Psalm 107:42

Psalm 107 is a song of thanksgiving. It opens by calling God’s people to thank him, “for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever” (Psalm 107:1). It then tells of four groups of people in trouble who cried to the LORD and were delivered: wanderers lost in the wilderness (Psalm 107:4–9), prisoners in darkness (Psalm 107:10–16), the sick who suffered for their folly (Psalm 107:17–22) and sailors caught in a storm (Psalm 107:23–32). Each account runs from distress to a cry, from the cry to deliverance, and from deliverance to the refrain, “Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!”

With verse 33 the psalm widens its view. The four accounts were particular rescues, and these last verses show the LORD ruling the land itself and the rise and fall of whole peoples. He works in both directions. He can make a watered land a desert and a desert a watered land, and he can bring the great down and lift the needy up. The psalm ties these verses to no single event. Its pictures of wandering, captivity and homecoming fit Israel’s memory of the exile in Babylon and the return, and the psalm is widely thought to have been written after that return.

The first singers felt the force of the pictures at once. In the land of Israel water was scarce and precious. Rivers and springs fed the crops, the herds and the towns, and a drought meant famine. To give water or to withhold it was therefore the plainest display of divine power. The nations around Israel credited that power to their various gods, and the psalm gives it to the LORD alone.

“He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the watersprings into dry ground.” The “He” is the LORD, who has been the one acting all through the psalm. The verb sûwm is a broad word meaning to put, set or appoint, and here it tells us that God makes one thing into another by his own decision. The wilderness, midbâr, is open and uncultivated country, and set beside “rivers” it means a dry desert. “Dry ground” is tsimmâʼôwn, a thirsty, drought-stricken place. The second half of the verse goes further than the first. Rivers are the great flows of water and watersprings are their sources, so the two together cover all the water a land has, and a spring that fails leaves the land with nothing to hope for from nature. God says the same of himself through Isaiah, that he will make the rivers islands and dry up the pools (Isaiah 42:15), and Joel laments a drought of this kind (Joel 1:16–20).

Verse 34 finishes the sentence and gives the reason: “A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.” “Fruitful” comes from pᵉrîy, fruit, the produce that a blessed land yields. “Barrenness” is mᵉlêchâh, a salted land or desert, ground on which crops fail. “Wickedness” is raʻ, the broad Hebrew word for evil. So the ruin of the land is God’s righteous judgment on the evil of the people who live in it, and “them that dwell therein” speaks of a whole community whose wickedness has become general.

Israel knew this from the covenant. Moses warned that if the people turned to other gods the LORD would shut up the heaven and the land would cease to yield its fruit (Deuteronomy 11:17). The blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28 set fruitfulness beside obedience and drought beside disobedience, with a heaven like brass and an earth like iron (Deuteronomy 28:23–24). The land itself has a part in the covenant. It vomits out those who defile it (Leviticus 18:24–28), it lies desolate and keeps its sabbaths while its people are scattered (Leviticus 26:33–35), and Jeremiah hears it mourn “for the wickedness of them that dwell therein” (Jeremiah 12:4). Isaiah sees the whole earth defiled under its inhabitants and devoured by a curse (Isaiah 24:5–6). The pattern goes back to the beginning, when the ground was cursed for Adam’s sake (Genesis 3:17–19). Human sin reaches the soil people walk on, and the fruitfulness of a land is a gift that rests on God’s favour.

Verse 35 turns verse 33 around: “He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into watersprings.” The wilderness is the same midbâr. “Standing water” is ʼăgam, a pool or marsh where water gathers and stays, joined here to the word for water (agam-mayim). The desert knows brief rains and stream beds that run for a season, and God gives it a lasting pool. “Dry ground” shares its English with verse 33, though the Hebrew word here is tsîyâh, parched land. “Watersprings” is môwtsâʼ, a going forth or source, the place where water comes out of the ground, and it is plural, so the picture is of many springs. A pool holds water and a spring keeps giving it, and between them the verse describes a land with a supply that will last.

