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PSALM 145

David's Psalm of praise.

1. I will extol you, O my god and King; and I will bless your name for ever and ever.
2. Every day will I bless you, and praise your name for ever and ever.
3. Great is jehovah, and greatly to be praised; yea, his greatness is unsearchable!
4. Generation to generation shall praise your works, and shall declare your mighty deeds.
5. I will speak of the glorious honour of your majesty, and of your wonderful works.
6. They shall speak of the might of your wonderful acts, and I will declare your greatness.
7. They shall pour forth the memory of your great goodness, and shall sing aloud of your justice.
8. Gracious and merciful is jehovah; slow to anger, and of great mercy.
9. Good is jehovah to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.
10. All your works shall praise you, O jehovah, and your saints shall bless you.
11. They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom, and talk of your power.
12. To make known to the sons of man his mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom.
13. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations.
14. jehovah upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.
15. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.
16. You open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every thing living.
17. Just is jehovah in all his ways, and holy in all his doings.
18. jehovah is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.
19. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him, yea, he will hearken to their cry, and will save them.
20. jehovah preserves all those who love him, but all the wicked will he destroy.
21. My mouth shall speak the praise of jehovah; and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.

Verses 4, 5, 12. The glorious honour of your majesty denotes the Divine good united to the Divine truth, and the glorious majesty of his kingdom denotes the Divine truth united to Divine good; the reason of its being so expressed is because the unification is reciprocal, for from the lord proceeds the Divine good united to the Divine truth, but by angels in heaven and the men in the church Divine truth is received, and is united to Divine good; it is therefore said, the glory of the honour of his kingdom, and by his kingdom is signified heaven and the church. AE 288.

Verse 4. Generation to generation; see Psalm 14:4 Exposition.

Verse 9. Good is jehovah to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works. god is love or goodness itself, and wisdom or truth itself, and these two constitute his essence. That love or goodness, and wisdom or truth, are the two essentials, to which all the infinite properties that are in god, and that proceed from him, have relation, was a truth known in the earliest ages of the world; but succeeding generations, as they withdrew their minds from heaven, and immersed them in worldly and corporeal things, could not discern that truth; for they began to lose the knowledge of what love is in its essence; not knowing that love abstracted from form cannot exist; and that in and by form it effects its operations. Now since god is the very, the one only, and thus the first substance and form, whose essence is love and wisdom; and since by him all things were made which are made, it follows that he created the universe with all its parts, both general and particular, out of or from love, by means of wisdom; and that, consequently, Divine love, in union with Divine wisdom, is in every created subject. Love, moreover, is not only the essence which forms all things, but which likewise unites and conjoins them, and so keeps them, when formed, in order and connection.

These truths are capable of receiving illustration from numberless objects in nature; as, for instance, from the heat and light proceeding from the sun, which are the two essentials and universals by which all things upon earth, both in general and in particular, exist and subsist: heat and light exist in nature, because they correspond with the Divine love and Divine wisdom; for the heat which proceeds from the sun of the spiritual world, in its essence, is love; and the light derived thence, in its essence, is wisdom. They may be illustrated also by the two essentials and universals, by which human minds exist and subsist, which are the will and the understanding; for of these two every man's mind consists; and they are, and operate in all its parts, both in general and in particular; the reason is because the will is the recipient and habitation of love, and the understanding of wisdom; wherefore those two faculties correspond with the Divine love and Divine wisdom, from whence they derive their origin.

Moreover, the same truths may be illustrated by those two essentials and universals, by which human bodies exist and subsist, the heart and lungs, or the systole and diastole of the heart, and the respiration of the lungs; which, it is well known, operate in all parts of the human body, both generally and particularly: the reason is because the heart corresponds to love, and the lungs to wisdom; which correspondence is fully demonstrated in the work entitled "angelic wisdom concerning divine love and divine wisdom." That love, as the bridegroom and husband, produces or begot all forms, but still by wisdom as the bride and wife, may be proved by numberless testimonies, both in the spiritual and the natural world; here however we shall only make this observation, that the whole angelic heaven is arranged into its form, and preserved in it, from the Divine love operating by the Divine wisdom.

Where men deduce the creation of the world from any other source, than from the Divine love operating by Divine wisdom, and do not know that these two constitute the Divine essence, they descend from rational vision to material, embrace nature as the creatrix of the universe, and thence conceive chimeras, and bring forth phantoms; their thoughts are fallacies, and their reasonings from them terminate in the formation of eggs, that are pregnant with birds of night: such men cannot properly be denominated minds, but rather eyes and ears without understanding, or thoughts without a soul: they talk of colours as existing without light; and of trees as produced without seed; and of all created subjects as formed without a sun; inasmuch as they put derivatives in the place of primitives, effects in the place of causes, and thus turn every thing upside down, and, laying the powers of reason asleep, see as in a dream. AR 37.

Verse 13. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; see the Work concerning "heaven and hell," HH 20 to 28.

Verse 13. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations. In this passage, dominion is predicated of good, because from good the lord is called lord, and kingdom is predicated of truth, because from this the lord is called king. AE 685.

