Psalms 145
Among the one hundred and fifty psalms, this is the only one headed David's Psalm of praise, and it is the only acrostic David wrote. The acrostic is a feature an English reader cannot see on the surface: in the Hebrew, each verse begins with the next letter of the alphabet, marching in order from the first letter to the last. The form is deliberate, and it carries a quiet message of its own.
To praise God from aleph to tav - from A to Z, as we might say - is to suggest that the whole of human speech, the entire alphabet out of which every word is built, finds its proper end in the praise of God.
The psalm opens not with a feeling but with a resolve, and the resolve is twofold: it is personal and it is perpetual. I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for ever and ever (v. 1) - not a distant deity but my God; not praise offered once and forgotten but praise meant to run for ever. And then the line that brings the for-ever down to size: Every day will I bless thee (v. 2).
The eternal commitment is kept one ordinary day at a time. What David sets himself to praise is a greatness he freely admits he cannot measure: Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable (v. 3) - a greatness deep enough to be explored for ever and never exhausted, and therefore handed on, one generation to another (v. 4).
At the centre of the song stands the most precious thing Israel knew about God, the very words the LORD spoke of Himself when He passed before Moses on the mountain: The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works (vv. 8-9). From there the psalm rises to its highest claim - Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations (v. 13) - and then, astonishingly, stoops to its tenderest: the same King who rules for ever upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down (v. 14), and openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing (v. 16).
It ends where prayer always hopes to end, in nearness: The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth (v. 18). A God too great to be searched out, and yet near enough to be called upon by anyone - that is the wonder this alphabet of praise was built to hold.
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Psalm 145:1-7 · David's Psalm of PraiseI Will Extol Thee, My God, O King
1I will extol thee, my God, O king; and I will bless thy name for ever and ever. 2Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name for ever and ever. 3Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable. 4One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. 5I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works. 6And men shall speak of the might of thy terrible acts: and I will declare thy greatness. 7They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness.
The psalm opens with a resolve, and the very first thing to notice is how personal it is: I will extol thee, my God, O king. David is Israel's king - the man with the throne and the crown - and the first word out of his mouth is to call God his king. The one with the most earthly authority bows to a higher one, and gladly. To extol is to lift high, to raise up in honour; and what David lifts high is not his own reign but God's name: I will bless thy name for ever and ever. There is something steadying in beginning a prayer this way.
Before a single request, before any mention of trouble or need, the psalm fixes the order of things: God is King, and the right posture of every creature - even a crowned one - is to bless His name. The acrostic form makes the point in its own quiet way. The whole alphabet, the raw material of every word ever spoken, is marshalled here for one purpose: to praise the King. Speech itself has found its proper use.
Twice in the opening lines David promises to bless God's name for ever and ever - and then, between those two great eternities, he sets one small, ordinary phrase that keeps the promise from floating off into the abstract: Every day will I bless thee (v. 2). This is how the eternal commitment actually gets kept - not in one grand burst of devotion, but one day at a time, the same resolve renewed each morning.
For ever is made of a great many todays. It is easy to intend to praise God always; it is the daily-ness that is hard, the blessing of His name on the dull day and the hard day and the day when nothing in particular has happened. David binds the two together on purpose. The praise that lasts for ever and ever is built out of the praise offered every day - and a person who waits for a worthy occasion to worship will wait a long time, while the one who blesses God daily finds that the days add up to a lifetime, and the lifetime opens out into for ever.
David sets his praise against a greatness he openly admits he cannot measure: Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable (v. 3). The word unsearchable means there is no end to the searching - you cannot get to the bottom of it, cannot reach a final wall beyond which there is no more of God to find. And notice that David treats this not as a frustration but as a reason for praise.
We might expect a person to say, I cannot fully understand God, therefore I cannot fully praise Him. David says the opposite: God's greatness is unsearchable, and that is precisely why He is greatly to be praised. A god small enough to be fully comprehended would be a god small enough to be exhausted, outgrown, set aside. The God of this psalm can be explored for ever and never come to an end - which is why the praise runs for ever and ever, and why it must be handed on: One generation shall praise thy works to another (v. 4).
No single lifetime, no single generation, could ever say it all. The work of praise is passed like a torch from hand to hand precisely because the greatness it answers to has no limit.
There is real wisdom in this. A faith that only speaks up on the mountaintop goes quiet for most of life, because most of life is not a mountaintop; it is Tuesday. So make the practice plain and daily. Before the day gets away from you, name God as King over it - bless His name once, deliberately, whether or not the day has earned it. You are not waiting for a feeling; you are building a habit, and the habit is what turns into a lifetime of worship.
