Psalm 147
The full text of Psalm 147 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Hebrew. Free to read.
Praise the LORD! (Hallelujah.)
1 Praise the LORD!
For it is good to sing praises to our God;
for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.
2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
4 He determines the number of the stars;
he gives to all of them their names.
5 Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
his understanding is beyond measure.
6 The LORD lifts up the humble;
he casts the wicked to the ground.
7 Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
make melody to our God on the lyre!
8 He covers the heavens with clouds;
he prepares rain for the earth;
he makes grass grow on the hills.
9 He gives to the beasts their food,
and to the young ravens that cry.
10 His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,
11 but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.
12 Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem!
Praise your God, O Zion!
13 For he strengthens the bars of your gates;
he blesses your children within you.
14 He makes peace in your borders;
he fills you with the finest of the wheat.
15 He sends out his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
16 He gives snow like wool;
he scatters frost like ashes.
17 He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
who can stand before his cold?
18 He sends out his word, and melts them;
he makes his wind blow and the waters flow.
19 He declares his word to Jacob,
his statutes and rules to Israel.
20 He has not dealt thus with any other nation;
they do not know his rules.
Praise the LORD!
Translation notes (4)
- Psalm 147:4a In the ancient Near East, to name something was to exercise authority over it, as a king names his subjects or a conqueror renames a city. The Hebrew shemot yiqra, 'he calls names', thus asserts God's sovereign ownership of the stars, which neighboring cultures worshiped as deities. Isaiah 40:26 uses the same image of stars summoned by name.
- Psalm 147:9a Hebrew livne orev asher yiqra'u, 'to the young ravens that cry', echoes Job 38:41, where God asks who provides prey for the raven when its young cry to him. The raven, an unclean bird under the law (Leviticus 11:15), serves in both passages as an emblem of divine care extending to the least regarded creatures; Jesus takes up the same image in Luke 12:24.
- Psalm 147:10a Shoqe ha'ish, 'the legs of the man', parallels the war-horse in the first line: both images stand for military capability, the cavalry and the swift infantryman. The psalm thus denies that God values the resources by which nations measure power, preparing the contrast with verse 11.
- Psalm 147:20a The claim echoes Deuteronomy 4:8, where Israel's mishpatim, 'rules', mark the nation as uniquely favored among the peoples. The Masoretic Text reads "they do not know his rules"; the Septuagint has instead "he has not made his judgments known to them," shifting the subject to God without altering the sense of exclusive revelation.
About this translation
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