For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. For the Lord is good - Goodness the perfect, eternal opposition to all badness and evil, is essential to God. Mercy and compassion are modifications of his goodness; and as his nature is eternal, so his mercy, springing from his goodness, must be everlasting. And as Truth is an essential characteristic of an infinitely intelligent and perfect nature; therefore God's truth must endure from generation to generation. Whatsoever he has promised must be fulfilled, through all the successive generations of men, as long as sun and moon shall last.
As this is a very important Psalm, and has long made a part of our public worship, I shall lay it before the reader in the oldest vernacular Versions I have hitherto met with, - the Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Scottish, with a literal interlineary translation of the former.
The Anglo-Saxon Hundredth Psalm
Rhyme ye the Lord all earth, serve the Lord in bliss;
Infare in sight his in blithness;
Wit ye, for that Lord he is God, he did us & not self we;
Folk his & sheep leeseway his; fare into gates his in confession, into courts is in hymns confess him.
Praise name his, for that winsom is; Lord thro' eternity mildheartedness his, & unto on kindred & kindred sothfastnes his
The reader will see that, in order to make this translation as literal as possible, I have preserved some old English words which we had from the Anglo-Saxon, and which have nearly become obsolete: e.g., Infare, "to go in;" blithness, "joy, exultation;" twit ye, "know ye;" did, the preterite of to do, "made, created," the literal translation of the Hebrew, עשה asah, he made; leeseway, "pasturage on a common;" winsom, "cheerful, merry;" mildheartedness, "tenderness of heart, compassion;" sothfastness, "steady to the sooth or truth, fast to truth." I might have noticed some various readings in Anglo-Saxon MSS.; e.g., Psalms 100:1 for idrymeth, "rhyme ye;" winsumiath, "be winsom, be joyful." And Psalms 100:5, for winsom, "cheerful;" swete, "sweet."
Anglo-Scottish Version of the Hundredth Psalm
1. Joyes to God al the erth; serves to Lord in gladnes.
2. Enters in his sight with joying.
3. Wittes for Lorde he is God; he made us and noght we;
4. Folke of hym, and schepe of his pasture; enters the gates of hym in schrift; hys Halles in ympnys; schryves to hym.
5. Loues his name, for soft is Lorde; withouten end in his mercy; and in generation and generation the sothfastnes of hym.
Thus our forefathers said and sung in heart and mouth and with their tongues made confession to salvation. There are but few words here which require explanation: Psalms 100:3, Wittes, "wot ye, know ye." Psalms 100:4, Schrift, "confession;" schryves, "confess ye." Verse 6, Loues, "praise ye, laud ye." Sothfastness, as above, steadfastness in the truth.
Commentary on the Bible, by Adam Clarke [1831].