Psalm 107:20

Psalm 107 is a song of thanksgiving for the whole congregation. It opens by calling God’s people to give thanks to the LORD, “for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever” (Psalm 107:1), and then tells four stories of people in trouble whom he rescued. The first are wanderers lost in the wilderness (Psalm 107:4–9), the second are prisoners in darkness (Psalm 107:10–16), the third are the sick of these verses, and the fourth are sailors caught in a storm (Psalm 107:23–32). Every story runs the same way. People are in distress, they cry to the LORD, he delivers them, and they are called to praise him.

The psalm is often placed in the years after the return from Babylon, when Israel was looking back on God’s faithfulness through the exile, and it was most likely sung in public worship. Its scenes echo what the nation had lived through, from the wilderness after the Exodus to captivity and the journey home. The fools of this third scene may stand for sinners in general, or for Israel in the times when idolatry and covenant-breaking brought trouble on the people.

This scene names the cause of the trouble at once: the sick are suffering through their own fault. That makes the rescue that follows an act of pure grace. The psalm closes by saying that the wise will take all these things to heart and understand the lovingkindness of the LORD (Psalm 107:43).

The word for fools, ʼĕvîyl, describes a moral condition. In Israel’s wisdom books, and above all in Proverbs, the fool is the person who lacks the fear of God and refuses to listen to advice, however clever he may be. His folly is a chosen way of life, a stubborn turning from God’s instruction, and that is the sense here.

Two words name what the fools have done. Transgression, peshaʻ, is rebellion, an act by which someone defies an authority, and here it is the breaking of God’s covenant and law. Iniquities, ʻâvôn, points to the crookedness of a person’s deeds and character and to the guilt that comes with it. One word looks at the act of defiance and the other at the twisted heart and life behind it, and together they cover the whole of the sin. The verb behind “are afflicted”, ʻânâh, means to be humbled or brought low, to be made to suffer. In this scene the affliction is bodily sickness, as the next verse shows, though the word is wide enough to take in distress of mind and hard circumstances as well.

The verse says “because of” twice, so the link between the sin and the suffering is stated as plainly as it can be. This fits the covenant God made with Israel, in which obedience brought blessing and disobedience brought curses, as Deuteronomy 28 sets out at length. Proverbs teaches the same. “The way of transgressors is hard” (Proverbs 13:15), and those who refuse wisdom eat the fruit of their own way and are destroyed by their own turning away (Proverbs 1:31–32). A way can look right to a man and still end in death (Proverbs 14:12). Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death (James 1:15), and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

God is just in letting sin bear its fruit, and he is also at work in it as a Father. The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he does it for their good (Hebrews 12:5–11). Affliction of this kind is meant to bring a person to repentance and back to him.

The sickness is described by its worst sign. “Soul” is nephesh, a word for the living, breathing person, which also means life itself and appetite. “Abhorreth” is taʻâb, to loathe or detest, a strong word of revulsion. “Meat” in the KJV is food of every kind. The sick turn in disgust from all that would keep them alive. Food was the daily sign of life in Israel, so a person who loathed it was plainly failing, and the phrase carries a weariness with living as well as a failing body.

“They draw near unto the gates of death” says how far it has gone. Death, mâveth, is here the realm of the dead, pictured as a place with gates, and to draw near its gates is to stand at the very edge of the grave. The same picture is used in Psalm 9:13. The sick are still moving toward those gates, and human help has run out. This is the lowest point of the scene, and it is exactly where the cry of the next verse begins.

The verse describes bodily sickness, and it also gives us a picture of the soul. Sin can leave a person with a distaste for the very things that feed life with God, his word, prayer and his presence, and that loss of appetite is a sign of danger just as it is in the body. Jesus offers himself as the food such a person needs. He is “the bread of life” (John 6:35), the living bread that came down from heaven (John 6:51).

Everything turns on the word “Then”. When the fools have come to the end of their strength, they at last turn to the one who can help. To cry, zâʻaq, is to cry out in anguish or danger, the call for help of people in hardship. It is the plea of someone who knows he is helpless. In Israel this cry rested on what the people had known of the LORD from the Exodus onward, that he hears his people and acts for them.

Two words describe what they are in. “Trouble” is tsar, a tight place, and “distresses” is mᵉtsûwqâh, which means narrowness and so anguish, the state of being hemmed in. The answer matches the need. “Saveth” is yâshaʻ, which at root means to be open, wide or free, and so to set free and to help. The LORD brings people out of the narrow place into a wide one. It is the word from which the name Jesus comes.

This verse is one of the psalm’s two refrains. It has already closed the troubles of the wanderers and the prisoners (Psalm 107:6, 107:13), and it returns with the sailors (Psalm 107:28). Whatever the trouble, the LORD answers the cry in the same way. Scripture says so in many places. The righteous cry and the LORD hears (Psalm 34:17). He says, “Call unto me, and I will answer thee” (Jeremiah 33:3). And “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13).

The LORD heals by sending his word. The verb is shâlach, to send out on purpose, and the word, dâbâr, is pictured as a messenger dispatched to do a task. Dâbâr is the ordinary Hebrew for a word or a speech, and what gives it power is whose word it is. By his word God made the world (Genesis 1), and by his word he lights our path (Psalm 119:105). He says of it, “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). The New Testament calls the word of God “quick, and powerful” (Hebrews 4:12). So God’s command is enough. He heals from where he is, and what he says is done.

