Psalm 146 Mar. 21  1Praise Yah! Praise Yahweh, my soul. 2While I live, I will praise Yahweh. I will sing praises to my God as long as I exist. 3Don’t put your trust in princes, each merely a son of man in whom there is no help. 4His spirit departs, and he returns to the dust. In that very day, his thoughts perish. 5Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in Yahweh his God: 6who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps truth forever; 7who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. Yahweh frees the prisoners, 8Yahweh opens the eyes of the blind, Yahweh raises up those who are bowed down, Yahweh loves the righteous. 9Yahweh preserves the strangers, He upholds the fatherless and widow, but the way of the wicked He turns upside down. 10Yahweh will reign forever; your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise Yah!    

Commentary

146:4 This clearly teaches that death is unconsciousness; we have no ‘immortal soul’ which consciously exists after death. The allusion is to how God made man from the dust and put into him the breath or spirit of life (Gen. 2:7). When we die, this spirit or life force returns to God, and we return to dust. The practical implication of correctly understanding human mortality is that we won’t trust in people, but rather in God; for we will realize their weakness and ultimate inability to save.