Psalm 107:1

“O give thanks unto the LORD” is a call to worship, addressed to everyone who has known his saving power. It asks for thanks spoken aloud and together, in the hearing of others. Public thanksgiving stood at the heart of Israel’s worship, with sacrifices, feasts and the singing of psalms, and this call belongs with the other summons to praise in the Psalter, such as Psalm 100.

The first reason is “for he is good”. The Hebrew ṭôwb is a broad word for what is good, pleasant, beautiful and right, and here it describes the LORD himself. Goodness belongs to his very being. He has always had it and always will, and it lies beneath everything he does, from his creation and his laws to the redemption the next two verses describe. So the thanks of this psalm begins with who God is, and his gifts follow from that. The New Testament says the same when it tells us that every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from the Father (James 1:17).

The second reason is “for his mercy endureth for ever”. “Mercy” translates cheçed, one of the richest words in the Old Testament, which other translations render “lovingkindness” or “steadfast love”. It is loyal love, the love of the LORD who has bound himself to his people by covenant and keeps faith with them. It holds compassion and faithfulness together, it acts for the good of those it loves, and it keeps on loving them when they are unfaithful. That is why Israel could sing of it after all their failures and wanderings.

“For ever” is ʻôwlâm, a word for lasting time, perpetuity and eternity, a far horizon that is never reached. Joined to cheçed, it tells us that the LORD’s covenant love has no end. It lasts through every generation and every circumstance, and since it rests on his own character, it holds firm through our weakness and failure. Lamentations says that his compassions never come to an end and are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23).

This line was one of the great refrains of Israel’s worship. The same thanks are given in 1 Chronicles 16:34 and Jeremiah 33:11, and they open Psalm 136:1.

The whole of Psalm 136 is built on the refrain of the mercy that endures for ever.

Psalm 107 begins the fifth and final book of the Psalter, Psalms 107 to 150. It is a thanksgiving psalm for the whole people, and after these opening verses it tells four stories of trouble and rescue: wanderers lost in the wilderness (Psalm 107:4–9), prisoners sitting in darkness and chains (Psalm 107:10–16), fools afflicted because of their sin (Psalm 107:17–22), and sailors caught in violent storms (Psalm 107:23–32). Each story runs the same course. The people fall into distress, they cry to the LORD, he delivers them, and they are called to praise him.

That call comes back as a refrain, “Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” It is heard at Psalm 107:8, 107:15, 107:21 and 107:31. So the goodness and mercy of verse 1 are what the four stories show at work.

The psalm names no date or event. Its picture of a people gathered out of the lands fits the return from captivity in Babylon well, and it may have been sung for that return or for another great deliverance of the nation. A people who had suffered so much and been restored so wonderfully would hear their own story in it, and the stress on the LORD’s cheçed would remind them that he had kept his covenant with them through all their failures.

The people with the most cause to give thanks are those the LORD has redeemed. The verb is gâʼal, the word for the work of a kinsman-redeemer, the go’el, who stepped in for a relative to buy back what had been sold, to restore what was lost, to set him free or to avenge a wrong done to him. It is personal intervention, often at real cost, that brings someone back to freedom and to his rightful place. When the LORD is the redeemer, the word speaks of how near he is to his people, as their own near kinsman, and of his power to win their freedom. Israel’s founding experience of it was the deliverance from Egypt (Exodus 6:6, Exodus 15:13), and through Isaiah the LORD tells Israel that he has redeemed them (Isaiah 43:1).

“Redeemed” comes twice in this verse, first to name who these people are and then to say what the LORD did for them. “Whom he hath redeemed” puts the whole work in his hands and looks back on a rescue already finished. Their freedom is his gracious work from first to last.

“Hand” is yâd. In Scripture the hand stands for power and control, and “by the hand of” marks the one through whom something is done. To be redeemed “from the hand of the enemy” is to be set free from an adversary’s grip and rule.

