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Psalms 103: What the Passage Says

50 claims across 22 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Psalms 103 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This psalm calls the singer's whole self to praise the LORD, and lists what God has done: forgiving sins, healing, rescuing life, and giving good things. It says the LORD is slow to anger, has not paid people back as their sins deserve, and shows compassion to those who fear him, knowing they are dust and short-lived as grass. It contrasts human frailty with the LORD's love, which lasts from everlasting to everlasting for those who fear him and keep his covenant. It ends by calling angels, heavenly armies, and everything God has made to praise him.

Claim by Claim

  1. 103:1
    • The speaker calls on his own soul to bless the LORD.
    • The speaker calls on all that is within him to bless the LORD's holy name.
  2. 103:2
    • The speaker calls on his own soul to bless the LORD.
    • The speaker charges his soul not to forget any of the LORD's benefits.
  3. 103:3
    • The LORD forgives all your iniquities.
    • The LORD heals all your diseases.
  4. 103:4
    • The LORD redeems your life from the pit of destruction.
    • The LORD crowns you with steadfast love and compassion.
  5. 103:5
    • The LORD satisfies with good things that which belongs to you; what is satisfied is uncertain in the source, and is rendered as your mouth.
    • Your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
  6. 103:6
    • The LORD performs acts of righteousness.
    • The LORD executes judgments for all who are oppressed.
  7. 103:7
    • The LORD made his ways known to Moses.
    • The LORD made his deeds known to the children of Israel.
  8. 103:8
    • The LORD is compassionate.
    • The LORD is gracious.
    • The LORD is slow to anger.
    • The LORD abounds in steadfast love.
  9. 103:9
    • The LORD will not contend forever.
    • The LORD will not keep his anger forever.
  10. 103:10
    • The LORD has not dealt with us according to our sins.
    • The LORD has not repaid us according to our iniquities.
  11. 103:11
    • The heavens are high above the earth.
    • The LORD's steadfast love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
  12. 103:12
    • The east is far from the west.
    • The LORD has removed our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west.
  13. 103:13
    • A father has pity on his children.
    • The LORD has pity on those who fear him as a father pities his children.
  14. 103:14
    • The LORD knows what we are made of.
    • The LORD remembers that we are dust.
  15. 103:15
    • A man's days are like grass.
    • A man blossoms like a flower of the field.
  16. 103:16
    • When the wind passes over the flower, the flower is gone.
    • The flower's place knows it no more.
  17. 103:17
    • The steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon those who fear him.
    • The LORD's righteousness is to their children's children.
  18. 103:18
    • This applies to those who keep the LORD's covenant.
    • This applies to those who remember his precepts to do them.
  19. 103:19
    • The LORD has established his throne in the heavens.
    • The LORD's kingdom rules over all.
  20. 103:20
    • The speaker calls on the LORD's angels to bless the LORD.
    • The angels are mighty in strength.
    • The angels carry out the LORD's word.
    • The angels listen to the voice of his word.
  21. 103:21
    • The speaker calls on all the LORD's hosts to bless the LORD.
    • The hosts are his ministers.
    • The ministers do the LORD's will.
  22. 103:22
    • The speaker calls on all the LORD's works to bless the LORD.
    • The LORD's works are in all the places of his dominion.
    • The speaker calls on his own soul to bless the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

