Psalm 104:33

I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Psalm 104:33-34. I will sing unto the Lord, &c. — Whatever others do, I will not fail to give to God his glory and due praises. My meditation of him — My praising of God concerning the glory of his works; shall be sweet — Either, 1st, To God; he will graciously accept it; praise being his most acceptable sacrifice, Psalm 69:30-31. Or rather, 2d, To myself. I will not only do this work of praising God, but I will do it cheerfully and with delight: it shall be a pleasure to me to praise him, and I shall find comfort in so doing.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

104:31-35 Man's glory is fading; God's glory is everlasting: creatures change, but with the Creator there is no variableness. And if mediation on the glories of creation be so sweet to the soul, what greater glory appears to the enlightened mind, when contemplating the great work of redemption! There alone can a sinner perceive ground of confidence and joy in God. While he with pleasure upholds all, governs all, and rejoices in all his works, let our souls, touched by his grace, meditate on and praise him.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live - That is, I will continue to praise him; I will never cease to adore him. The result of the psalmist's meditations on the wonderful works of God is to awaken in his mind a desire to praise God forever. He is so filled with a sense of his greatness and glory that he sees that there would be occasion for eternal praise; or that the reason for praise could never be exhausted. He who has any proper sense of the greatness, the majesty, and the glory of God "intends" to praise him forever. He sees that there is enough in the character of God to demand eternal praise, and he does not anticipate that a period can ever occur in all the future when he will feel that the causes for praise have come to an end, or when his heart will be indisposed to celebrate that praise.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

31-34. While God could equally glorify His power in destruction, that He does it in preservation is of His rich goodness and mercy, so that we may well spend our lives in grateful praise, honoring to Him, and delightful to pious hearts (Ps 147:1).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

But whatsoever others do, I will not fail to give God his glory and due praises.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live,.... Or, "in my life or lives (w)", throughout the whole of it. This was what the psalmist determined to do, let others do what they would; even sing songs of praise to the Lord; since he was the God of his life, who had fed him all his life long; from whom he had all the mercies of life, and by whom he had been followed with goodness and mercy all his days, and on whom his life and the comforts of it depended.

I will sing praise unto my God while I have my being: because he lived, and moved, and had his being in him; and it was continued to him, and he was upheld in it; and not only for his being, but for his well being; as for his temporal, so for his spiritual mercies, which he had from him as his God, as his covenant God; such as peace, pardon, righteousness, and eternal life: a view of God as our own God, such a view as Thomas had of Christ, when he said, "my Lord, and my God", is enough to make a man sing; and when the psalmist says he would do this as long as he lived and had a being, this is not to be understood as if this work would end with his life, or that he had no thought of praising him hereafter; but it signifies his constancy in this employment, while in the land of the living; knowing that in the grave he could not praise the Lord with his bodily organs as now; though he knew that this would be his eternal employ in the world of spirits, in his soul, during its separate state, and in soul and body after the resurrection.

(w) "in vita mea", V. L. Pagninus; "in vitis meis", Montanus.

Geneva Study Bible

I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 33-35. - The peroration (like the opening) is simple praise of God himself, considered in himself. All his life the psalmist will praise God (ver. 33) - his soul shall praise him (ver. 35), he will be glad in him (ver. 34); finally, he calls upon all men to join in his praise (ver. 35, last clause). Verse 33. - I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live (comp. Psalm 63:4; Psalm 146:2): I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. An echo of the preceding hemistich. Psalm 104:33