The word for enemy, tsar, comes from a root meaning to cramp, and it can mean narrow, distress, adversary or flint. Its most common sense by far is “adversary”, which is how the KJV reads it here, and “distress” is a smaller sense of the same word. The enemy may be a human foe, a desperate situation or a spiritual power, and the LORD is stronger than every one of them. Psalm 18:3 praises him in the same way for saving his servant from his enemies.

The LORD “gathered them out of the lands”. The verb qâbats means to grasp, collect, gather or assemble, and it is used of people or animals brought together for a common purpose. The LORD is the subject of the verb, so the gathering is wholly his work. “Lands” is plural, from ʼerets, the word for the earth at large or for one particular land or country. The plural places these people in many foreign countries, scattered far from their own land.

Then the verse names all four points of the compass. Together they mean every direction, so every place where his people had been carried lay within his reach.

Scattering marked Israel’s history, through their own disobedience and through the empires around them. The northern kingdom was carried off by Assyria and the southern kingdom by Babylon, where the LORD promised through Jeremiah to bring his people back (Jeremiah 29:10). For a people whose life was bound up with their land and their covenant with the LORD, being scattered was a calamity, and it was often understood as his judgment. Being gathered meant coming home to the land, and with it a restored covenant, a restored people and a restored hope. Even the scattering had been under his control, and the gathering showed his mercy triumphing over judgment.

The prophets held out this gathering again and again. Moses told Israel that the LORD would gather them from all the nations where he had scattered them (Deuteronomy 30:3). Through Isaiah the LORD promises to gather the outcasts of Israel (Isaiah 11:12) and to bring his people from the east and the west, the north and the south (Isaiah 43:5–6). Through Ezekiel he promises to gather Israel out of all countries and bring them into their own land (Ezekiel 36:24), and the valley of dry bones pictures the same restoration (Ezekiel 37). Zechariah hears him say, “I will hiss for them, and gather them” (Zechariah 10:8).

These verses come to their fullness in Jesus Christ. The goodness of verse 1 is seen in him, the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15) and the express image of his person (Hebrews 1:3), whose compassion, healing and service showed God’s goodness in a human life. The LORD’s cheçed reaches its height at the cross, where God commends his love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). By his resurrection he conquered sin and death, and he is the mediator of a new and better covenant (Hebrews 8:6). He is the Lamb of God (John 1:29), and he is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8), so the mercy that endures for ever is secured in him.

Christ is also the great Kinsman-Redeemer of verse 2. Our deepest bondage was to sin, to death and to the power of Satan, and by his death and resurrection he bought us back. God has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13–14). We were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18–19). So all who belong to him are the redeemed of the LORD, and saying so now includes telling the good news of Jesus to the nations, as he commanded (Matthew 28:19–20).

The gathering of verse 3 points to him too. He came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10), and he spoke of other sheep, outside the fold of Israel, whom he would bring so that there would be one flock and one shepherd (John 10:16). By the cross he broke down the wall of hostility and reconciled Jew and Gentile to God in one body (Ephesians 2:14–16). The church is that gathering, people redeemed “out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” (Revelation 5:9), a great multitude of all nations before the throne (Revelation 7:9). At his return he will send his angels to “gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:31), the last gathering from every direction.

These verses give God’s people a reason for thanks that rests on who he is. He is good, and his mercy endures for ever. Our circumstances change while his character stays the same, so the praise of verse 1 is as true on a hard day as on a glad one.

They also show us the LORD as the one who redeems and gathers. He took Israel out of the hand of their enemies and brought them home from the four corners of the earth, and in Christ he has done the same for people of every nation. Whatever held us and however far we had wandered, his hand reached us, and his love will hold us for ever.

So every believer has a story of his mercy, and the psalm calls that story out: “Let the redeemed of the LORD say so.” When the redeemed tell it, in the congregation or to a friend, they join the thanks Israel sang and give others a reason to trust him.