Psalm 145:8

Psalm 145 is the only psalm headed “David’s Psalm of praise”, and it is the last psalm in the book that carries David’s name. It is an acrostic, in which each verse begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, a way of giving God praise that is complete and ordered from the first letter to the last. In the Hebrew text as it has come down to us the verse for the letter Nun is missing, and it is found in the Septuagint and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Verse 13, the last of this passage, is the verse for Mem.

The psalm opens with David resolving to extol his God and King (Psalm 145:1). It praises a God whose “greatness is unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3) and speaks of “the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works” (Psalm 145:5). Verse 8 then shows us the heart of this great God, and it is the ground for all the praise that follows.

Verse 9 widens the circle to everyone and everything. “Good” is ṭôwb, a broad word for moral goodness, pleasantness, kindness, fitness and well-being. Said of the LORD, it means he is the source of all that is beneficial, beautiful and right, and his very being is disposed to bless and provide. “To all” carries that goodness to every person and every creature.

Jesus says the same of his Father, who “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). He tells his disciples to be merciful as their Father is merciful, since the Highest is kind to the unthankful and to the evil (Luke 6:35–36). And God’s last words to Jonah show his compassion for the great city of Nineveh (Jonah 4:11). This kindness to all is often called common grace. By it God sustains life and meets the basic needs of all, whatever their standing before him. Israel, a farming people who lived by the rain and the harvest, met that goodness in every season, and the law speaks of rain in its season as the LORD’s blessing (Deuteronomy 28:12).

“Tender mercies” translates racham, usually found in the plural, rachamim. It is tied to the word for the womb, rechem, and speaks of a deep, nurturing love like a mother’s for her child, a compassion that moves God to care for what he has made, protect it and sustain it. Scripture uses it as an intimate word for his love, and it is part of the name he proclaimed at Sinai, where he calls himself “merciful”.

“Over all his works” means that these mercies rest upon everything he has made. The word for works, maʻăseh, means a deed, a work or a thing made, and here it is everything God has made and done: the heavens and the earth, every living creature, and his ongoing care for them. “Over” means “upon” or “above”, and it pictures his mercy spread over his creation to guard and keep it, from the smallest creature to the heavens that declare his glory (Psalm 19:1–6). The psalm comes back to this a few verses later, where the eyes of all wait upon him and he satisfies the desire of every living thing (Psalm 145:15–16).

Verse 10 follows from verse 9. A God who is good to all and whose mercies cover all his works draws praise from all of them, and from his own people in a way of their own. The verse names two choirs.

The first is “all thy works”, the same word, maʻăseh, as in verse 9. Creation praises God by being what he made it. Its order, beauty and design are a constant, silent witness to the wisdom, power and goodness of its Maker. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1), and Paul says that God’s invisible things “from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Romans 1:20). The verb for praise, yâdâh, means to praise, give thanks or confess. Its root goes back to holding out the hand, as in worship with lifted hands.

The second choir is “thy saints”. The word is châçîyd (plural chasidim), meaning kind, godly or loyal, and it comes from the same family as cheçed, the loyal love of verse 8. The saints are those who keep faith with God’s covenant and whose own lives reflect the loyal love he has shown them. They “bless” him, barakh, an act of worship that often went with kneeling or bowing and expressed submission, adoration and thanks. Their praise is conscious, willing and spoken, the answer of people who know him and have received his grace. God says of his people, “This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise” (Isaiah 43:21).

The two belong together. Creation’s witness is the ground on which God’s people add their own deliberate praise, and Scripture looks ahead to the day when both are joined. John hears every creature in heaven, on earth and under the earth giving blessing, honour, glory and power to God and to the Lamb (Revelation 5:12–13), and Paul writes that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10–11). Psalm 145 itself ends on this note: “let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever” (Psalm 145:21). The Psalter then closes with a whole psalm calling everything that has breath to praise the LORD (Psalm 150).

