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Psalm 115:15-17
New Catholic Bible
Psalm 115:15-17
New Catholic Bible
15 May you be blessed by the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
16 [a]The heavens belong to the Lord,
but he has given the earth to humanity.
17 It is not the dead who praise the Lord,
those who sink into silence.[b]
Footnotes
- Psalm 115:16 The psalmist concludes with a short hymn of praise. In so doing, he reminds his people that they have been given the earth to enjoy and care for, while praising the Lord.
- Psalm 115:17 The psalmist stresses that the dead cannot praise the Lord; for, according to the idea of the ancients, in the netherworld the souls of the dead had a kind of shadowy existence with no activity or lofty emotion and could not offer praise to God. Silence: a euphemism for the grave (see Ps 94:17; see also notes on Pss 6:6 and 30:2).