Verse 18. jehovah is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. Where to be near, denotes to be present and conjoined; the reason why the conjunction and presence of the lord is by the Word is because the Word is the union of man with heaven, and by heaven with the lord; for the Word is the Divine truth proceeding from the lord, wherefore they who are in that truth as to doctrine and life, or as to faith and love, are in the Divine principle proceeding from the lord, thus are conjoined to him. From these considerations it is evident that by the words, "Moses, he alone shall approach to jehovah," is signified the conjunction and presence of the lord by the Word. The reason why to approach denotes conjunction and presence is because in the other life the distances of one from another are altogether according to the dissimilitudes and diversities of the interiors, which are of thoughts and affection, see n. 1273 to 1277; removals also from the lord and approaches to him are altogether according to the good of love, and thence of faith from him and to him; hence it is, that the heavens are near to the lord according to goods, and on the other hand, the hells are remote from the lord according to evils; hence it is evident from what ground it is that to be near and to approach in the spiritual sense denote to be conjoined. AC 9378.

Verse 20. jehovah preserves all those who love him. It may be expedient briefly to state what is meant by love to the lord, or by loving the lord. He who believes that he loves the lord, and does not live according to his precepts, is very greatly deceived; for to live according to his precepts is to love the lord, those precepts being truths which are from the lord, thus in which the lord is; wherefore so far as they are loved, that is, so far as from love the life is formed accordingly, so far the lord is loved.

The reason is because the lord loves man, and from love wills him to be happy to eternity, and man cannot become happy except by a life according to his precepts; for by them man is regenerated, and becomes spiritual, and is thus capable of being elevated into heaven: but to love the lord without a life according to his precepts is not to love him, for in such case there is not any thing belonging to man, into which the lord can flow, and elevate man to himself; for he is as an empty vessel, in which there is not any thing of life in his faith, nor any thing of life in his love;. for the life of heaven, which is called eternal life, is not infused into any one immediately, but mediately.

From these considerations it may be manifest what it is to love the lord, and likewise what it is to see the lord, or his faces, namely that he is seen from such faith and love. To live according to the lord's precepts, is to live according to the doctrine of charity and faith, which may be seen prefixed to each chapter of the book of Exodus. That this is the case, the lord also teaches in John, "He that has my precepts, and does them, he it is who loves me; but he that loves me will be loved of my father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him: if any one love me, he will keep my Word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him. He that loves me not, keeps not my words," John 14:21, 23, 24. AC 10578.

So far as any one is principled in good, and from good loves truths, so far he loves the lord, inasmuch as the lord is good itself and truth itself; therefore the lord is with man in good and in truth, and if the latter be loved from the former, then the lord is loved, and not otherwise. This the lord teaches in John, "He that has my precepts, and does them, he it is who loves me; but he that loves me not, keeps not my words," John 14:21, 24. DLife 38.

Inasmuch as the church at this day does not know that conjunction with the lord makes heaven, and that conjunction is effected by the acknowledgement that he is the god of heaven and earth, and at the same time by a life according to his precepts, it may therefore be expedient to say something on the subject. It may be asked by him, who is uninstructed in this case, what is conjunction? How can acknowledgement and life make conjunction? What need is there of these things, when every one may be saved by mercy alone? What necessity for any other medium of salvation but faith alone? Is not god merciful and omnipotent? But let such a one know that in the spiritual world knowledge and acknowledgement make all presence, and that the affection which is of love makes all conjunction; for spaces in that world are nothing else but appearances according to the similitudes of minds, that is, of affections and consequent thoughts; wherefore when any one knows another either from reputation, or from communication with him, or from conversation, or from affinity, whilst he thinks of him from the idea of that knowledge, he is presented to view, although he were a thousand miles off as to appearance; and if any one loves another with whom he is acquainted, he dwells with him in one society, and if he loves him inmostly, in one house. This is the state of all throughout the spiritual world, and it derives its origin from this circumstance, that the lord is present with every one according to faith, and conjoined according to love; faith, and the consequent presence of the lord, is given by the knowledges of truths from the Word, especially concerning the lord himself there, but love and consequent conjunction is given by a life according to his precepts, for the lord says, "He that has my precepts, and does them, he it is who loves me; and I will love him, and make abode with him," John 14:21 to 24. But in what manner this is effected, it may also be expedient to say. The lord loves every one, and is willing to be conjoined to him, but he cannot be conjoined so long as man is in the delight of evil, as in the delight of hatred and revenge, in the delight of adultery and whoredom, in the delight of defrauding or stealing under any pretence whatever, in the delight of blaspheming and lying, and in the cravings of the love of self and of the world; for every one, who is in those evils, is in concert with devils who are in hell; the lord indeed loves them even there, but he cannot be conjoined with them, unless the delights of those evils be removed, and they cannot be removed by the lord, unless man explores himself, so as to know his own evils, acknowledging and confessing them before the lord, and being willing to desist from them, and thus doing the act of repentance; this man ought to do as from himself, because he is not sensible that he does any thing from the lord; and this has been given to man, because conjunction, in order to be conjunction, must be reciprocal, of man with the lord, and of the lord with man: so far therefore as evils with their delights are thus removed, so far the love of the lord enters, which, as was said, is universal towards all, and in such case man is withdrawn from hell, and brought into heaven. AR 937.

Verse 21. Let all flesh bless his holy name. For the signification of flesh, see Psalm 16:9, Exposition.

Verse 21. Holy name; see Psalm 79:9, Exposition.