Praising and blessing.
Matthew Henry indicates the distinction between these terms, and the appropriateness with which each is used. "All God's works shall praise him. They all minister to us matter for praise, and so praise him according to their capacity; even those that refuse to give him honor he will get himself honor upon. But his saints (beloved ones) do bless him, not only as they have peculiar blessings from him, which other creatures have not, but as they praise him actively, while his other works praise him only objectively. They bless him, for they collect the rent or tribute of praise from the inferior creatures, and pay it into the treasury above. All God's works do praise him, as the beautiful building praises the builder, or the well-drawn picture praises the artist; but the saints bless him as the children of prudent tender parents rise up and call them blessed. Of all God's works, his saints, the workmanship of his grace, the firstfruits of his creatures, have most reason to bless him."
I. PRAISING IS COMMON TO ALL BEING. Because all being is creation, and has its satisfaction in being what it was designed to be, and doing what it was designed to do. We must distinguish between what creation does, and what the poetic and the pious soul thinks of creation as doing. It is true that (perhaps) everything, animate and inanimate, has in it the capacity of sound; and its sound may be its voice of praise. But the praise is what man hears in his soul. It is the voice of nature translated by man. So marvelous, so perfect, and so mutually adapted, are all the creations of God, that every existing thing can be conceived of as praising God for its very being, because it finds pleasure in being.
II. BLESSING IS SPECIAL TO MAN. Because it indicates the intellectual apprehensions, and the heart-feelings, of a living moral being; one who can reason, feel, and bear relations. To bless a person is to recognize gratefully something which that person has done for us, and done as a sign of his love to us. And it is thus that we bless God. It is our recognition not of common good, but of special interventions, arrangements, and adaptations for us; and these as signs and proofs of his gracious and loving personal feeling toward us.—R.T.