And I will praise thee continually all the days of my life: This line is part of the previous sentence, and may easily be connected to it saying “and I will praise you as long as I live.” Or it may be translated as a separate sentence, as in Good News Translation. A slight problem may lurk in Good News Translation‘s use of “go on praising” to express the idea of praise … continually. It may suggest that the speaker has been praising God in the past, and will go on doing so. He has not been doing this in the past; he has been too busy committing wicked acts. He can only start praising God when he has assurance of forgiveness. It may then be a shade safer to say “and I will constantly praise you as long as I live” or “Then I will praise you every hour of every day” (Contemporary English Version).

For all the host of heaven sings thy praise: Now the speaker has returned to the point where he started, with God as the God of the universe. All the host of heaven could refer to the stars (Psa 33.6; Dan 8.10) or to angels (1 Kgs 22.19), if the author even made a distinction. Good News Translation‘s translation “All the heavenly powers” allows for either. Technically Good News Translation is even a bit more literal than Revised Standard Version here. The text reads “all the power of heaven”; this is not the expression used for the heavenly host of Luke 2.13. Sings thy praise will need to be expressed in some languages as “sing praises to you” or even “sing songs telling you how great you are.”

And thine is the glory for ever: The prayer ends with a short doxology, an ascription of glory (compare 1 Chr 29.11). This form is of course reminiscent of the doxology to the Lord’s Prayer found in late manuscripts of Matt 6.13. Glory here refers to “honor” that God receives. So we may also express this clause as “And you will be honored forever” (Contemporary English Version). In languages that do not have the passive voice, we may say “and they [the heavenly powers] will honor you forever.”

Amen is an expression of affirmation used in closing prayers.

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see