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Psalm 145

Psalm 145 in 30 seconds

An A to Z of praise: great is Yahweh. Every generation tells the next.

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In this chapterField Notes · ArchaeologyThe Great Psalms Scroll · after verse 21

I Will Exalt You, My God and King

A Psalm of praise. Of David.

¹I will exalt You, my God and King;

I will bless Your name forever and ever.

PS 145:1[NOTE]AN A TO Z. Each verse starts with the next Hebrew letter, but in most Hebrew copies the N line is missing. See the TEXT note on 145:13.

²Every day I will bless You,

and I will praise Your name forever and ever.

³Great is Yahweh and greatly to be praised;

His greatness is unsearchable.

⁴One generation will commend Your works to the next,

and will proclaim Your mighty acts—

⁵the glorious splendor of Your majesty.

And I will meditate on Your wondrous works.

⁶They will proclaim the power of Your awesome deeds,

and I will declare Your greatness.

⁷They will extol the fame of Your abundant goodness

and sing joyfully of Your righteousness.

⁸Yahweh is gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and abounding in loving devotion.

⁹Yahweh is good to all;

His compassion rests on all He has made.

¹⁰All You have made will give You thanks, O Yahweh,

and Your saints will bless You.

¹¹They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom

and speak of Your might,

¹²to make known to men Your mighty acts

and the glorious splendor of Your kingdom.

¹³Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,

and Your dominion endures through all generations.

Yahweh is faithful in all His words and kind in all His actions.

PS 145:13[ARCHAEOLOGY]The Great Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11 has the missing N line of Psalm 145 and Psalm 151, see The Great Psalms Scroll Field Notes page
PS 145:13[TEXT]THE MISSING LINE. Yahweh is faithful in all His words and kind in all His actions. Most Hebrew copies leave this line out, but it is in the Great Psalms Scroll from Qumran, 11QPs a, and in the Greek Old Testament. It fills the missing N, nun, line of the A to Z.

¹⁴Yahweh upholds all who fall

and lifts up all who are bowed down.

¹⁵The eyes of all look to You,

and You give them their food in season.

¹⁶You open Your hand

and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

¹⁷Yahweh is righteous in all His ways

and kind in all His deeds.

¹⁸Yahweh is near to all who call on Him,

to all who call out to Him in truth.

¹⁹He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him;

He hears their cry and saves them.

²⁰Yahweh preserves all who love Him,

but all the wicked He will destroy.

²¹My mouth will declare the praise of Yahweh;

let every creature bless His holy name

forever and ever.

Field Notes · Archaeology

The Great Psalms Scroll

Psalm 145:13 · 151 · 2 Samuel 23:1 to 7

Columns of the Great Psalms Scroll, 11QPs a, from Qumran Cave 11. Photo Israel Antiquities Authority, 1993.

WHAT IT IS: The largest Psalms scroll ever found, called 11QPs a or 11Q5. It holds parts of 41 psalms from the last third of the book, plus songs that are not in the Hebrew Bible.
HOW OLD IT IS: Copied about 30 to 50 AD, in the days of Jesus and the apostles.
WHERE AND WHEN FOUND: Bedouin found Cave 11 at Qumran in 1956. The scroll was unrolled in 1961 and published by James Sanders in 1965. It is about 14 feet long.
A DIFFERENT ORDER: The psalms are not in the order of our Bibles. Psalm 145 even has a chorus after every verse: Blessed be Yahweh, and blessed be His name forever and ever.
THE MISSING LINE: Psalm 145 is an A to Z, but the Hebrew copies we use skip the N line. This scroll has it: Yahweh is faithful in all His words, 145:13. Many Bibles today put it back, and this one does too.
PSALM 151: Near the end of the scroll is Psalm 151 in Hebrew, longer than the Greek and in two parts. It names Samuel as the prophet who came to anoint David.
DAVID'S COMPOSITIONS: A prose note in the scroll says David wrote 3,600 psalms and 450 songs, 4,050 in all, through the spirit of prophecy.
GOD'S NAME: The scribe wrote the rest in square Hebrew letters but wrote YHWH in the old Hebrew letters, out of respect for the name.
DAVID'S LAST WORDS: Among the psalms the scroll also has the last verse of David's last words, 2 Samuel 23:7.
SONGS NOT IN OUR BIBLE: A Plea for Deliverance, a song to Zion, a Hymn to the Creator, Psalms 154 and 155, which old Syriac Bibles also have, and the wisdom poem at the end of Sirach, Sirach 51.
A SONG FOR EVERY DAY: The note on David's songs counts 364 songs for the daily offering, one for each day of a 364 day year, the calendar the Qumran group followed, plus 52 for the Sabbaths and 30 for new moons and feast days.
THE BOTTOM IS GONE: The lower edge of the scroll rotted away, so the last lines of most columns are missing. The top part survived well.
ONE MORE PIECE: A separate piece of the same scroll, called fragment E, turned up later and was published by Yigael Yadin in 1966.
WHY IT MATTERS: The psalms Jesus sang read almost word for word like the ones in your Bible. Some Jews also sang a few extra songs with them.
WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVE: Scholars still debate whether it was a Bible scroll or a worship songbook. Either way, its psalms match ours very closely.

CONFIDENCE: HIGH

Psalm 145

I Will Exalt You, My God and King

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