Monday: Praise the LORD, O My Soul

Theme: The Last Five Psalms

In this week’s lessons from Psalm 146, we learn more about worship and the God who is the subject and object of our praise.

Scripture: Psalm 146:1-10

We come now to the very last psalms of the Psalter, a group of five all beginning and ending with the word “Hallelujah,” translated “Praise the LORD” by most of our English versions (Psalms 146-150). The Septuagint identifies them as psalms of Haggai and Zechariah, making them a second Hallel (like the Egyptian Hallel, Psalms 113-118). But this ascription adds nothing to our understanding of these psalms, and it is probably incorrect. What is correct and important is that the psalms as a whole, these great Hebrew worship hymns beginning with Psalm 1 and going all the way to Psalm 150, end on uninterrupted notes of praise to God as if to teach us that this is indeed the chief end of man: “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”

In the earlier psalms we have studied the writers' griefs, shames, sins, doubts and fears. We have witnessed the people of God in their defeats and victories, their ups and downs in life. We have encountered rebellious words and struggling faith. But all this is behind us now. In these final psalms every word is praise. 

So should it be with us, particularly as our lives move toward their inevitable earthly ends. In The Treasury of David, Charles Spurgeon reports that on his deathbed a man named John Janeway cried out: 

Come, help me with praises.... Let every thing that hath being help me to praise God. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Praise is now my life work, and I shall be engaged in this sweet work now and for ever. Bring the Bible; turn to David's psalms, and let us sing a psalm of praise. Come, let us lift up our voices in the praises of the Most High. I will sing with you as long as my breath doth last, and when I have none, I shall do it better.¹

Maclaren says that in these psalms "with constantly swelling diapason, all themes of praise are pealed forth, until the melodious thunder of the final psalm, which calls on everything that has breath to praise Jehovah."²

These last psalms have hymn versions that we frequently sing, and this psalm has contributed a hymn to The Psalter of 1912: 

Hallelujah, praise Jehovah, O my soul, Jehovah praise.

I will sing the glorious praises of my God through all my days.

Put no confidence in princes, nor for help on man depend;

He shall die, to dust returning, and his purposes shall end. 

Happy is the man that chooses Israel's God to be his aid;

He is blessed whose hope of blessing on the Lord his God is stayed.

Heav'n and earth the Lord created, seas and all that they contain;

He delivers from oppression, righteousness he will maintain.

¹Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, vol. 3b, Psalms 120-150 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1968), p. 404. 

²Alexander Maclaren, The Psalms, vol. 3, Psalms 90-150 (New York: A.C. Armstrong and Son, 1894), p. 434. 

Study Questions:

1. How would you characterize the last five psalms of the Psalter? 
2. What unifying theme is found throughout all the psalms? 

Prayer: Ask God to teach you more about what it means to praise him. 

Application: Make this a week of praise throughout all your activities.