Commentaire de citation sur Les Psaumes 106:2

נורא תהלות, “awesome in splendour.” All G’d’s creatures are afraid to proclaim His praises as they are afraid to do so inadequately. David echoed this sentiment in Psalms 65,2 when he said לך דומיה תהלה, “vis-a-vis You o G’d silence is the essence of praise.” This is so because who can be arrogant enough to presume to praise the Lord adequately?
Praise may be offered in one of three ways. 1) Excessive praise. Exaggeration demeans. 2) adequate praise. 3) inadequate praise; this reveals lack of perception by the one who offers the praise. When applied to G’d, the first two ways amount to a lie when applied to someone praising the Lord. This leaves only the third possibility of praising the Lord inadequately. Seeing this is so David explains that silence is best. We have a similar though differently worded statement by David in 106,2: “who can tell the mighty acts of the Lord?” A third statement in Scripture making a similar point is found in Nechemyah 9,5: “exalted though it is (His glorious name) beyond every blessing and praise.” Jerusalem Talmud Berachot at the beginning of chapter 9 writes לך דומיה תהלה סמא דכולא משתוקא, “as to You, silence is praise, seeing that in the final analysis there is only silence.” Just as if one praises the beauty of an exquisite pearl one invariably fails to do justice to its beauty, so when attempting to praise the Lord one invariably will fall short of one’s objective.

I will exult in Thy deliverance: – i.e. the deliverance which Thou shalt effect for me from every single enemy I have. And he says in the gates of (in the same sense as in the verse) “to the gate unto the elders” (Deut. 25:7); and the word תְּהִלָּתֶיךָ is written with yodh (in the suffix), for he intends to speak of many praises. It lacks the complete sign of the plural feminine, having the plural masculine suffix termination only. And similar examples are: “I am wearied in the multitude of thy counsels” (עֲצָתָיִךְ, Is. 47:13); “And thy sisters (וַאֲחוֹתַיִךְ, Ezek. 16:55), Sodom and her daughters” (see the interpretation our rabbi (ad loc.) gives). And in that he says here all Thy praises; and in another place (Ps. 106:2) asks, “Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord?” David says, I will shew forth all Thy praises. In spite of all the troubles which came upon him, he gave praise and (made) confession to God, who delivered him from the enemies; but when he comes to narrate the wondrous signs He had given Israel generation after generation, he asks, “Who can make known all His praise?” And so the individual alone is not able to tell the wondrous signs of goodness and mercy which the Holy One – Blessed be He! – worketh for him, as he says (ibid. 40:6), “If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.” For sometimes God – Blessed be He! – does a wondrous sign for a man who is unaware of it until later when he reflects upon it. And so our rabbis of blessed memory have said (Babli, Niddah 31a), “Even he to whom the wondrous sign happens does not recognise it.” And when David says all Thy praises, he speaks of the wondrous signs which He had wrought for him which were evident and known to all in the war with the enemies.