1 Praise Yah! Praise Yahweh, my soul.
2 While I live, I will praise Yahweh. I will sing praises to my God as long as I exist.
3 Don’t put your trust in princes, each a son of man in whom there is no help.
4 His spirit departs, and he returns to the earth. In that very day, his thoughts perish.
Free Grace note
Why princes cannot carry your soul Do not put your trust in princes, the psalm warns, because their breath departs and on that very day their thoughts perish. The point is not that rulers are wicked but that they are mortal. Every human help, however powerful, has an expiration date. The psalm sets this next to the God who made heaven and earth and keeps truth forever (verse 6). The contrast is between help that dies and help that cannot. This is a gentle but firm correction for the maturing believer: it is easy to lean on a person, a leader, a system, a savings account, as though it could secure the soul. It cannot. Only the eternal God is a foundation that outlasts the day of trouble.
5 Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in Yahweh, his God:
6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps truth forever;
7 who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. Yahweh frees the prisoners.
8 Yahweh opens the eyes of the blind. Yahweh raises up those who are bowed down. Yahweh loves the righteous.
Free Grace note
A God who stoops to the weak Read the list of what the Lord does: executes justice for the oppressed, feeds the hungry, frees prisoners, opens blind eyes, raises the bowed down, upholds the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow. Every category is someone with no leverage, no bargaining power, nothing to offer. This is the gospel pattern in miniature. God helps people precisely where they cannot help themselves. Some hear Yahweh loves the righteous in verse 8 as a wage paid to the deserving. But in Scripture righteousness is credited to those who believe, as it was to Abraham in Genesis 15:6, not earned by performance. The God pictured here does not wait at the top for climbers; he comes down to the bottom where the helpless are.
9 Yahweh preserves the foreigners. He upholds the fatherless and widow, but the way of the wicked he turns upside down.
10 Yahweh will reign forever; your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise Yah!
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