Psalms 116:1
O praise the Lord, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people.
Open Psalms 116:1 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Alleluja. Laudate Dominum, omnes gentes ; laudate eum, omnes populi.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Ἁλληλουιά. Αἰνεῖτε τὸν κύριον, πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, αἰνεσάτωσαν αὐτὸν πάντες οἱ λαοί·
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 117:1
- הַֽלְל֣וּ אֶת יְ֭הוָה כָּל גּוֹיִ֑ם שַׁ֝בְּח֗וּהוּ כָּל הָאֻמִּֽים
Haydock's commentary
Alleluia. This word is found at the end of the last psalm, in Hebrew. (Haydock)
The captives invite all to thank God for their delivery, which was a most striking figure of the world's redemption, in which sense the apostle (Romans xv. 11.) quotes this psalm, with the holy Fathers, though Ven. Bede puts it in the mouth of Ezechias, after the retrogradation of the sun. Kimchi allows that it regards the times of the Messias. (Calmet)
Praise him. St. Paul reads, magnify him, as the Hebrew means, "extol" by your praises. (Berthier)
All are invited to praise, as the redemption is sufficient, (Worthington) and designed for all the posterity of Adam.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CXVII
1. “O praise the Lord, all ye heathen: praise Him, all ye nations” ( ver. 1 ). These are the courts of the Lord’s house, this all His people, this the true Jerusalem. Let those rather listen who have refused to be the children of this city, since they have cut themselves off from the communion of all nations. “For His merciful kindness is ever more and more towards us: and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever” ( ver. 2 ). These are those two things, loving-kindness and truth, which in the CXV th Psalm I admonished you should be committed to memory. But “the merciful kindness of the Lord is ever more and more towards us,” since the furious tongues of hostile nations have yielded to His Name, through which we have been freed: “and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever,” whether in those things which He promised to the righteous, or in those which He hath threatened to the ungodly.
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Homily XXVIII on Rom. xv. 8
Ver. 10-12 . “And, rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people. And, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles” ( Deut. xxxii. 43 ); “and let all people laud Him.” ( Ps. cxvii. 1 .) “And, There shall be a root of Jesse, and He that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, in Him shall the Gentiles trust.” ( Is. xi. 1, 10 .) Now all these quotations he has given to show that we ought to be united, and to glorify God; and also, to humble the Jew, that he may not lift himself up over these, since all the prophets called these, as well as to persuade the man of the Gentiles to be lowly, by showing him that he had a larger grace to answer for. Then he concludes his argument with a prayer again.
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).