Today’s Passage: Psalm 146
This psalm begins with a single word, Hallelujah, and there is no need to stop and define it before you feel it. Praise the LORD, O my soul, the psalmist says, and then he turns to tell us where our weight must never rest. Put not your trust in princes. They return to the ground, and their plans perish there with them. Above all of that, steady and unshaken, the LORD reigns forever. It is the same good news the whole book has been singing.
As you read, hold this: Put not your trust in princes. The LORD reigns forever.
Context Hallelujah at both ends
This psalm opens and closes on that one word, Hallelujah, and so do the four psalms that follow it. The book of Psalms is turning now toward its last sound, and that sound is praise. Today we are not so much tracing the order of the psalms as sitting with two things this one holds side by side: the warning not to lean on princes, and the reign of the God who never falls.
Psalm 146:1-4 (BSB)
¹ Hallelujah! Praise the LORD, O my soul. ² I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. ³ Put not your trust in princes, in mortal man, who cannot save. ⁴ When his spirit departs, he returns to the ground; on that very day his plans perish.
Notice how the psalmist first turns and speaks to his own soul: all my life, while I have my being, I will praise. Only then does the warning come. Do not set that batach, pronounced bah-TAKH. Strong's H982, to trust, lean one's full weight on, rely on. It means to lean your full weight on something, to rest on it as though the thing beneath you will surely hold. The psalm will not let that weight come down on a prince. A mortal man cannot save. When his spirit is gone he goes back to the ground, and on that very day his plans perish along with him. on princes. They die, the ground takes them, and their plans go down into the ground along with them.
Psalm 146:5-6 (BSB)
⁵ Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, ⁶ the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. He remains faithful forever.
Here is where the true help and the true hope belong: in the God of Jacob, the Maker of heaven and earth and sea, who remains faithful forever. The contrast is already complete. A prince returns to the dust, but this God made the dust. He is worthy of a soul’s whole life of praise.
Psalm 146:7-8 (BSB)
⁷ He executes justice for the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free, ⁸ the LORD opens the eyes of the blind, the LORD lifts those who are weighed down, the LORD loves the righteous.
Look now at everything this God does. He brings justice for the oppressed and food for the hungry, He sets the prisoners free and opens the eyes of the blind, He lifts up those who are bowed down low and He loves the righteous. Five times over in these two verses, the LORD Himself is the one at work.
Study notes The works He claimed
Jesus once stood up in the synagogue of His own hometown, read a list very much like this one, and laid His own name over it.
"The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed." Luke 4:18 (BSB)
Liberty for the captives, sight for the blind, the oppressed set free. Then He sat down and told them that this very Scripture was fulfilled in their hearing. It is the same good news. The LORD who does all these things is the very One who reigns forever.
Psalm 146:9-10 (BSB)
⁹ The LORD protects foreigners; He sustains the fatherless and the widow, but the ways of the wicked He frustrates. ¹⁰ The LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Hallelujah!
He watches over the foreigner, He holds up the fatherless and the widow, and He turns the ways of the wicked back on themselves. And then the psalm arrives where it has longed to land: the LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Hallelujah. So put not your trust in princes.
Put not your trust in princes. The LORD reigns forever.