Psalm 136:9

Psalm 136 is a hymn of thanksgiving in which every line about God is answered by the refrain “for his mercy endureth for ever”. It is often called the Great Hallel, and it was sung in Israel’s worship, at Passover and other festivals, with a leader declaring what God has done and the congregation answering with the refrain.

The psalm opens by calling for thanks to the God of gods and Lord of lords (Psalm 136:2–3). Verse 4 then turns from who God is to what he does, and it is the bridge to everything that follows. First come his works in creation, in the verses studied here. After them come his works for Israel, from the striking of Egypt through the wilderness to the gift of the land (Psalm 136:10–24), and the psalm closes with his care for every living thing. Creation is placed first so that we understand the mercy that rescued Israel to be as old and as wide as the world itself.

Verse 4 praises “him who alone doeth great wonders”. The word behind “wonders”, pâlâ, comes from a root that means to separate or distinguish, and so it describes what is great, difficult and wonderful, the kind of act that stands apart from anything a creature could do. For Israel the word called up the signs and judgments God worked in Egypt, told in Exodus 7–12. Moses asked whether any god had ever taken a nation for himself by signs, wonders and a mighty hand as the LORD did (Deuteronomy 4:34). In this psalm the first wonders named are the heavens, the earth and the lights, so that the world we wake up in every morning is counted among his wonders too. Jeremiah prays in the same spirit that the LORD made heaven and earth by his great power and that nothing is too hard for him (Jeremiah 32:17).

The verb “doeth” is ʻâsâh, the broad, everyday Hebrew word for doing or making, and it returns in verse 7, where God “made” great lights. The weight of verse 4 falls on the word “alone”. Only the LORD does such things. Israel sang this among nations that honoured many gods, and the line sets him apart from every one of them and from everything he has made. Isaiah records the LORD saying that he stretches out the heavens alone and spreads the earth by himself (Isaiah 44:24), and that he is the LORD and there is none else (Isaiah 45:5–7).

The refrain then tells us what kind of power this is. The God who does wonders is the God whose mercy endures, so his might is always in the service of his love. Recalling what he has done leads naturally into worship, as another psalm calls us: “O come, let us worship and bow down” (Psalm 95:6).

Verse 5 says that God made the heavens “by wisdom”. The Hebrew word, tâbûwn, means intelligence, discretion, reason and skilfulness. It is understanding put to work, the knowledge of a craftsman who knows how to bring a thing to its right end. The heavens here take in the sun, the moon, the stars and the whole expanse above us, and their order, their steady cycles and their beauty show the mind of the one who made them.

Scripture says the same in other places. “The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth” (Proverbs 3:19), and Jeremiah says that God made the earth by his power and established the world by his wisdom (Jeremiah 10:12). The Bible’s first sentence is that God created the heaven and the earth (Genesis 1:1), and David sings that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). The peoples around Israel told of creation as a thing of strife and caprice. Israel knew the heavens as a realm ordered by one wise God.

The refrain after this line means that the making of the heavens was itself an act of kindness. God gave his creatures an ordered and dependable world to live in, and that gift came from the same love that later redeemed his people.

Verse 6 looks down from the sky to the ground. The word for earth, ʼerets, can mean the whole earth or a particular land, and here it is the dry land that rises out of the waters. The word for the waters, mayim, is the ordinary word for water, and in Scripture the waters often stand for what is unformed and untamed. In the beginning the earth was without form, and darkness was on the face of the deep (Genesis 1:2). Then God gathered the waters into one place, let the dry land appear, and called it Earth (Genesis 1:9–10). The psalm thanks him for that act.

The verb “stretched out” is râqaʻ, which means to pound or beat, and so to spread a thing out by hammering, the way a metalworker beats a sheet thin and wide to overlay something with it. The picture is of a craftsman at work, and it speaks of God in human terms so that we can grasp what he did. He spread out a firm expanse of land and set it above the waters, with the waters kept to their bounds. A people who knew the threat of floods and the worth of stable, fertile ground would have felt the force of this line. When the LORD answers Job, he asks where Job was when the foundations of the earth were laid and the sea was shut in behind its doors (Job 38:4–11).

So the ground under our feet is a provision. God made a place where people and animals can live, and he made it because he is kind, for “the LORD is good to all” (Psalm 145:9).

