¹I will extol You, my God, O King, and I will bless Your name forever and ever. ²Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever.

David overflows with lofty, unadulterated, and unqualified adulation for the Lord, not so much for what He has done but because of who He is. This is a psalm of pure praise. The twenty-one verses that comprise this psalm are saturated with praise—the word itself is used five times. He does not perform his praise as a ritual, hoping to get some sort of blessing from God, but speaks of his praise being a blessing forGod. He also does not bring his good deeds or faithfulness as an offering to prompt God for anything. He is spurred on because the Lord and His actions are great, majestic, awesome, wonderful, abundantly good, righteous, glorious, powerful, and holy. David highlights (vss. 8, 9) a subset of the Lord’s attributes: He is gracious, merciful, slow to get angry, great in lovingkindness, and good. These attributes cause David to give himself wholeheartedly to praising the Lord. The Lord God alone is worthy, and nothing we can do as mere humans can compare to Him; we can do no better than to praise and worship Him.

To the superficial or skeptical individual, this psalm may come across like a word salad, containing an abundance of pious-sounding words lacking practical value. However, for those who “Call upon Him in truth” (vs. 18) and “who fear Him” (vs. 19), these words of praise resonate deeply in their souls. They are assured that the Lord will fulfill their hearts’ desires, so they need not always go before Him with their needs (see Ps. 37:4).

This exuberant psalm follows a simple pattern. It begins and ends with David’s first-person declaration that he will praise God (vss. 1-2, 21). He “extols” the Lord (vs. 1); the word carries a sense of lifting or raising up. In another psalm, David explains that the Lord is “enthroned on the praises of Israel (Psalm 22:3).” This phrase pictures prayer as lifting the Lord higher in the view of His people. David extols the Lord and raises Him up in praise to be seen for how great He is!

This psalm is very personal; David prays to “my God” (Heb: elohim). As the psalm continues, he refers to God by his personal name, Yahweh (“Lord”). David recognizes God as his sovereign (“king”) and writes of His glorious majesty and reign which will last forever (vs. 12b). He is not a territorial god like the pagans worship; Yahweh is the one who sustains all living things (vs. 16). Yet, to each of us who trusts in Him, we can also say with David, “He is my God and my King.”

David’s prayer is not fair-weather praise based on circumstances but is rooted in who God is, that is, in His character, independent of circumstances. David can say, “Every day I will bless You, and I will praise Your name forever and ever” (vs. 2). Indeed, God is abundantly blessed to see His believers praising Him in advance of and apart from any answer to their needs.

David, a wonderful example of godliness, desires that the praise God receives will extend beyond himself to succeeding generations: “One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts” (vs. 4). How we need that today – faithful believers who pass on the legacy of praise to their children. David, for himself, wants to go deeper by meditating on “the glorious splendor” and “wonderful works” of the Lord (vs. 5). There is a depth of knowing God that can only come from pondering and ruminating on what one knows of the Lord. David uses exuberant language as he anticipates that others will also praise the Lord for who He is and what He does (vss. 6-7).

Throughout this psalm, David toggles between talking to the Lord and talking about the Lord. He proclaims in a concise and memorable way to all who will listen:

The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His work. (vss. 8-9)

How can we not join him in praising the Lord?!

David’s psalm is poetic and expansive: he uses an anthropomorphism (attributing human characteristics to objects or phenomena) to declare that the very works of God will give “thanks” (vs. 10, see also Ps. 18:1, 103:22). Some translations render the Hebrew word for “thanks” as “bless.” Both are valid translations, for the two concepts are closely connected—thanking God is a form of blessing Him. In fact, God’s works speak volumes about Him and will continue to do so into the future (vss. 11-12), for His kingdom and sovereignty are not limited to our time frame but will last forever (vss. 11-13).

Although we are created in God’s image, we find we cannot praise God in a complete vacuum, divorced from our own circumstances. Though David exemplifies for us the highest form of praise, centered on the Lord simply because of who He is, he also demonstrates that, as created beings, we are derivative and dependent: we praise Him for all that He does for us. In verses 14-20, David explains that we can only praise and bless the Lord because He has blessed and continues to bless us. This reminds us of what the apostle John wrote: “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19). He sustains us, gives us our food, and satisfies us. He is righteous towards us, near to us, fulfills our desire, hears us when we plead with Him, and above all else, saves and preserves us. These are the blessings that all who trust in Him experience. Thus, David leads us in a final word of praise in verse 21:

“My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless His holy name forever and ever.”