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Save thy people - Continue to preserve them from all their enemies; from idolatry, and from sin of every kind.
Bless thine inheritance - They have taken thee for their God; thou hast taken them for thy people.
Feed them - רעה raah signifies both to feed and to govern. Feed them, as a shepherd does his flock; rule them, as a father does his children.
Lift them up for ever - Maintain thy true Church; let no enemy prevail against it. Preserve and magnify them for ever. Lift them up: as hell is the bottomless pit in which damned spirits sink down for ever; or, as Chaucer says downe all downe; so heaven is an endless height of glory, in which there is an eternal rising or exaltation. Down, all down; up, all up; for ever and ever.
Save thy people - All thy people. The psalm appropriately closes with a prayer for all the people of God. The prayer is offered in view of the deliverance which the psalmist had himself experienced, and he prays that all the people of God might experience similar deliverance and mercy.
And bless thine inheritance - Thy heritage; Thy people. The Hebrew word properly means “taking possession of anything; occupation.” Then it comes to mean “possession; domain; estate:” Num, Psalm 18:21. Thus it is used as applied to the territory assigned to each tribe in the promised land: Joshua 13:23. Thus also it is applied to the people of Israel - the Jewish nation - as the “possession” or “property” of Yahweh; as a people whom he regarded as His own, and whom, as such, He protected: Deuteronomy 4:20; Deuteronomy 9:26, Deuteronomy 9:29. In this place the people of God are thus spoken of as His special possession or property on earth; as that which He regards as of most value to Him; as that which belongs to Him, or to which He has a claim; as that which cannot without injustice to Him be alienated from Him.
Feed them also - Margin, “rule.” The Hebrew word refers to the care which a shepherd extends over his flock. See Psalm 23:1, where the same word, under another form - “shepherd” - is used. The prayer is, that God would take the same care of His people that a shepherd takes of his flock.
And lift them up for ever - The word used here may mean “sustain” them, or “support” them; but it more properly means “bear,” and would be best expressed by a reference to the fact that the shepherd carries the feeble, the young, and the sickly of his flock in his arms, or that he lifts them up when unable themselves to rise. See Isaiah 40:11, note; Isaiah 63:9, note. The word “forever” here means simply “always” - in all circumstances; at all times. In other words, the psalmist prays that God would “always” manifest Himself as the Friend and Helper of His people, as He had done to him. It may be added here, that what the psalmist thus prays for God‘s “will” to be done. God “will” save His people; He will bless His heritage; He will be to them a kind and faithful shepherd; He will sustain, comfort, uphold, and cherish them always - in affliction; in temptation; in death, forever. They have only to trust in Him, and they will find Him to be more kind and faithful than the most tender shepherd ever was to his flock.