The eternity David promises is assembled out of ordinary mornings. Start one of them, today.
Psalm 145:8-16Gracious, and Full of Compassion
8The LORD is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. 9The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. 10All thy works shall praise thee, O LORD; and thy saints shall bless thee. 11They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power; 12To make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom. 13Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. 14The LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down. 15The eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season. 16Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.
After the words of Sinai comes a line that stretches God's goodness as wide as creation itself: The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works (v. 9). Weigh the reach of it. Not good to the deserving, not good to His own people only - good to all. And His tender mercies - the deep, womb-like compassion the Hebrew word carries - are over all his works, spread like a covering over everything His hands have made.
This is the God who, Jesus said, maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust (Matt. 5:45). The mercy of God is not rationed to the worthy; it overflows the boundaries we would draw and falls on the whole field of creation. There is a comfort here for anyone who has wondered whether they have placed themselves outside the circle of God's care.
The psalm draws no such circle. His goodness is to all; His tender mercies cover all his works. No creature He has made falls outside the reach of the compassion that defines Him.
To say gracious, and full of compassion is to reach for the bedrock of who God has always declared Himself to be. And that self-portrait did not stay carved in stone. When the apostle John tried to put into words what he had seen when the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, he reached for the very note that anchors the Sinai revelation and this verse: and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
The grace and compassion David praised from afar - the goodness God had spoken of Himself centuries earlier - took on a human face. We watch that compassion move in the Gospels: he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd (Matt. 9:36). The God who is gracious, and full of compassion is the God we have now beheld.
When the angel came to Mary, the promise he made of her Son was lifted straight from this hope: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end (Luke 1:33). The everlasting kingdom of the psalm and the kingdom with no end promised to David's Son are one and the same. The apostle Peter names it by the very word this psalm uses, and tells us whose it is: he writes of the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 1:11).
And the last book of Scripture shows that kingdom come at last, when great voices in heaven cry that the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever (Rev. 11:15). The dominion David said endureth throughout all generations turns out to be the dominion of the One whose throne the grave could not end.
Here the psalm does something breathtaking. Having just declared God's reign everlasting and His majesty glorious (vv. 12-13), it turns at once to the lowest and most helpless of His subjects: The LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down (v. 14). The sequence is the whole gospel in miniature. We might expect a king of such glory to be remote, occupied with grand affairs, indifferent to the small and the fallen.
This King is the opposite. The same hand that holds an everlasting kingdom reaches down to steady those who are slipping and to lift those who are bent double under their burdens. All that fall - not the strong, not the upright who never stumble, but the falling, the failing, the ones at the end of their strength. All those that be bowed down - crushed low by grief, by guilt, by the sheer weight of life.
The greatness of God in this psalm is never the cold greatness of distance; it is a greatness that stoops. The higher the throne, the lower the King is willing to bend. And the next verses make the stooping daily and concrete: the eyes of all wait upon thee; and thou givest them their meat in due season (v. 15). The God of the everlasting kingdom is also the God who sets food on the table.
The open hand of Psalm 145 is the feeding hand of the Father in the Sermon on the Mount. But the New Testament reaches further still. The deepest desire of every living thing is not finally met by bread that perishes, and the One through whom the Father feeds the world stood up and said: I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst (John 6:35).
The hand that opens to fill every mouth opened at last to give the world its true bread. The God who satisfies the desire of every living thing came near in the One who is Himself the satisfaction of the deepest hunger there is.
When you are bowed down - bent under guilt, or grief, or a load you cannot put down - the temptation is to assume that a God of such glory must have larger concerns than you. The psalm forbids it. The very greatness that rules an everlasting kingdom is the greatness that stoops to steady the one who is falling. He is not too exalted to bend; His exaltation is precisely what makes His stooping so complete.
So when you find yourself low, do not reach for a smaller, more “manageable” God. Reach for this one - the King of the everlasting kingdom whose open hand satisfies every living thing and whose strong hand upholdeth all that fall. The throne and the stooping belong to the same God.
Psalm 145:17-21Nigh unto All Them That Call
17The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works. 18The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. 19He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them. 20The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy. 21My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.