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The poet has now come to an end with the review of the wonders of the creation, and closes in this seventh group, which is again substantially decastichic, with a sabbatic meditation, inasmuch as he wishes that the glory of God, which He has put upon His creatures, and which is reflected and echoed back by them to Him, may continue for ever, and that His works may ever be so constituted that He who was satisfied at the completion of His six days' work may be able to rejoice in them. For if they cease to give Him pleasure, He can indeed blot them out as He did at the time of the Flood, since He is always able by a look to put the earth in a tremble, and by a touch to set the mountains on fire (ותּרעד of the result of the looking, as in Amos 5:8; Amos 9:6, and ויעשׁנוּ of that which takes place simultaneously with the touching, as in Psalm 144:5, Zechariah 9:5, cf. on Habakkuk 3:10). The poet, however, on his part, will not suffer there to be any lack of the glorifying of Jahve, inasmuch as he makes it his life's work to praise his God with music and song (בּחיּי as in Psalm 63:5, cf. Bar. 4:20, ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις μου). Oh that this his quiet and his audible meditation upon the honour of God may be pleasing to Him (ערב על synonymous with טּוב על, but also שׁפר על, Psalm 16:6)! Oh that Jahve may be able to rejoice in him, as he himself will rejoice in his God! Between "I will rejoice," Psalm 104:34, and "He shall rejoice," Psalm 104:31, there exists a reciprocal relation, as between the Sabbath of the creature in God and the Sabbath of God in the creature. When the Psalmist wishes that God may have joy in His works of creation, and seeks on his part to please God and to have his joy in God, he is also warranted in wishing that those who take pleasure in wickedness, and instead of giving God joy excite His wrath, may be removed from the earth (יתּמּוּ, cf. Numbers 14:35); for they are contrary to the purpose of the good creation of God, they imperil its continuance, and mar the joy of His creatures. The expression is not: may sins (חטּאים, as it is meant to be read in B. Berachoth, 10a, and as some editions, e.g., Bomberg's of 1521, actually have it), but: may sinners, be no more, for there is no other existence of sin than the personal one.

With the words Bless, O my soul, Jahve, the Psalm recurs to its introduction, and to this call upon himself is appended the Hallelujah which summons all creatures to the praise of God - a call of devotion which occurs nowhere out of the Psalter, and within the Psalter is found here for the first time, and consequently was only coined in the alter age. In modern printed copies it is sometimes written הללוּ־יהּ, sometimes הללוּ יהּ, but in the earlier copies (e.g., Venice 1521, Wittenberg 1566) mostly as one word הללוּיהּ.

(Note: More accurately הללוּיהּ with Chateph, as Jekuthil ha-Nakdan expressly demands. Moreover the mode of writing it as one word is the rule, since the Masora notes the הללוּ־יהּ, occurring only once, in Psalm 135:3, with לית בטעם as being the only instance of the kind.)

In the majority of MSS it is also found thus as one word,

(Note: Yet even in the Talmud (J. Megilla i. 9, Sofrim v. 10) it is a matter of controversy concerning the mode of writing this word, whether it is to be separate or combined; and in B. Pesachim 117a Rab appeals to a Psalter of the school of Chabibi (תילי דבי חביבי) that he has seen, in which הללו stood in one line and יה in the other. In the same place Rab Chasda appeals to a תילי דבי רב חנין that he has seen, in which the Hallelujah standing between two Psalms, which might be regarded as the close of the Psalm preceding it or as the beginning of the Psalm following it, as written in the middle between the two (בעמצע פירקא). In the הלליה written as one word, יה is not regarded as strictly the divine name, only as an addition strengthening the notion of the הללו, as in במרחביה Psalm 118:5; with reference to this, vide Geiger, Urschrift, S. 275.)

and that always with הּ, except the first הללוּיהּ which occurs here at the end of Psalm 104, which has ה raphe in good MSS and old printed copies. This mode of writing is that attested by the Masora (vid., Baer's Psalterium, p. 132). The Talmud and Midrash observe this first Hallelujah is connected in a significant manner with the prospect of the final overthrow of the wicked. Ben-Pazzi (B. Berachoth 10a) counts 103 פרשׁיות up to this Hallelujah, reckoning Psalm 1:1-6 and Psalm 2:1-12 as one פרשׁת'.