Israel had lived through this. In the wilderness after Egypt God fed the people with manna (Exodus 16) and gave them water out of the rock (Exodus 17:6). The prophets promise it again. “I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water” (Isaiah 41:18). “The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water” (Isaiah 35:7). “I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19). Isaiah says that the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose (Isaiah 35:1), and Ezekiel sees a river flowing from the temple that brings life wherever it goes (Ezekiel 47:1–12).

The wilderness in Scripture is a place of danger, testing and want, where human resources run out and people must depend on God. So the verse speaks first of real deserts and real water, and it also speaks to any season of dryness, loss or loneliness. The God who waters a desert can bring refreshment there too, and we may pray boldly for places and people that look barren to us.

“And there he maketh the hungry to dwell.” “There” is the watered wilderness of verse 35. The hungry, râʻêb, are the famished. In Israel such hunger usually went with homelessness and helplessness after war, famine or upheaval, so these are people with nowhere to go. The verb yâshab means to sit down, to abide or to remain, and it stands here in its causative form: God is the one who settles them. He does it “that they may prepare a city for habitation”, and kûwn, “prepare”, means to be firm and so to establish or make ready.

“Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.” The KJV’s “Again” marks the turn. The people who were multiplied are now “minished”, and the Hebrew verb is mâʻaṭ, the same verb as “decrease” in verse 38. The God who kept their herds from lessening now lets the people themselves become few. “Brought low” is shâchach, to sink or be bowed down. The first word is about numbers and resources, and the second is about standing and honour, so together they describe a people who are both smaller and humbled.

Three things bring them there. Oppression is the harsh rule of others, whether foreign empires such as Assyria and Babylon or unjust rulers at home. Affliction is the hardship itself. Sorrow, yâgôwn, is grief, the pain carried within.

The verse names the hardships and leaves their cause unsaid. Israel’s covenant warned that curses would follow disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15), so decline of this kind was often a call to repent. It may also be God’s discipline, or a testing of faith, or part of life in a fallen world. What the verse makes sure is that prosperity rests in God’s hand and can be withdrawn, which is the Preacher’s point when he asks what profit a man has of all his labour under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:2–3). It also treats suffering as real. The psalm has already taught four times what to do in it, which is to cry to the LORD, and Jeremiah gives the hope that goes with that cry: “But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies” (Lamentations 3:32).

“He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way.” To pour is shâphak, to pour out or spill, and it pictures scorn coming down on them in full measure. Contempt is būwz, disrespect and scorn. The princes are nâdîyb, a word from a root meaning willing or generous that came to name the noble, people of high birth and standing. Job says the same thing of God in the same words (Job 12:21).

Their punishment is to wander. Tâʻâh means to stray or go astray, and the “wilderness” here is a different Hebrew word from the midbâr of verses 33 and 35. It is tôhûw, a place of emptiness, waste and confusion. “Way” is derek, a road, and also a course of life. Men who once gave direction to nations are left in an empty place with no road and no plan. For Israel the picture carried the memory of forty years in the wilderness, the nation’s most helpless time.

Among the nations kings claimed the authority of the gods and expected to be obeyed without question. Israel knew that every king stands under the LORD, and the prophets held kings to account by his law. God “removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Daniel 2:21). He “bringeth the princes to nothing” (Isaiah 40:23–24). He drove Nebuchadnezzar from his throne until he learned that the most High rules in the kingdom of men (Daniel 4:32). “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble” (James 4:6).

Verse 41 turns with the word “Yet”: “Yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and maketh him families like a flock.” The poor man is ʼebyôwn, the needy one, in want and without a protector, weak in the eyes of those who hold power. Affliction is ʻŏnîy, misery and trouble. God lifts him out of it and sets him “on high”, in a place of safety and honour. Then he gives him “families like a flock”. Tsôʼn is the collective word for a flock of sheep and goats, and to a farming people a large, healthy flock was the very picture of wealth and security. The needy man’s household grows and is kept as a shepherd keeps his sheep.

