Ps 146

Hallelujah

Praise Yhwh / I tell myself

                I want to praise Yhwh / throughout my life

                To celebrate my God / with music / as long as I exist

The psalmist begins with a call to himself, to praise Yhwh. He wants to praise Yhwh throughout his life and to celebrate him with music for as long as he lives and exists. This call to praise is similar to the previous psalm where the psalmist seeks to turn himself into praise, a life-praise without remainder.

Do not trust / in rulers

                In a person of earth / who cannot save

His breath / leaves him / he returns / to his native earth

                On that day / his policies have perished

How fortunate / is the one / whose help is Jacob’s God

                Whose hope / is set on Yhwh / as his God

Who made heaven / and earth

                The sea / and everything in them

From his call to himself to praise Yhwh he now turns to “rulers”. This shift in perspective is important in that it sheds some light on why he would praise Yhwh. These rulers represent the antithesis of what Yhwh can accomplish. They cannot save; when they die their “policies” dies with them. This is why they cannot be ‘trusted’—death ends everything that marks their power. Yhwh, by contrast, can save and, because he is the undying One, his policies will never perish. Yhwh’s breath will never leave him, like the “rulers”. The earth is not Yhwh’s “native place”. The key here is that Yhwh is not marked by the boundary of death. He lives on, unlike the ‘rulers’. That is why those whose help is Jacob’s God are fortunate—they have found a sure object of trust; a sure object of hope.

Importantly, though, Yhwh is not only the undying One. When the “rulers” die they return to earth, which is described as their native place. It is what they are made from. Yhwh, as we indicated above, though, does not have a ‘native’ place to return to, because he does not come from some source. He is his own source. He is, who is. Because he is “source-less”, he stands as the source of everything else—He is also the one who “made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them.” This is key—he stands as the source of the rulers “native place”. The psalmist is not here simply saying that Yhwh created the ‘stuff’ of the rulers. He is saying that Yhwh stands as the entire source of the rulers, from the bottom to the top, from their bodies to their authority and glory. He is the divine Source of all that is, which includes not only the earthly rulers but those of every realm in the cosmos—heaven, earth, and sea.

This is the deeper level as to why those whose help is Jacob’s God are fortunate. They are wed to the source of all ‘fortune’, the one gives life to all rulers in the cosmos, and who stands as the King of all that is because he himself is not sourced.

He is the one / who keeps faith forever

                Brings about justice / for the oppressed

                Gives food / to the hungry

Yhwh / sets prisoners free

                Yhwh opens the eyes / of the blind

                Yhwh raises those / whose backs are bent

Yhwh loves the righteous

                Yhwh looks after / foreign settlers

The orphan / and widow he relieves

                But the wicked / he diverts from their course

From the rulers whose “policies perish”, we now turn to Yhwh who “keeps faith forever”. Yhwh is the true King because he is the undying One. He inhabits forever and therefore his faithfulness can be relied upon. If this reflections points to Yhwh’s undying nature, then the following lines point to who Yhwh is, what his ‘character is’ as the divine Ruler. Yhwh does not simply bring about justice, but he brings it about for those who are the invisible ones within the society—for the oppressed. And, likewise, while he certainly provides food, he is particularly cognizant of the “hungry”. And again, he has regard for the forgotten ones—the prisoners, and he sets them free. They blind, he opens the eye. And for those with bent backs, he raises them. This litany of the forgotten continues with the foreign settlers, the orphans and the widow. All of these people are those who do not fit well within human society; they represent and are the shadow ones cast by the light of the strong and powerful. As such, they tend to need to remain shadow beings. Except to Yhwh. He pulls them into the light of his forever faithfulness.

In this way, the fact that the rulers of the earth die is blessing to the shadow people because the rulers are the ones who establish the light that leaves them in shadows.

While the previous are all aimed at providing vitality and strength, there is one party against whom Yhwh acts, one party that Yhwh saps life from—the wicked. “He diverts them from their course.”

Yhwh’s actions toward the wicked in this psalm are important on many levels. First, the psalmist focuses on Yhwh’s absolute authority as the divine Ruler and Creator. In this context to focus on the wicked is to draw the inference that the wicked are anti-creators. What they do and why they need to “diverted” is to act against creation. Yhwh is the protector of the realm of creation because he is its creator and its king. He must rid it of those that threaten it.

A second point to make is how little attention is given to the wicked. They are, almost literally, an after-thought. While it is important to underscore Yhwh’s actions toward the wicked—and it can be source of meditation—Yhwh’s character is understood much more fully in how he treats the shadow-people, how he redeems, heals and raises them into the light. In this psalm it is literally the case. His actions toward them consume nine lines; the wicked get a single line.

Yhwh will reign forever

                Your God / Zion / for generation after generation

                                                Hallelujah.