Psalm 106:5

Psalm 106 closes the fourth book of the Psalms, and it stands beside Psalm 105. Psalm 105 tells how faithfully God kept his covenant promises to his people. Psalm 106 tells the same history from the other side: Israel’s disobedience, rebellion and idolatry from the Exodus, through the wilderness and into the land, until the people were scattered among the nations. Psalm 107 opens with the same call to give thanks, so the three psalms read together as one long look at Israel’s life with God.

Psalm 106 was probably written during or after the exile in Babylon, since it ends with the prayer, “Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise” (Psalm 106:47). Its first hearers were people who had felt God’s judgment and were asking him to restore them. Its recital of the past was meant to instruct them, to remind them of his faithfulness through all their failures, and to call them back to obedience.

So the order of the psalm matters. The confession “We have sinned with our fathers” comes in Psalm 106:6, and the praise comes first. Everything the psalm says about human sin is heard in the light of who God is. His goodness and his steadfast love are the one constant in Israel’s troubled history and the only ground of hope, so the long account of failure becomes a witness to his faithfulness, and the psalm ends where it began, in prayer for restoration.

Verse 1 gives two commands and two reasons. “Praise ye the LORD” is the Hebrew Hallelujah, a call to the whole gathered people that rang out in temple worship, public assemblies and the feasts. “O give thanks unto the LORD” adds gratitude to praise. We praise him for who he is, and we thank him for what he has done for his people throughout their history. Then each reason is introduced by “for”, and both are about the LORD himself.

“He is good.” The word ṭôwb is broad. It covers moral excellence and uprightness, and also kindness, generosity and the giving of every good thing. Said of God, it means that goodness belongs to his very nature, so his intentions toward his people stay kind whatever they have done. David puts it as an invitation: “O taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8).

“His mercy endureth for ever.” The word for mercy, cheçed, is one of the richest in the Old Testament, and English Bibles render it “lovingkindness”, “steadfast love” or “covenant loyalty”. It is the faithful, active love by which God keeps his covenant with people who do not deserve it. It was at the heart of the covenant made through Moses, and Israel saw it again and again in his patience, his forgiveness and his restoring of the nation after its rebellions. ʻôwlâm means “for ever” or “for all time”. Joined to cheçed, it tells us that his mercy runs through every generation and every circumstance. It rests on his character, and our performance is what it outlasts.

These words were a refrain in Israel’s worship. “O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever” also opens Psalm 107:1 and Psalm 118:1, and Psalm 136 answers each line with “for his mercy endureth for ever”.

In Christ we see this goodness and mercy in a person. Jesus said, “there is none good but one, that is, God” (Mark 10:18), and he is the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The new covenant carries the same mercy: “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12), and “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). So the old Hallelujah becomes ours as we praise the God whose goodness and mercy are made known in his Son.

Verse 2 asks two questions, and the answer to both is “no one”. The verb “utter”, mâlal, simply means to speak or say. The “mighty acts” are gᵉbûwrâh, a word for might and for deeds of might. Scripture uses it of the strength of people, of nations and even of a horse, and here it is the LORD’s own acts of power. For Israel those words called to mind at once the Exodus from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the manna and the water from the rock in the wilderness, the giving of the law at Sinai and the conquest of Canaan. Moses sang of them: “Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power” (Exodus 15:6), and “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods?” (Exodus 15:11). These deeds set the LORD apart from every other god.

“Shew forth” is shâmaʻ, the ordinary word for hearing, used here in the form that means to cause to hear, so to tell or proclaim. The second question moves from God’s deeds to God himself. If his acts are too many and too great to tell, then all the praise he is worthy of is greater still. The psalmist stands in awe, as other Scriptures do: “his greatness is unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3), “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Romans 11:33), and “there is no searching of his understanding” (Isaiah 40:28).

Verse 3 states the life God blesses. “Blessed” is ʼesher, happiness or blessedness, often used as an exclamation: “How happy!” It describes someone fortunate and blessed by God. The same word opens the whole Psalter, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly” (Psalm 1:1), and Psalm 1 with the book of Proverbs ties true blessedness to walking in God’s ways.

“Judgment” is mishpâṭ, a verdict, a decree or law, and the justice by which things are judged. To keep judgment is to observe God’s statutes and to deal fairly and justly. “Doeth” is ʻâsâh, the broadest Hebrew word for doing or making, and “righteousness” is tsᵉdâqâh, rightness and justice, both uprightness before God and fair dealing with others. In Israel these were practical duties that reflected God’s own character, and the nation’s welfare rose and fell with its keeping of his covenant. The law set out blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28), and Moses said, “it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD our God” (Deuteronomy 6:25). The prophets and wise men said the same: “To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice” (Proverbs 21:3), and the LORD requires us “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8).

