Psalm 103:1–5
1 Praise the LORD, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the LORD, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
As we saw yesterday the first part of the psalm focuses on the hesed of God as seen in the context of the individual psalmist. David addresses God's covenant faithfulness and unfailing love through the lens of praise. The word used for praise here is not the most common word (halel), instead it is the word barak. Because of this some translations prefer to translate this "bless". The connotation is to declare God as the source of the special power. When God is the subject (here He is the object) of the verb it means that God endows someone or something with special power. So here the psalmist is praising God by recognizing him to be the source of blessing and special power.
In verses 3-5 the psalmist teases out the benefits the LORD gives him. The psalmist states it in the negative "forget not all his benefits" but the idea is that if we don't praise him for his benefits we are prone to forget them. Note the verbs—God forgives, heals, redeems, crowns and satisfies. These are all rich theological words expressing actions that demonstrate God's hesed towards us as individuals. God's hesed as we will see here is not solely a feeling. It is a feeling seen and demonstrated only by the actions that it produces.
The "your" in these verses is in the feminine singular which means it is referring back to "soul". So the psalmist here is having a conversation with his soul, his inmost being. If you talk to yourself a lot, you're in good company :).
For the sake of time we won't go through all of the verbs here, just the ones that we may be prone to misunderstand. "Redeems your life from the pit" doesn't mean "redeems you out of hell in the afterlife" but simply "redeems you from death". Also, "redeem" is a term that carries a lot of modern, theological implications with it that likely are not present in how the psalmist uses it here. Likely here he is referring to the ancient Jewish cultural tradition of redemption. Ruth and Boaz is an example of this. If someone falls on hard times their close family members are expected to redeem them and lift them up out of trouble. So here it simply means that God is able to redeem and rescue you from many sources of trouble. (For some examples of redemption scenarios see: Ruth 3:9-13; Lev. 25:25-33; 25:47-55)
"Crowns" is obviously a royal term. The image here is of God honoring the psalmist's soul with gifts of love and compassion, like a king is crowned with honor, prestige and power. The love (hesed) and compassion (raham) are aspects of God's character that he gives to his people. (More on this tomorrow: see v. 8 cf. Ex. 34:6)
The word "satisfies" in v. 5 carries the connotation of being filled up. So God fills up our empty desires with good things. God does this, the psalmist says, so that his soul's youth is renewed like the eagle's. He is filled with good things from God so that his soul is swiftly restored to it's power and vitality that it was created to have.
That's a lot to unpack, but when we read this Psalm with all this in mind it comes alive with more beautiful imagery and applicative power.