103:1
"Bless" translates a Hebrew verb whose root sense is to kneel. Used of God toward people it means to give good things; used of people toward God, as here, it means to kneel in praise and thanks (not to confer anything on him. "Soul" here is the Hebrew *nephesh*, the whole living self) appetite, breath, life, not an immaterial part housed inside the body. The psalmist is talking to himself, rousing his entire being.
103:2
Where the King James has "benefits," the word in 1611 meant simply good things done for someone. It carries none of the modern sense of employment perks or state payments.
103:3
"Iniquities" is an old word for sins, the wrong things people do.
103:4
"Redeem" was a legal and family term: to buy a relative back out of slavery or debt, or to buy back property they had lost. The word assumes someone in trouble and a kinsman with the means and the obligation to pay. "Destruction" in the King James renders a Hebrew word for the pit (the grave, the hole in the ground and the shadowy realm of the dead. "Lovingkindness" is *hesed*, one of the key words of the Hebrew Bible: steady, loyal, committed love) the kind owed within a binding relationship rather than a passing feeling. It recurs in verses 8, 11 and 17.
103:5
Ancient writers observed that a bird of prey sheds and regrows its feathers and emerges sleek again, and that such birds live a very long time; the image is of vigor restored, not of any literal transformation. The Hebrew word (*nesher*) covers both the eagle and the griffon vulture.
103:6
"Righteousness and judgment" is a fixed Hebrew pair meaning something like justice properly done. It pictures a ruler or judge who hears the case of people with no power and rules in their favor, rather than an abstract moral quality.
103:7
Moses is the leader who, in the book of Exodus, brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and received the law at Mount Sinai. The line draws a distinction: Moses was shown God's *ways* (what he is like) while the nation saw his *acts*, the rescue itself.
103:8
These exact words quote the description God gives of himself to Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 34:6. The phrase became a standard formula, repeated across the Hebrew Bible, and an Israelite hearing verse 8 would recognize it as a quotation, which is why verse 7 has just named Moses. "Slow to anger" is literally "long of nostrils", anger was pictured as hot, flaring breath, so a long nose meant a long fuse.
103:9
"Chide" here is a courtroom word: to press charges, to keep prosecuting a case against someone. The image is of a legal action that is dropped rather than pursued indefinitely.
103:10
In 1611 "rewarded" just meant paid back. It could mean paying back something bad, and that is how it is used here.
103:11
To "fear" God in Hebrew usage means to hold him in awe and take him seriously, the attitude of someone standing before a king. It is closer to reverence than to terror, and it is used throughout this psalm as a simple description of the people who belong to him.
103:12
East and west are the two directions that never meet. Saying it this way meant as far apart as anything can possibly be.
103:13
The Hebrew verb translated "pitieth" comes from the same root as the word for a womb. It means a deep, physical, gut-level tenderness, the feeling a parent has for a small child, rather than pity in the modern sense of looking down on someone.
103:14
"Frame" means how we are formed, the stuff we are made of. "Dust" points back to the story in Genesis where the first human is shaped from the dust of the ground and told he will return to it. Calling people dust is a statement about being fragile and temporary, not about being worthless.
103:15
In the dry hill country of Israel, grass and wildflowers spring up fast after the winter rains and are burnt off within weeks. The comparison is to something that appears at full beauty and is gone within a season, which is why it is such a common image in Hebrew poetry for a human life.
103:16
"The place thereof shall know it no more" is a Hebrew idiom: the patch of ground where the flower stood shows no trace that anything ever grew there. It is about leaving no mark, not about the ground literally having knowledge.
103:17
"From everlasting to everlasting" translates a Hebrew phrase reaching from the most distant past anyone can imagine to the most distant future, the whole span of time, rather than a philosophical notion of eternity. "Righteousness" here, as in verse 6, means acting rightly by people: keeping faith with them and putting things right for them.
103:18
A covenant was a formal, binding agreement, like a treaty between a great king and a smaller nation, with sworn obligations on both sides. The covenant meant here is the one made at Mount Sinai, where Israel agreed to live by God's commands and he committed himself to them as their God.
103:19
This is the language of a royal court. A king's throne "established" meant his rule was secure and unchallenged; his "kingdom" meant the whole territory under his authority. The claim is that this throne is not in Jerusalem or any other capital but in heaven, and its territory has no edges.
103:20
The Hebrew word behind "angels" simply means messengers. Together with the "hosts" and "ministers" of the next verse they make up a royal household: strong officers who stand waiting, listening for the king's spoken order and then carrying it out.
103:21
"Hosts" means armies, the assembled ranks of heaven, pictured as the armed retinue of a king. "Ministers" in the King James means servants or court officials, not clergy; the word had no religious sense of its own.
103:22
"Dominion" means everywhere a ruler rules, all the land and people under his authority.

Read Psalms 103