Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 145:14
The LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all [those that be] bowed down.
14. all that fall ] Or, all that are falling. But cp. Psa 37:17; Psa 37:24.
raiseth up ] An Aramaic word, found in the Heb. of the O.T. only here and in Psa 146:8.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The Lord upholdeth all that fall – The word used here is a participle, literally, The Lord sustaining; that is, the Lord is a Sustainer or Upholder of all that fall. The allusion is to those who have no power to go of themselves; who would sink under the burdens of life if they were not supported. The idea is, that it is a characteristic of the Lord, that he does sustain such; that all such may confidently look to him to uphold them.
And raiseth up all those that be bowed down – The word here also is a participle: he is lifting up; that is, he is a lifter up. The reference is to those who are bent and bowed under the duties, the cares, the trials of life; who go bowed down under those burdens. God is able to strengthen them so that they can bear those burdens without being crushed under them.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 145:14
The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down.
The God of the unsuccessful
The Bible, being a book for humanity, is a book for the weak, the fallible, and the disappointed. A large part of it is devoted to the erring and the unsuccessful. Take its biographies. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, Job–every one of these biographies is the story of a faultful man. Then, so much of its counsel and warning is directed at servants of God and disciples of Christ. Not only guide-posts, but-danger-signals, are set up all along the way of life. It was to His own disciples that Christ said, Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. By far the larger part of its promises is to the sorrowful, and afflicted, and disappointed. When Christ invited the weary and heavy-laden to rest, He invited a restless and burdened world. When the Bible addresses the strong, it is to point them to the true source of their strength, to warn them against presuming on their own wisdom, and to commend the weak to their sympathy and helpfulness. The whole matter is summed up in the psalmists statement of Gods attitude toward His children at large. It is that of pity based on knowledge of their infirmity. I speak, as the psalmist does, of men and to men who recognize and honour the law of God, and are honestly striving to keep His laws. The words do not apply to the indolent who interpret the invitation to east their care on God as a permit to cast off all care about their own souls and lives. They do not apply to those who are indifferent to God and who wilfully defy His law. The psalmist settles that in verse 20. I am speaking, then, to you who honour God; who are making an honest fight for the truth and the right; who are trying to keep your lives pure and to make them useful. I know that you fall as I do, and are often bowed down. I know that you are not all successes, either from a worldly or a religious point of view. Now, first, in relation to your worldly affairs. You have stumbled and fallen in the path which you thought would lead you to success and victory. Well, look at the text. O merciful, wise, tender love, which, even while it denies what we long for, bends over us while we lie prone and weeping over our disappointment, and sets us on our feet again and bids us follow God and not the devices and desires of our own hearts. He may thus set us on our feet that we may walk another way from that on which we were going. The fall may be a blessing in disguise, a monition to abandon that way. Many a man has found that to give up the thing he desired and take something less and lower was not a sorrow after all. Or, suppose God means to admonish you by your fall to go more slowly after your desire. He that believeth shall not make haste. God will not let us pursue one remote end to the neglect of all that lies by the wayside. Success in life is not the gaining of that one end at the end. It is the right adjustment to all that lies in the track of each day. So God lets you walk, upholds you, teaches you to walk. He is doing you a greater service by upholding you, so that you can move on and win the strength, and discipline, and experience which come through walking circumspectly, than if lie had let you go straight to the thing you coveted and sit down and enjoy that. Disappointment need not mean wreck. It will not if God is in it. Sometimes it seems as if Gods policy toward a man is to keep him down, and yet keep him walking and working. That develops the highest type of moral heroism. It is a higher and greater thing for an unsuccessful and disappointed man to keep rising from his failures and to struggle on his way leaning on Gods hand to the very end, than for him to succeed before the world. God has a testimony to bear to the world through His sons and daughters no less than to them; and He bears that testimony most emphatically in showing the world that His hand can keep a man a man, with an honest soul and a persistent purpose in him, amid all his falls and disappointments. And as to the matter of Christian experience and the falls and stumblings which are along that line–I know that the ideal which at once beckons and reproaches us is that of a steady growth in faith, and love, and goodness, and Christian power. It is the true ideal too. Let us never lower it: never cease striving for it. Let us never admit to ourselves that yielding to temptation is anything less than sin: that sin is other than vile. Tried by the high ideal of the Gospel you are not a religious success, only trying hard to be. That is the saving clause. God is on the side of the unsuccessful but honestly-striving. You find in yourself a constant tendency to stumble. If Satan desires to sift you as wheat, Christ prays for you. He is bent, not on raising up you and your sin together, but on raising you out of your sin and making you a man in Christ Jesus in spite of your temptation and weakness. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.)