Verses 7 to 9 belong together. Verse 7 says that God “made great lights”, and the next two verses name them: the sun for the day, and the moon and stars for the night. The word for lights is ʼôwr, which means illumination or a luminary, a thing that gives light. The phrase “great lights” is the phrase of the creation account, where God made two great lights and the stars also on the fourth day (Genesis 1:16) and set them “to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14–18). They are called great because of their size and power and because so much of life on earth depends on them. Isaiah tells us to lift up our eyes and see who created the stars, the one who brings out their host and calls them all by name (Isaiah 40:26).

Each of these verses ends with the refrain, and the refrain is the heart of the psalm. “Mercy” translates cheçed, which means kindness, lovingkindness and favour. It is the word Scripture uses for God’s steadfast, loyal love, the love with which he keeps his covenant and his promises. It is an active love that does good to those it is set upon. “For ever” translates ʻôwlâm, a word that at root speaks of what is hidden at the vanishing point of time, and so it means time out of mind, past or future, and in practice eternity. God’s mercy is permanent. It belongs to who he is, and it reaches through every generation.

The refrain gives the reason for each line it follows. The heavens were made, the land was spread out and the lights were set in place because God is merciful. His power is always joined to his goodness, so the one who can do all things is the one who is committed to the good of what he has made. Sung over and over by a whole congregation, the refrain fixed this truth in Israel’s memory and turned a recital of God’s deeds into worship.

The same words are sung elsewhere in Scripture, where we are told to give thanks to the LORD because he is good and his mercy endures for ever (1 Chronicles 16:34, Psalm 107:1, Psalm 118:1), and “his mercy is everlasting” (Psalm 100:5). The LORD named himself to Moses as merciful and gracious, abundant in goodness and truth (Exodus 34:6–7), and Moses pleaded that name back to him (Numbers 14:18). Jeremiah, in the ruins of Jerusalem, said that the LORD’s compassions “fail not” and are “new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22–23). Paul carries the same confidence into the New Testament when he says that no created thing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38–39).

The New Testament tells us that the wonders of these verses were done through the Son. All things were made by the Word (John 1:3), all things in heaven and in earth were created by him and for him, and in him they hold together (Colossians 1:16–17). He upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). The wisdom that made the heavens, the hand that spread out the earth and the command that set the lights in their places are his.

The one who alone does great wonders came among us. The Word was made flesh (John 1:14), and in his ministry Jesus did mighty works that showed his authority over nature and over death, as when he calmed the storm (Matthew 8:23–27) and called Lazarus out of the tomb (John 11:43–44). The greatest of God’s wonders are the incarnation, the cross and the resurrection, and by the resurrection Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power (Romans 1:4).

The mercy that endures for ever is seen most fully in him. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16), and he showed that love in this, that Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ when we were dead in sins (Ephesians 2:4–5). Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6), and the one who obtained eternal redemption for us (Hebrews 9:12). As God once brought an ordered world out of the waters, Christ brings life out of sin and death, and those who are his are given an entrance into his everlasting kingdom (2 Peter 1:11).

The lights of the sky point to him as well. Malachi promised that the Sun of righteousness would arise with healing in his wings (Malachi 4:2), and Zacharias sang of the dayspring from on high that visits us to give light to those who sit in darkness (Luke 1:78–79). Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). He drives out a darkness of sin that neither moon nor star could ever reach. In the holy city at the end there is no need of the sun or the moon, because the glory of God lights it, and there is no night there (Revelation 21:23–25).

This passage gives us a way of seeing ordinary things. The sun that came up this morning, the ground that held firm under us and the moon and stars that will be out tonight are each named in Scripture as works of God’s mercy. They are with us whether we think of them or forget them, and each of them carries the same message, that the love of the one who made them has lasted until today.

The passage also shows us who God is. He is the only one who does wonders, he does them with wisdom, and he does them out of kindness. The God who keeps the sun to its course day after day is the God who has made promises to his people, so the reliability of the sky is a picture of the reliability of his word. If his mercy is wide enough to hold the creation in place, it is enough for the life of anyone who trusts him.

And the night is ordered as well as the day. Verse 9 gives the dark hours their own lights and their own rule under God, which means that the dark stretches of a life are still inside his care. The psalm’s own response to all of this is simply thanks, and it gives us the words for it: his mercy endureth for ever.