For us, keeping judgment means honest dealing in business, treating every person with respect, and setting injustice right where we have the opportunity, as Jesus taught: “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12).

“At all times” is ʻêth, time or season, and the phrase means in every season of life. God’s standard covers the whole of a life, in easy times and hard ones. That is why the verse stands at the head of this psalm. Everything that follows shows Israel falling short of it, which shows the depth of their sin and the greatness of the mercy that bore with them.

In verse 4 the psalm turns from “ye” to “me”. One worshipper, standing among a people who will soon confess their sins, asks for God’s attention for himself. “Remember” is zâkar, the ordinary verb for remembering. God never forgets anything, and when Scripture says that he remembers, he acts on it. “God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24), and soon he told Moses, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people… And I am come down to deliver them” (Exodus 3:7–8). Israel’s trumpets in battle carried the promise, “ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies” (Numbers 10:9). God says to Zion, “Can a woman forget her sucking child...? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:15–16). To ask God to remember us is to ask him to turn his care and power toward us.

The psalmist asks to be remembered “with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people”. “Favour” is râtsôwn, goodwill, delight, acceptance and pleasure. It is God’s kindly disposition toward the people of his covenant and his delight in them. The psalmist appeals to that favour and offers nothing of his own worth. He wants the same goodwill God shows to all his people to rest on him too. The KJV prints “that thou bearest unto” in italics, as words its translators supplied to make the sense plain.

“O visit me with thy salvation.” To visit, in Hebrew paqad, can mean to inspect, to appoint, or to step in, and God’s visits can bring blessing or judgment. Here the psalmist asks for a visit of blessing. “Salvation” is yᵉshûwʻâh, deliverance, rescue, welfare and victory. Scripture uses it even of the great rescue Jonathan brought about in Israel, and it traces all such rescue back to the LORD: “Behold, God is my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2). The word covers rescue from enemies and distress and the wholeness that follows. The name Jesus comes from the same root.

This prayer is answered in Christ. When Jesus was about to be born, Zacharias sang, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people” (Luke 1:68–79). In Christ God has “delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood” (Colossians 1:13–14). The favour the psalmist asked to share is the blessing God gives his people in his Son, who “hath made us accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:3–6).

Verse 5 gives the purpose of the prayer in three steps, each beginning “that I may”. The psalmist wants to see the good of God’s people, to rejoice in their gladness, and to glory with them. The three names he gives them describe Israel from three sides. “Thy chosen” is bâchîyr, those God has selected by his own free grace. “Thy nation” is gôwy, a word often used of the other nations, which here names Israel as one people with a shared standing before God. “Thine inheritance” is nachălâh, a possession or allotted portion, and here it is God’s own possession, the people he has claimed for himself. Moses used the same language: “the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6), and “the LORD’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance” (Deuteronomy 32:9).

The “good” is ṭôwb again, the word used of God himself in verse 1, and here it is the welfare and blessing that come from his hand to his people. The “gladness”, simḥâh, is the joy the whole people share when God is with them and blesses them. To “glory” is the verb hâlal in a form that means to boast, to praise oneself, or to be celebrated, and it is the verb in the Hallelujah of verse 1. The psalmist’s boast is in God’s work among his people. Israel’s true honour lay in belonging to the LORD.

In Israel a person’s welfare was bound up with the nation’s, and the psalmist wants his joy to be one with theirs. The same holds for the people of God now. Peter calls the church “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9), people “which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God” (1 Peter 2:9–10). Paul asks believers to make his joy full by being of one mind (Philippians 2:2), and he says that we have obtained an inheritance in Christ so that we “should be to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:11–12), sealed with the Holy Spirit, “the earnest of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:11–14).

Christ is God’s own chosen one. Isaiah speaks of him as “mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth” (Isaiah 42:1), and at the transfiguration the Father’s voice marked him out: “This is my beloved Son: hear him” (Luke 9:35). Those who belong to him share his good, his gladness and his glory, with “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), and as “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) while we wait for his kingdom to come in full.

These five verses give us a way to come to God when we know our own failures and those of the people around us. We begin where the psalm begins, with his goodness and his mercy that endures for ever, because our hope rests on who he is. We can thank him for his mighty acts in our own lives, his provision, his rescue and his grace, and tell them to others, knowing we will never come to the end of them. We can hold up his standard of right living at all times, and look to Christ who kept it and to his Spirit who works it in us.

And we can pray as the psalmist did, “Remember me, O LORD.” He asked to be counted among God’s people and to share their joy, and that is a good prayer for us. Our prayers can carry both our own needs and the good of the whole church, so that we are glad in its gladness and carry one another’s burdens as members of one family.