Recuperative grace
An Eastern parable represents a man as falling down by the way, and getting so broken up by his fall that he lay there eleven years. One day an old friend came along and began to commiserate and encourage him, and forthwith he poured out the story of his sorrows, and began to tell the ether what a dreadful thing it was to fall down. Ah, yes, said the friend, but I know something much worse than falling down. Why, said he, what can be worse? And the other answered, Not getting up again. Thank God for recuperative grace! When we were boys, at our wrestling matches we were not considered down until we said Down, and some of us refused to stay down long enough to count. Beloved, dont make the mistake of not getting up again. Be brave in spite even of yourself and your own failures and weaknesses. Remember that the Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up those that be bowed down.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 14. The Lord upholdeth all that fall] nophelim, the falling, or those who are not able to keep their feet; the weak. He shores them up; he is their prop. No man falls through his own weakness merely; if he rely on God, the strongest foe cannot shake him.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Upholdeth all; either,
1. All that look up to him for help: or,
2. All that are upheld; whose support is not from themselves, nor from other men, but only from Gods powerful and good providence.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
14. (Compare Psa 37:17;Psa 54:4).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The Lord upholdeth all that fall,…. Not all that fell in Adam, as all mankind did; nor all that fall into sin, as every man does; and therefore not those that fall into hell: but this is to be understood of the subjects of Christ’s kingdom, of which the psalmist is speaking; who does that which no mortal king can do, as Aben Ezra observes: another king raises up one, and depresses another; supports one, and lets another fall: but the Lord upholds all his people and subjects with the right hand of his righteousness; though they are liable to fall into sin, and in many instances do fall, and into various temptations and afflictions; yet he sustains and upholds them, that they shall not fall finally and totally by sin, nor be overwhelmed and crushed by their heavy afflictions. Or, “all that are falling” g; he either upholds and keeps them that they shall not fall, at least so as to perish; or he holds them by his right hand when they are fallen, and raises them up again; and bears them up under all their exercises, so that they are not utterly cast down and destroyed, Ps 37:24;
and raiseth up all [those that be] bowed down: with a body of sin, under which they groan, being burdened, and which presses them sore; with Satan’s temptations, like the woman in the Gospel, bound together by him; and with various troubles and afflictions; but the Lord raises and bears them up under all, and comforts and refreshes them.
g “emnes cadentes”, Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, &c.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The poet now celebrates in detail the deeds of the gracious King. The words with are pure datives, cf. the accusative expression in Psa 146:8. He in person is the support which holds fast the falling ones ( , here not the fallen ones, see Psa 28:1) in the midst of falling (Nicephorus: , ), and the stay by which those who are bowed together raise themselves. He is the Provider for all beings, the Father of the house, to whom in the great house of the world the eyes ( with the second e toneless, Ew. 100, b) of all beings, endowed with reason and irrational, are directed with calm confidence (Mat 6:26), and who gives them their food in its, i.e., in due season. The language of Psa 104:27 is very similar, and it proceeds here, too, as there in Psa 104:28 (cf. Sir. 40:14). He opens His hand, which is ever full, much as a man who feeds the doves in his court does, and gives , pleasure, i.e., that which is good, which is the fulfilling of their desire, in sufficient fulness to all living things (and therefore those in need of support for the body and the life). Thus it is to be interpreted, according to Deu 33:23 (after which here in the lxx the reading varies between and ), cf. Act 14:17, . is construed with a dative and accusative of the object instead of with two accusatives of the object (Ges. 139. 1, 2). The usage of the language is unacquainted with as an adverb in the sense of “willingly” (Hitzig), which would rather be . In all the ways that Jahve takes in His historical rule He is “righteous,” i.e., He keeps strictly to the rule (norm) of His holy love; and in all His works which He accomplishes in the course of history He is merciful ( ), i.e., He practises mercy ( , see Psa 12:2); for during the present time of mercy the primary essence of His active manifestation is free preventing mercy, condescending love. True, He remains at a distance from the hypocrites, just as their heart remains far from Him (Isa 29:13); but as for the rest, with impartial equality He is nigh ( as in Psa 34:19) to all who call upon Him , in firmness, certainty, truth, i.e., so that the prayer comes from their heart and is holy fervour (cf. Isa 10:20; Isa 48:1). What is meant is true and real prayer in opposition to the , as is also meant in the main in Joh 4:23. To such true praying ones Jahve is present, viz., in mercy (for in respect of His power He is everywhere); He makes the desire of those who fear Him a reality, their will being also His; and He grants them the salvation ( ) prayed for. Those who are called in Psa 145:19 those who fear Him, are called in Psa 145:20 those who love Him. Fear and love of God belong inseparably together; for fear without love is an unfree, servile disposition, and love without fear, bold-faced familiarity: the one dishonours the all-gracious One, and the other the all-exalted One. But all who love and fear Him He preserves, and on the other hand exterminates all wanton sinners. Having reached the Tav, the hymn of praise, which has traversed all the elements of the language, is at an end. The poet does not, however, close without saying that praising God shall be his everlasting employment ( with Olewejored, the Mahpach or rather Jethib sign of which above represents the Makkeph ), and without wishing that all flesh, i.e., all men, who , , may bless God’s holy Name to all eternity. The realization of this wish is the final goal of history. It will then have reached Deu 32:43 of the great song in Deut. 32 – Jahve one and His Name one (Zec 14:9), Israel praising God , and the Gentiles (Rom 15:8.).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
14. Jehovah upholding all the falling. He gives instances of the goodness and mercy of God, such as make it evident that God reigns only for the promotion of the general welfare of mankind. By the falling, and those who are bowed down, he means figuratively those who are overwhelmed by adversity, and would sink at once, were not God to extend his hand for their support. God, in short, has respect to the troubles of men, and helps such as are in distress, so that all ought not only to look upon his divine government with reverence, but willingly and cordially submit themselves to it. Another lesson taught us is, that none will be disappointed who seeks comfort from God in his affliction.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(14) The Lord.Comp. Psa. 37:24. It marks a grand step in theology when the first instance of majesty of the Divine Being is sought in His condescension to human weakness and pity for frailty and want. The heathen had seen that this was king-like
Regia (crede mihi) res est succurrere lapsis.
OVID: Ep. de Ponto 11., 9, 11.
But they had hardly seen that it was also god-like.
For raiseth and bowed down, see Psa. 146:8.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 145:14. Between this and the 13th verse is omitted the verse beginning with nun, in the Hebrew; but as the LXX. and some other translations have it, it is easily supplied: neeman Jehovah, &c. The Lord is faithful in his words, and holy in all his works.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 145:14 The LORD upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all [those that be] bowed down.
Ver. 14. The Lord upholdeth all that fall ] None of his subjects can fall below his helping hand, his sweet support.
And raiseth up all those that are bowed down
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 145:14-16
14The Lord sustains all who fall
And raises up all who are bowed down.
15The eyes of all look to You,
And You give them their food in due time.
16You open Your hand
And satisfy the desire of every living thing.
Psa 145:14 The Lord sustains all who fall Psa 145:14-16 speaks of God providing faithful followers’ physical needs, while Psa 145:17-21 speaks of God providing for their spiritual needs. Notice the repetitive use of the term all.
Psa 145:15 The eyes of all look to You These verses state that God provides food for all of His creatures, cf. Psa 104:27-28; Psa 136:25.
Psa 145:16 This is the concept of Providence. God creates and sustains this planet and all its life forms. This action in the OT is attributed to Elohim (see Special Topic: Names for Deity ).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
fall = are ready to fall.
raiseth up. Occurs only here and Psa 146:8.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
upholdeth: Psa 37:24, Psa 94:18, Psa 119:117, Luk 22:31, Luk 22:32
raiseth up: Psa 38:6, Psa 42:5, Psa 146:8, Luk 13:11-13
Reciprocal: Job 4:4 – upholden Psa 37:17 – Lord Psa 56:13 – wilt Psa 147:6 – lifteth up Isa 41:10 – I will uphold
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 145:14-16. The Lord upholdeth all that fall All that look to him for help; indeed all that are upheld, whose support is not from themselves, or from men, but only from Gods powerful providence and grace. The eyes of all Of all living creatures; wait upon thee Expect their supplies wholly from thy bounty. Expectation is here figuratively ascribed to brute creatures, as Psa 104:27, on which see note, and Rom 8:22. And givest them their meat in due season When they need it. What a just and beautiful picture, says Dr. Horne, is here presented to view! We see the whole animal world assembled before us, with their eyes fixed on the great King and Father of all things, like those of a flock on their shepherd, when he enters the field in time of dearth with provender for them. From the same divine person, as the Saviour of men, as the King, Father, and Pastor of the church, do believers, with earnest expectation, wait for the food of eternal life. And neither one nor the other look and wait in vain. To both he giveth their meat in due season; he openeth his hand and satisfieth the desire of every living thing.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
145:14 The LORD upholdeth all that {h} fall, and raiseth up all [those that be] bowed down.
(h) Who being in misery and affliction would faint and fall away if God did not uphold them, and therefore they should revere him who reigns in heaven and suffer themselves to be governed by him.