Psalm 146:2

While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

146:1-4 If it is our delight to praise the Lord while we live, we shall certainly praise him to all eternity. With this glorious prospect before us, how low do worldly pursuits seem! There is a Son of man in whom there is help, even him who is also the Son of God, who will not fail those that trust in him. But all other sons of men are like the man from whom they sprung, who, being in honour, did not abide. God has given the earth to the children of men, but there is great striving about it. Yet, after a while, no part of the earth will be their own, except that in which their dead bodies are laid. And when man returns to his earth, in that very day all his plans and designs vanish and are gone: what then comes of expectations from him?

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

While I live will I praise the Lord ... - See the notes at Psalm 104:33, where the same language occurs substantially as in this verse: "I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being." The idea is, not merely that he would praise him during this life - short and fleeting as it is - but that as long as he had an existence - in the future world - forever he would praise him.

Through every period of my life

Thy goodness I'll pursue;

And after death, in distant worlds,

The glorious theme renew.

Through all eternity to Thee

A joyful song I'll raise;

But, oh! eternity's too short

To utter all thy praise."

- Addison

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

PSALM 146

Ps 146:1-10. An exhortation to praise God, who, by the gracious and faithful exercise of His power in goodness to the needy, is alone worthy of implicit trust.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

While I live will I praise the Lord,.... As he had good reason to do, since he had his life from him, and was upheld in it by him; who also favoured him with the mercies and comforts of life; and that every day, being renewed to him every morning, and continued all the days of his life; which determined him throughout the whole of it to praise the Lord: nay, he had his spiritual life from him, with all the blessings of it; which are lasting, everlasting ones, and had hope of eternal life with him;

I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being; or "while I am" (l); not only in this world, but in the world to come; for men have a being or existence after death, and the saints have a most comfortable and happy one then; and will be more capable of singing praises to their incarnate God, and which will be their work to all eternity; see Psalm 104:33.

(l) "dum fuero", Pagninus; "in adhuc me", Montanus; "quamdiu ero", Cocceius; , Sept. "quamdiu sum", Schmidt, Ethiopic version; so Ainsworth.

Geneva Study Bible

While I live will I praise the LORD: I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. Almost identical with Psalm 104:33.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - While I live will I praise the Lord. Nearly identical with Psalm 104:35a. It is our duty towards God to be always praising him, if not with the lips, at any rate with the heart. I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being. Identical with Psalm 104:33b. Psalm 146:2

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Instead of "bless," as in Psalm 103:1; Psalm 104:1, the poet of this Psalm says "praise." When he attunes his sole to the praise of God, he puts himself personally into this mood of mind, and therefore goes on to say "I will praise." He will, however, not only praise God in the song which he is beginning, but כּחיּי (vid., on Psalm 63:5), fillling up his life with it, or בּעודי (prop. "in my yet-being," with the suffix of the noun, whereas עודנּי with the verbal suffix is "I still am"), so that his continued life is also a constant continued praising, viz., (and this is in the mind of the poet here, even at the commencment of the Psalm) of the God and Kings who, as being the Almighty, Eternal, and unchangeably Faithful One, is the true ground of confidence. The warning against putting trust in princes calls to mind Psalm 118:8. The clause: the son of man, who has no help that he could afford, is to be understood according to Psalm 60:13. The following לאדמתו shows that the poet by expression בּן־אדם combines the thoughts of Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 3:19. If his breath goes forth, he says, basing the untrustworthiness and feebleness of the son of Adam upon the inevitable final destiny of the son of Adam taken out of the ground, then he returns to his earth, i.e., the earth of his first beginning; cf. the more exact expression אל־עפרם, after which the εἰς τὴν γῆν αὐτοῦ of the lxx is exchanged for εἰς τὸν χοῦν αὐτοῦ in 1 Macc. 2:63: On the hypothetical relation of the first future clause to the second, cf. Psalm 139:8-10, Psalm 139:18; Ew. 357, b. In that day, the inevitable day of death, the projects or plans of man are at once and forever at an end. The ἅπ. λεγ. עשׁתּנת describes these with the collateral notion of the subtleness and magnitude.