To heal, râphâʼ, means to mend or cure. It is the common word for healing, used of human physicians too, and the LORD said to Israel, “I am the LORD that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). People ask whether the healing in this verse is of the body or of the soul. It is both. The sickness of verse 18 is bodily and has brought the sick to the edge of the grave, so the cure is a real recovery. Since the sickness came from sin, the mending also reaches the broken relationship with God that lay behind it.

The last clause widens the rescue. “Delivered” is mâlaṭ, to let escape or to snatch away, and “destructions” is shᵉchîyth, a pit, and so a state of ruin or the grave itself. Their folly had brought them into a pit of ruin, and the LORD both cures them and lifts them out.

Verse 21 is the psalm’s second refrain, and it closes the other three scenes as well (Psalm 107:8, 107:15, 107:31). “Oh that” makes it a longing. The psalmist aches for rescued people to give God his due. “Praise” here is yâdâh, to praise, give thanks or confess, which is thanks spoken aloud and before others.

Two reasons are given. The first is who the LORD is. “Goodness” is cheçed, one of the great words of the Old Testament, also translated mercy, lovingkindness and steadfast love. It is God’s loyal, committed love for his people, the love he pledged in his covenant and keeps even when they are undeserving, which is exactly the case with these fools. The second reason is what he does. “Wonderful works” comes from pâlâ, to be distinct or extraordinary, and it names deeds beyond human power that could only be God’s, like the wonders of the Exodus. His love is the source, and his works are where we see it.

“The children of men” joins bên (son) and ʼâdâm (man, mankind), the usual Hebrew way of saying the human race. The LORD’s kindness reaches people as people, and so the call to thank him goes out to everyone. The same notes sound across Scripture. “The LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting” (Psalm 100:5), David resolves to show forth all God’s marvellous works (Psalm 9:1), and the thanksgiving that opens this psalm is sung again in 1 Chronicles 16:34.

The healed are told what form their thanks should take. In Israel “the sacrifices of thanksgiving” were a known offering, the zevach todah, a kind of peace offering whose rules are given in Leviticus 7:11–15. Sin offerings and burnt offerings were required. The thank offering was voluntary, brought by someone grateful for a particular rescue, blessing or answered prayer. With the animal came unleavened cakes mingled with oil, wafers and leavened bread, and the meat had to be eaten the same day, usually in a meal shared with others. So thanksgiving in Israel cost something, was done in public, and ended at a table with God’s people. There is a fitness in it here, for those who loathed all food now sit down to a feast.

Tôwdâh, the word for thanksgiving, means thanksgiving or confession and also the thank offering itself. The plural “sacrifices” may point to offerings repeated over time, or to the several parts of one offering.

The second half of the verse adds the voice. “Declare” is çâphar, to count, and so to recount: to tell God’s works one by one and in detail. “Rejoicing” is rinnâh, a raised voice, a ringing shout of joy. The healed person is to tell the story of what the LORD did, aloud and gladly, so that others hear it and learn to trust him, and so that his deeds are remembered. Another psalm speaks of mourning turned into dancing so that the singer may give thanks and not be silent (Psalm 30:11–12), and Israel was told, “Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people” (1 Chronicles 16:8–9).

Each part of this scene comes to its fullness in Jesus Christ. The fools needed wisdom, and Christ “is made unto us wisdom” (1 Corinthians 1:30). They suffered for their own transgressions and iniquities, and he who knew no sin was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), so that those who are in him are free from condemnation and from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1–2).

They stood at the gates of death. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). He promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his church (Matthew 16:18), and he holds the keys of hell and of death (Revelation 1:18). He calls his people out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9).

They cried, and the LORD saved them. The name Jesus means “the LORD saves” and is tied to the verb of verse 19. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). On the cross he himself cried out to the Father (Matthew 27:46), entering our deepest distress to bring us out of it. Through him we come boldly to the throne of grace to find mercy and help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

The LORD sent his word and healed them. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), and that Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). When Jesus healed, he did it as this verse describes. He cast out spirits with his word and healed all who were sick (Matthew 8:16), he commanded unclean spirits with authority (Mark 1:27), and he called Lazarus out of the tomb with a loud voice (John 11:43). By his death and resurrection he has delivered us from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13–14) and from the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15), which are the deepest “destructions” of all.

The goodness and the wonderful works of verse 21 are seen most fully in him too. God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16), and he showed his love in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Jesus pointed to his own works, the blind seeing, the lame walking and the dead raised, as the sign of who he was (Matthew 11:4–5). He is the image of the invisible God, through whom all things are reconciled (Colossians 1:15–20), and in him we are blessed with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3–14). So our thanksgiving rests on a forgiveness already won at the cross (Colossians 2:13–14). The works we declare with rejoicing are above all his, for we are his witnesses (Acts 1:8) and are told to rejoice in the Lord always (Philippians 4:4).

This scene gives hope to the person whose trouble is his own doing. The fools of verse 17 had only themselves to blame, and the LORD saved them when they cried. Honesty and hope belong together here. The psalm lets us admit that some of our pain is the fruit of our own sin, and in the next breath it shows the LORD answering exactly such people. That is who God is throughout Psalm 107: he hears the cry of people in every kind of trouble, and he is quick to save.

The scene also shows what the rescue is for. A healed man could go quietly home, and the psalm wants to hear him give thanks aloud, at some cost, with joy, and before other people. Our own stories of what God has done belong to that same telling, and someone still near the gates may be helped by hearing them.