Scripture sings of this reversal again and again. Hannah prays, “The LORD maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up” (1 Samuel 2:7–8). Another psalm says that he raises the poor out of the dust to set him with princes (Psalm 113:7–8). Mary sings, “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree” (Luke 1:52–53). James reminds the church that God has chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith (James 2:5), and Proverbs says that whoever has mercy on the poor honours his Maker (Proverbs 14:31).

“The righteous shall see it, and rejoice: and all iniquity shall stop her mouth.” The righteous are the yâshâr, the straight or upright, people whose lives are in line with God’s will. What they see is everything verses 33 to 41 have described: the land judged and the desert watered, the hungry housed, the proud brought down and the needy raised. God’s justice is done in the open where it can be watched, and the upright are glad because it proves that he is just and that trusting him is well founded. David says the same of the righteous (Psalm 58:10), Proverbs says that “the way of the LORD is strength to the upright” (Proverbs 10:29), and in heaven the redeemed sing that his ways are just and true (Revelation 15:3–4).

Iniquity is ʻevel, wrong or injustice in general. The verse pictures it as a woman who shuts her own mouth, and qâphats means to draw together or close. Her silence is the silence of defeat. Every boast, every complaint against God and every excuse for evil runs out when his justice is plain to see. Paul uses the same picture when he says that the law speaks “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God” (Romans 3:19).

“Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the LORD.” The last verse tells us what the whole psalm is for.

The wise person is châkâm. Wisdom in Israel (ḥokmah) was practical skill and moral discernment rooted in the fear of the LORD, which is its beginning (Proverbs 9:10). “Observe” is shâmar, a verb that first means to guard or keep. The wise keep watch over “these things”, holding them in mind and turning them over as something worth guarding. “These things” are all the works of God the psalm has told: the four rescues and the great reversals of these closing verses. They include what he has done in history, such as bringing Israel out of Egypt through the sea, and what he has done in our own lives.

The promise is that such a person “shall understand”. Bîyn means to understand or discern, to see what a thing means. What the wise come to see is the lovingkindness of the LORD. Cheçed is one of the richest words in the Old Testament. It is God’s steadfast love, his mercy and his loyalty to his covenant, a love that acts to deliver, preserve and redeem. The name beside it is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, the name of the God who made covenant with Israel. The psalm began with this love, the mercy that endures for ever, and it ends by promising that the watchful will understand it.

The wise find that love in every part of the psalm, the hard parts included. The drying of the rivers, the humbling of the blessed and the fall of princes belong to “these things” as much as the springs and the harvests do, and the wise learn to trace one faithful love through them all. Wisdom of this kind is to be sought like hidden treasure (Proverbs 2:1–5) and prized above everything else we get (Proverbs 4:7). We are given what God has revealed, while the secret things remain his (Deuteronomy 29:29), and when we have understood all we can, we still say with Paul, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Romans 11:33).

These verses give us a God who is never a bystander. The water we drink, the ground that feeds us, our children and our living are gifts held in his hand, which is reason for thanks in good years and for humility when we are tempted to think we earned them. Nothing in a life or a nation is so fixed that he cannot turn it. That is a sober word to the comfortable and to those who hold power, since authority is lent by God and answerable to him. It is a hopeful word to anyone in a dry place or under someone else’s heel, because the wilderness and the affliction are as open to his turning as the river and the throne.

The passage also shows who God is toward the weak. He feeds the hungry, and then he settles them, gives them work that bears fruit and builds their households. His people have the same pattern set before them when they help someone in need.

And the psalm ends by telling us that all of this can be understood. Its last word on drought and harvest, on the fall of princes and the rise of the poor, is lovingkindness. The wise person keeps the record of what the LORD has done, in Scripture and in his own years, and finds the same steadfast love running through it. If you are in the low place of verse 39, the psalm has already shown four times over what happens when people cry to the LORD in their trouble.