Psalm 103:2

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(2) Benefits.—Literally, actions, whether good or bad (Judges 9:16; Proverbs 12:14). But what a significance in the restricted meaning “benefits.” God’s acts are all benefits.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

103:1-5 By the pardon of sin, that is taken away which kept good things from us, and we are restored to the favor of God, who bestows good things on us. Think of the provocation; it was sin, and yet pardoned: how many the provocations, yet all pardoned! God is still forgiving, as we are still sinning and repenting. The body finds the melancholy consequences of Adam's offence, it is subject to many infirmities, and the soul also. Christ alone forgives all our sins; it is he alone who heals all our infirmities. And the person who finds his sin cured, has a well-grounded assurance that it is forgiven. When God, by the graces and comforts of his Spirit, recovers his people from their decays, and fills them with new life and joy, which is to them an earnest of eternal life and joy, they may then be said to return to the days of their youth, Job 33:25.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Bless the Lord, O my soul - The repetition here denotes the intensity or earnestness of the wish or desire of the psalmist. It is an emphatic calling upon his soul, that is, himself, never to forget the many favors which God was continually conferring upon him.

And forget not all his benefits - Any of his favors. This refers not to those favors in the aggregate, but it is a call to remember them in particular. The word rendered "benefits" - גמול gemûl - means properly an act, work, doing, whether good or evil, Psalm 137:8; and then, "desert," or what a man deserves "for" his act; "recompence." It is rendered "deserving" in Judges 9:16; benefit, as here, in 2 Chronicles 32:25; "desert," Psalm 28:4; "reward," Psalm 94:2; Isaiah 3:11; Obadiah 1:15; "recompence," Proverbs 12:14; Isaiah 35:4; Isaiah 59:18; Isaiah 66:6; Jeremiah 51:6; Lamentations 3:64; Joel 3:4, Joel 3:7. The proper reference here is to the divine "dealings," - to what God had done - as a reason for blessing his name. His "dealings" with the psalmist had been such as to call for praise and gratitude. What those "dealings" particularly were he specifies in the following verses. The call here on his soul is not to forget these divine dealings, as laying the foundation for praise. We shall find, when we reach the end of life, that all which God has done, however dark and mysterious it may have appeared at the time, was so connected with our good as to make it a proper subject of praise and thanksgiving.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2. forget not all—not any, none of His benefits.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Bless the Lord, O my soul,.... Which is repeated to show the importance of the service, and the vehement desire of the psalmist, that his soul should be engaged in it:

and forget not all his benefits; not any of them; the least of them are not to be forgotten, being such as men are altogether unworthy of; they flow not from the merit of men, but from the mercy of God; and they are many, even innumerable; they are new every morning, and continue all the day; and how great must the sum of them be, and not one should be forgotten; and yet even good men are very apt to forget them; as the Israelites of old, who sung the praises of the Lord, and soon forgot his works: the Lord, knowing the weakness of his people's memories, has not only, under the Gospel dispensation, appointed an ordinance, to be continued to the end of the world, to commemorate a principal blessing and benefit of his, redemption by his Son; but has also promised his Spirit, to bring all things to their remembrance; and this they should be concerned for, that they do remember what God has done for them, in order both to show gratitude and thankfulness to him, and for the encouragement of their faith and hope in him.

Geneva Study Bible

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. forget not] “Beware lest thou forget” is the often repeated warning of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 6:12; Deuteronomy 8:11; &c.). “Si oblivisceris tacebis” is St Augustine’s comment.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - Bless the Lord, O my soul. Repetition, in Holy Scripture, is almost always for the sake of emphasis. It is not "vain repetition." Our Lord often uses it: "Verily, verily, I say unto you;" "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? .... Feed my sheep... Feed my sheep." And forget not all his benefits (comp. Deuteronomy 6:12; Deuteronomy 8:11, 14, etc.). Man is so apt to "forget," that he requires continual exhortation not to do so. Psalm 103:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In the strophe Psalm 103:1 the poet calls upon his soul to arise to praiseful gratitude for God's justifying, redeeming, and renewing grace. In such soliloquies it is the Ego that speaks, gathering itself up with the spirit, the stronger, more manly part of man (Psychology, S. 104f.; tr. p. 126), or even, because the soul as the spiritual medium of the spirit and of the body represents the whole person of man (Psychology, S. 203; tr. p. 240), the Ego rendering objective in the soul the whole of its own personality. So here in Psalm 103:3 the soul, which is addressed, represents the whole man. The קובים which occurs here is a more choice expression for מעים (מעים): the heart, which is called קרב κατ ̓ ἐξοχήν, the reins, the liver, etc.; for according to the scriptural conception (Psychology, S. 266; tr. p. 313) these organs of the cavities of the breast and abdomen serve not merely for the bodily life, but also the psycho-spiritual life. The summoning בּרכי is repeated per anaphoram. There is nothing the soul of man is so prone to forget as to render thanks that are due, and more especially thanks that are due to God. It therefore needs to be expressly aroused in order that it may not leave the blessing with which God blesses it unacknowledged, and may not forget all His acts performed (גּמל equals גּמר) on it (גּמוּל, ῥῆμα μέσον, e.g., in Psalm 137:8), which are purely deeds of loving-kindness), which is the primal condition and the foundation of all the others, viz., sin-pardoning mercy. The verbs סלח and רפא with a dative of the object denote the bestowment of that which is expressed by the verbal notion. תּחלוּאים (taken from Deuteronomy 29:21, cf. 1 Chronicles 21:19, from חלא equals חלה, root הל, solutum, laxum esse) are not merely bodily diseases, but all kinds of inward and outward sufferings. משּׁחת the lxx renders ἐκ φθορᾶς (from שׁחת, as in Job 17:14); but in this antithesis to life it is more natural to render the "pit" (from שׁוּח) as a name of Hades, as in Psalm 16:10. Just as the soul owes its deliverance from guilt and distress and death to God, so also does it owe to God that with which it is endowed out of the riches of divine love. The verb עטּר, without any such addition as in Psalm 5:13, is "to crown," cf. Psalm 8:6. As is usually the case, it is construed with a double accusative; the crown is as it were woven out of loving-kindness and compassion. The Beth of בּטּוב in Psalm 103:5 instead of the accusative (Psalm 104:28) denotes the means of satisfaction, which is at the same time that which satisfies. עדיך the Targum renders: dies senectutis tuae, whereas in Psalm 32:9 it is ornatus ejus; the Peshto renders: corpus tuum, and in Psalm 32:9 inversely, juventus eorum. These significations, "old age" or "youth," are pure inventions. And since the words are addressed to the soul, עדי cannot also, like כבוד in other instances, be a name of the soul itself (Aben-Ezra, Mendelssohn, Philippsohn, Hengstenberg, and others). We, therefore, with Hitzig, fall back upon the sense of the word in Psalm 32:9, where the lxx renders τάς σιαγόνας αὐτῶν, but here more freely, apparently starting from the primary notion of עדי equals Arabic chadd, the cheek: τὸν ἐμπιπλῶντα ἐν ἀγαθοῖς τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν σου (whereas Saadia's victum tuum is based upon a comparison of the Arabic gdâ, to nourish). The poet tells the soul (i.e., his own person, himself) that God satisfies it with good, so that it as it were gets its cheeks full of it (cf. Psalm 81:11). The comparison כּנּשׁר is, as in Micah 1:16 (cf. Isaiah 40:31), to be referred to the annual moulting of the eagle. Its renewing of its plumage is an emblem of the renovation of his youth by grace. The predicate to נעוּריכי (plural of extension in relation to time) stands first regularly in the sing. fem.