Verse 11 shows how the saints bless God, which is by speaking of him. “They” are the saints of verse 10, and their subject is the glory of his kingdom and his power. The two verbs, ʼâmar and dâbar, are the everyday words for saying, speaking and telling, and the two lines of the verse say the same thing twice for emphasis, once of his reign and once of his might.

“Glory” is kâbôwd, which means glory, honour and splendour. The glory of God’s kingdom is the splendour and majesty of his reign, its beauty, holiness, justice and perfect order, and the awe of his presence and authority. “Kingdom” is malkûwth, a rule or dominion, the exercise of kingship over a realm, and here it is God’s sovereign reign over all creation. That reign is a present reality as well as a future hope, for “his kingdom ruleth over all” (Psalm 103:19).

“Power” is gᵉbûwrâh, force, valour or might. Scripture uses it of people, of nations and even of a horse, and here of the strength by which God creates, delivers, sustains, governs and judges. In verse 12 the same word, in the plural, becomes “his mighty acts”, the deeds in which that might has been shown.

Verse 13 brings this part of the psalm to its height. “Kingdom” is malkûwth again, said twice for emphasis, and here it is called ʻôwlâm, everlasting. The word speaks of perpetuity, of time stretching on out of sight, “to the vanishing point”. God’s reign outlasts every age and passes to no successor.

“Dominion” is memshâlâh, rule or government, the active exercise of authority over a realm. It endures “throughout all generations”, literally to generation and generation, using dôwr, a generation or more broadly a period or age. The two lines of the verse say one thing in two ways. “Everlasting” and “throughout all generations” both tell how long his rule lasts, just as another psalm sets them side by side for his mercy and his truth: “his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations” (Psalm 100:5). So God is King in every age and over every people, and he governs actively from the beginning of history to its end. The book of Daniel says it in nearly the same words: “his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation.”

All that these verses say of the LORD is seen in Jesus Christ. John says the Word was made flesh, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), and that the only begotten Son has declared the Father whom no man has seen (John 1:18). He is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3).

His compassion was the compassion of verse 8. He “was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14), he was moved with compassion for the crowds who were “as sheep having no shepherd” (Matthew 9:35–36), and at the grave of Lazarus “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). He showed God’s slowness to anger in his patience with his disciples’ weakness, in bearing betrayal, and on the cross, where he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). God’s great mercy is seen most fully in his sacrifice. God is “rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4) and saved us “according to his mercy” (Titus 3:5), for “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). So we may “come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16).

The works that praise God were made through him: “all things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:16). Through his cross God reconciles all things to himself (Colossians 1:19–20), so his tender mercies reach both creation and fallen mankind.

Jesus came preaching the kingdom of verse 11. He taught his disciples to pray “Thy kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10), sent the twelve “to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:2), and told the Pharisees, “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). After his resurrection the apostles proclaimed that God had made him “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). God has delivered his people from the power of darkness and “translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13), and the risen Christ, who said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18), sends his people to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19–20). That is verse 12’s call to make his mighty acts known to the sons of men.

The everlasting kingdom of verse 13 is his. The angel told Mary, “he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33). He died and rose again so “that he might be Lord both of the dead and living” (Romans 14:9). And at the last trumpet loud voices in heaven say, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).

These six verses give us God’s own description of himself to hold and to repeat. He is gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger and of great mercy, and those words come from his own mouth at Sinai. That gives his people a firm place to stand when they come to him after failing. His goodness reaches every creature, so the sunrise, the rain and the food on the table are all signs of his kindness, given to the just and the unjust alike.

The passage also gives God’s people a part in a great chorus. All his works praise him by simply being what he made them, and the saints add the praise of people who know him by name, speaking of his kingdom and his power so that others come to know him too. And it shows us a King whose reign has no end, whose kingdom outlasts every kingdom of the earth, and who is the same patient and merciful LORD in every generation. Whatever this generation brings, his dominion endures through it, and his loyal love with it.