As the psalm turns toward its close, it adds the note that keeps all the rest honest: The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works (v. 17). We have heard of God's greatness, His compassion, His everlasting reign, His open hand; now we hear that everything He does is righteous and holy. This is no small addition. A god of boundless mercy who was not also perfectly righteous would be merely indulgent - his kindness would be unreliable, his forgiveness cheap.
But the God of this psalm is good and just, merciful and holy, and the two never pull against each other. His compassion is not a softening of His righteousness; it flows from the same flawless character. In all his ways, in all his works - not most, not nearly all, but every one. There is no hidden corner of God's dealings where He is less than perfectly right. This is why His nearness in the next verse is such good news rather than a threat: the God who draws near to all who call is a God in whom there is nothing to fear except the abandonment of one's own pretences.
His holiness guarantees that His mercy can be trusted all the way down.
The apostle Paul takes this very promise and throws its doors wide. Quoting the Scriptures of Israel, he writes: For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Rom. 10:13) - and he is careful, in the surrounding verses, to insist that the whosoever means exactly what it says: there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him (Rom. 10:12).
The nearness Psalm 145 promised to all them that call becomes, in the gospel, a salvation offered to every nation on earth without exception. And the nearness took on flesh. The God who is nigh unto all them that call is the One who said, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28). The far-off God of unsearchable greatness came near enough to be called upon, near enough to be come to - near enough to save.
The psalm ends the way it began - with David's own resolve to praise - but it does not end there only. My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD (v. 21) takes us back to the opening, I will extol thee, my God. The song has come full circle. But watch how the last line widens past David himself: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever. The personal vow of verse 1 has become a summons to the whole world.
All flesh - every living person, every nation, every creature that breathes - is called to join the praise. This is the natural end of everything the psalm has said. If God is good to all (v. 9), if His tender mercies are over all his works (v. 9), if He is nigh to all them that call (v. 18), then the only fitting response is that all flesh should bless His name. The acrostic that began as one man working through the alphabet ends as a chorus the size of creation.
And the phrase for ever and ever returns one last time, closing the psalm where it opened: a praise that runs without end, because it answers to a greatness that has no end. The single voice of verse 1 has become the everlasting song of all that lives.
What He answers is the honest cry - the prayer that tells Him the truth about where you actually are, even when the truth is ugly, even when it is just help. The good news buried in the condition is how low the bar of honesty is set. You do not need impressive words; you need true ones. So the practice is simply this: stop performing in prayer. Tell God the truth - about your fear, your failure, your divided heart, your need - and trust the promise that He is nigh to exactly that kind of calling.
The God too great to be searched out is near enough to hear an honest word. Speak one.
Where this echoes in Scripture
I Will Extol Thee, My God, O King
- Psalm 96:4For the LORD is great, and greatly to be praised: he is to be feared above all gods.The same confession that anchors verse 3 - a greatness that demands praise precisely because it cannot be measured.
- Romans 11:33how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!Verse 3's “his greatness is unsearchable” sounded again - the depth of God that no searching exhausts.
- Psalm 78:4shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works.The handing-on of praise “one generation… to another” (v. 4) - God's works passed like a torch from hand to hand.
- Deuteronomy 6:6-7thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house.The command beneath verse 4 - why each generation must declare God's mighty acts to the next.
Gracious, and Full of Compassion
- Exodus 34:6The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.The Sinai self-revelation David quotes in verse 8 - the oldest words Israel had about the heart of God.
- Luke 1:33And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.The “everlasting kingdom” of verse 13 promised of David's greater Son - a reign with no end.
- John 1:14the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us... full of grace and truth.The grace and compassion of verse 8 given a human face - the glory of God beheld.
- Matthew 6:26Behold the fowls of the air... yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.The open hand of verse 16 - the Father's daily feeding of every living thing.
- Daniel 7:14his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.The everlasting dominion of verse 13 seen given to one like the Son of man.
Nigh unto All Them That Call
- Romans 10:12-13the 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.Verse 18's nearness “to all them that call” thrown open in the gospel to every nation without difference.
- Matthew 11:28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.The God “nigh unto all them that call” (v. 18) come near enough to be come to.
- Acts 17:27That they should seek the Lord... though he be not far from every one of us.The nearness of verse 18 - a God not far from any who would seek and call upon him.
- Philippians 4:5-6The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer... let your requests be made known unto God.The nearness of verse 18 made the ground of unanxious, honest prayer.
- Revelation 5:13And every creature... heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne.Verse 21's “let all flesh bless his holy name” come true - a chorus the size of creation.