Psalms 147:1-3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Praise the Lord, for it is good It is acceptable to God, and greatly beneficial and productive of comfort to ourselves. It is pleasant, and praise is comely “Being the only return man can make for his creation and redemption, and all other mercies; the offspring of gratitude, and the expression of love; the elevation of the soul, and the ante-past of heaven; its own reward in this life, and an introduction to the felicities of the next.” Horne. The Lord doth build up Jerusalem It is the Lord's own doing, and not man's. He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel Hebrew, נדחי, the banished, or expelled, who had been carried captives out of their own land, and dispersed in divers strange countries. He healeth the broken in heart Those whose hearts were broken, either with a sense of their sins, or with their afflictions, calamities, and sorrows. He seems to speak peculiarly of the captive Israelites now returned.