1Hallelujah! How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and lovely to praise Him!
2The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the exiles of Israel.
3He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
He Heals the Brokenhearted
Hallelujah! How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and lovely to praise Him! Psalm 147:1 · Berean Standard Bible
The psalmist opens with an invitation to celebrate God through singing, declaring that praising Him is genuinely good and brings joy to our hearts.
This is likely written after the exile when God's people were beginning to return and rebuild. The community needed reminding that worship itself—the act of praising God together—was restorative and life-giving after such devastation.
The psalmist, probably speaking as a worship leader or spiritual guide to the community of returning exiles.
This connects to the larger biblical narrative of God always calling His people back to worship Him, not as obligation but as genuine delight. Even in difficulty, praise realigns us with what's true about God.
The psalm opens with an exuberant call to praise, declaring that singing praises to God is inherently good and brings delight to the worshiper.
This opening functions as a summons to the community—likely post-exilic Israel reconstituting itself around renewed temple worship. The Hebrew *tov* (good) carries both aesthetic and moral weight; praise isn't merely pleasant sentiment but aligns the worshiper with cosmic order. The doubled emphasis on goodness and loveliness (*na'im*, literally 'fitting' or 'seemly') suggests a liturgical setting where communal song restores social and spiritual coherence.
A psalmist or liturgical leader addressing the assembled congregation, invoking them to participatory worship.
This inaugurates a theology of praise as restorative practice—the antidote to exile's silence and despair. It echoes the recovery of voice promised in Isaiah 52:9, where Jerusalem's ruins break forth in song.
1Hallelujah! How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and lovely to praise Him!
2The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the exiles of Israel.
3He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Read all of Psalm 147 — God counts the stars and calls them each by name — and also binds up the wounds of the brokenhearted. Both. At the same time.
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