Psalms 145:1

my God, O king Or, my God the King. He Who is Israel's God is the absolute, universal King. The phrase has a larger meaning than that of Psalms 5:2, my King and my God.

for ever and ever Israel is probably the speaker; and Israel as the people of God is immortal (Habakkuk 1:12). Generation after generation (Psalms 145:4) will take up the unending chorus of praise. If it is an individual who speaks, we must suppose, with Delitzsch, that in his devotion to the eternal King he forgets his own mortality. For it is at least doubtful if, even late in the post-exilic period, the doctrine of a personal immortality of conscious and active blessedness was so clearly developed that the words could have been used originally in the sense in which the Christian uses them now. But, as Del. rightly remarks, the divinely implanted impulse of the soul to find its highest delight in the praise of its Creator is in itself a practical argument for a life after death.