule (136:8–9). The lights have their rule by appointment; the King has his for all ages.

The Shorter Catechism says how the Son exercises it: “Christ executeth the office of a king, in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies” (WSC 26). And it teaches the church to pray for its advance: “that Satan’s kingdom may be destroyed; and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it; and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened” (WSC 102). Verse 13 is not only a description of heaven. Daniel’s stone “became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Dan. 2:35), and Paul says “he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25). A church that sings verse 13 is entitled to expect verse 12 to succeed.

vv. 14–16Upholdeth all that fall; the eyes of all wait

The King of verse 13 has an everlasting kingdom, and verse 14 says what he does with it first: he stoops. סוֹמֵךְ, upholdeth, means to lean a hand on something, to prop it up. “Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand” (Ps. 37:24); “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me” (Ps. 3:5); “uphold me with thy free spirit” (Ps. 51:12) — all this verb. And הַנֹּפְלִים is a participle, the falling: it takes in those already down and those still on the way, and the hand of verse 14 is there for both.

זוֹקֵף, raiseth up, is a rare verb; in the Hebrew of the Old Testament it appears elsewhere only at Psalm 146:8, “the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down”. Bowed down, כְּפוּפִים, is bent double, the posture of a man under a load or a grief: “my soul is bowed down” (Ps. 57:6). The Gospels show the verse done. “There was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself … And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God” (Luke 13:11, 13). He prayed for Peter before Peter fell — “that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” (Luke 22:32) — and the church’s doxology is addressed to “him that is able to keep you from falling” (Jude 24).

Then the table. The eyes of all wait upon thee — יְשַׂבֵּרוּ, wait with hope, the posture of a household at the table. And thou givest them their meat in due season, בְּעִתּוֹ, in its time, the phrase of the tree that “bringeth forth his fruit in his season” (Ps. 1:3). Psalm 104 has nearly the same lines: “These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season … thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good” (Ps. 104:27–28). Our Lord used the phrase for the faithful steward, set over the household “to give them meat in due season” (Matt. 24:45).

Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. רָצוֹן, desire, more often means favour, goodwill, and the line can be read either way: God satisfies what every creature wants, or he satisfies every creature with his favour. Moses’ blessing on Naphtali has the second sense — “O Naphtali, satisfied with favour” (Deut. 33:23). Both are true, and the word comes back in verse 19: He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him.

The New Testament puts the open hand into the hands of Christ. “Behold the fowls of the air … yet your heavenly Father feedeth them” (Matt. 6:26); “Consider the ravens … and God feedeth them” (Luke 12:24). By the lake, “Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed”, “as much as they would. When they were filled …” (John 6:11–12). The catechism turns the verse into the fourth petition: in Give us this day our daily bread “we pray that of God’s free gift we may receive a competent portion of the good things of this life, and enjoy his blessing with them” (WSC 104). Of God’s free gift: the open hand. Luther put verses 15 and 16 on the lips of every child at the family table, which the closing section takes up.

vv. 17–20Righteous, nigh, preserving

The last movement gathers the claims. The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works. צַדִּיק, righteous, answers verse 7’s thy righteousness. Holy is the Authorised Version’s word for חָסִיד, and it hides something. The word is the adjective of hesed: loyal in love, kind with the kindness of the covenant. Elsewhere it is used of God only once, where he calls the backslider home: “Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the LORD” (Jer. 3:12), merciful being this word. Verse 10 called the saints his חֲסִידִים; here he is the חָסִיד himself. The psalm has now used the root of Psalm 136’s refrain three times (vv. 8, 10, 17).

Then verse 18, the sentence the psalm has been travelling toward since verse 3: The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him. The unsearchable is near. Moses said it was Israel’s distinction among the nations: “For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?” (Deut. 4:7). “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart” (Ps. 34:18); “Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near” (Isa. 55:6).

But the nearness has a door, and the psalm names it twice: to all that call upon him in truth, בֶאֱמֶת. There is a calling that is not in truth. “This people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me” (Isa. 29:13), which our Lord applied to the religious leaders of his day (Matt. 15:8). He also told the woman at the well what the true calling is: “the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23). And Paul, preaching the gospel to Jew and Gentile, uses this verse’s very shape: “the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:12–13). All that call is the widest invitation in the psalm, and it is the gospel’s. Those who were far off “are made nigh by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13).

Verse 19 says what nearness does. He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him — רְצוֹן, verse 16’s word — he also will hear their cry, and will save them. Cry is שַׁוְעָה, the cry for help, the word for Israel’s groaning in Egypt: “their cry came up unto God” (Ex. 2:23). Save is יוֹשִׁיעֵם, from the root of the name the angel gave: “thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). The desire he fulfils is the desire of those who fear him, which is why John can say, “if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us” (1 John 5:14).

Verse 20 is the shin line and it holds two things together. The LORD preserveth all them that love him — שׁוֹמֵר, keeps, the verb that in Psalm 130 God was begged not to use of iniquities, used here of the people he will not let go. Moses has the whole of this psalm’s vocabulary in one verse: “the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him” (Deut. 7:9) — faithful, the word of the missing nun line; keepeth, verse 20’s verb; mercy, hesed; them that love him. Our Lord prayed it: “I kept them in thy name … none of them is lost” (John 17:12); Peter says believers “are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation” (1 Pet. 1:5).

But all the wicked will he destroy. The psalm that says good to all says this too, and it does not apologise. “The way of the ungodly shall perish” (Ps. 1:6). Paul speaks of those “that know not God, and that obey not the gospel … Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thess. 1:8–9). The Confession gives the last day the same two ends as verse 20: “the manifestation of the glory of his mercy, in the eternal salvation of the elect; and of his justice, in the damnation of the reprobate, who are wicked and disobedient” (WCF 33.2). The God who says it is the God who says “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezek. 33:11), and the invitation of verse 18 is still open while the warning of verse 20 stands.

v. 21My mouth shall speak; let all flesh bless

The tau line, the last letter, begins with the psalm’s title word: תְּהִלַּת, the praise of. The alphabet ends where the heading began. And the verse has two halves that mirror the whole psalm. My mouth shall speak is the I of verses 1 and 2, still at it. Let all flesh bless his holy name is the widest circle the Psalter can draw.

כָּל־בָּשָׂר, all flesh, is the phrase of Psalm 136: there God gives food to all flesh, and here all flesh is summoned to bless him. The prophets saw it coming. “O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come” (Ps. 65:2); “the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Isa. 40:5), which Luke quotes over the preaching of John the Baptist, “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3:6); “shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD” (Isa. 66:23). And Joel says how it will happen: “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh” (Joel 2:28), which Peter announced fulfilled at Pentecost (Acts 2:17). All flesh will bless the name because the Spirit has been poured on all flesh.

The psalm does not end the work; it hands it on. The next five psalms take up the summons — each begins and ends with Praise ye the LORD — and the last verse of the Psalter answers this one: “Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD” (Ps. 150:6). John hears it finished: “every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever” (Rev. 5:13). For ever and ever, the psalm’s own last words.

And between now and then there is history. “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee” (Ps. 22:27); “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). The psalm’s let all flesh bless is a summons with a promise behind it. The one mouth of verse 21 is not asked to do the work alone. It is asked to start.