Psalms 106

After reading this psalm, we might be tempted to say, “Those Israelites were certainly a sorry band of sinners!” Instead, we ought to be commending the psalmist for telling the truth about his own people. Most historians present their nations in the best possible light and blame other nations rather than their own, but our anonymous psalmist told the truth. “History will bear me out,” said Sir Winston Churchill, “particularly as I shall write that history myself.” But the writer is also to be commended for identifying himself with his struggling people and saying “We have sinned” and “Save us” (vv. 6, 47, italics mine). We noted that 105 said nothing about Israel’s failings, but that deficiency is remedied by 106. However, the purpose of the psalm is not to condemn Israel but to extol the Lord for His longsuffering and mercy toward His people. In order to glorify God, the writer had to place God’s mercies against the dark background of Israel’s repeated disobedience. The psalm was probably written after the Babylonian captivity, when the Jewish people were scattered and a remnant had returned to the land to rebuild the temple and restore the nation (vv. 44–47). After expressing his praise to the Lord (vv. 1–6), the writer pointed out nine serious offenses the nation had committed. He began with the Exodus and closed with the Babylonian captivity, and at the heart of the list he placed Israel’s rebellion at Kadesh Barnea. He did not arrange these selected events in order of their occurrence, for his purpose was to teach us theology and not chronology.

The psalm begins on a high note of worship and praise. Before he looked back on the failures of his people, or looked around at the ruins of the kingdom, the psalmist looked up and gave thanks to God for His goodness and mercy (vv. 1–3). Jehovah had been merciful in all that He had done, and the writer accepted God’s will as just and right. Then the psalmist turned from praise to prayer and asked God to include him in the blessings of the promised restoration of the nation (vv. 4–5). The prophets had promised that the captivity would end and the people would return and rebuild, and he believed those promises. But his prayer was not selfish, for he wanted the whole nation to prosper, to rejoice in the Lord, and to give praise to His name. His prayer climaxed with penitence as he confessed his sins and the sins of his people (v. 6). “We have sinned with our fathers” is better than “Our fathers sinned.” (See Neh. 1:6, Dan. 9:5, 8, 11, 15; Lam. 5:16.) The psalmist claimed the promise that King Solomon asked God to honor when he dedicated the temple (1 Kings 8:46–53). As we study this psalm, it may be like witnessing an autopsy, but we will benefit from it if, like the psalmist, we keep our eyes on the Lord of glory and see His kindness and faithfulness to His sinful people.

The reference here is to Israel’s fear and unbelief at the Exodus, when they were caught between the Egyptian army behind them and the Red Sea before them (Ex. 14:10–31). They had witnessed the mighty power of God as He had devastated Egypt with plagues, but Israel did not believe that the Lord could successfully deliver them from the Egyptians. They were looking back instead of looking up and were walking by sight and not by faith. They preferred the security of slavery to the challenges of liberty. “Let us go back to Egypt!” was frequently their response when they found themselves in a situation that demanded faith. In that desperate hour, they did not remember God’s kindness or His promises, and they panicked. But God led them through the sea on dry land and utterly destroyed the enemy army that tried to follow them. “Then they believed His words; they sang His praise” (v. 12 nasb; see Ex. 15). This one miracle should have assured them for all the trials to come, but they did not take it to heart or understand God’s ways (78:42–51; 95:10; 103:7). For Moses, this was an experience of faith that glorified God, but for the people, it was just another spectacular event. They were spectators at a performance, not participants in a miracle. But are God’s people any different today?

The seeds of unbelief buried in the hearts of the Jewish people took root and bore bitter fruit in the years to come. As George Morrison wrote, “The Lord took Israel out of Egypt in one night, but it took Him forty years to take Egypt out of Israel.” The people were slow to remember God’s past deeds but quick to rush ahead and ignore His desires. However, they did not hesitate to make known their own desires, for they craved water (Ex. 15:22–27), food (Ex. 16), and meat (Num. 11:4–15, 31–35). “What shall we eat? What shall we drink?” (See Matt. 6:25ff.) God provided daily manna (“angels’ food”—78:12), water at an oasis and then from the rock (Ex. 17), and enough fowl to give meat to the whole nation. People who grumble and complain are people not walking by faith in the promises of God (Phil. 2:14–15). We must resist the temptation to yield to our fleshly cravings (1 Cor. 10:1–13).

The rebellion of Korah (Num. 16—17) followed soon after Israel’s apostasy at Kadesh Barnea when the nation refused to enter the Promised Land. Korah enlisted his 250 fellow rebels because of this crisis; all he had to do was blame Moses and claim that the nation needed new leadership. (Political candidates have been doing this ever since.) Korah was a Levite in the family of Kohath, whose privilege it was to carry the tabernacle furnishings. But Kohath was not satisfied with that task; he wanted to function at the altar as a priest (Num. 14:8–10). Pride and selfish ambition have always brought trouble to God’s people (Phil. 2:1–11; James 4:1–10). These rebels were opposing the will of God, for it was the Lord who chose Moses and Aaron to lead the nation, and so the Lord destroyed Korah and his followers. Respect for God’s leaders is important to the success of the Lord’s work (Heb. 13:7, 17).

The first failure involved the lusts of the flesh, and the second involved the pride of life (see 1 John 2:15–17). The third failure, the worship of the golden calf (Ex. 32; Deut. 9:8–29), involved the lust of the eyes. For forty days, Moses had been on Sinai with the Lord, and the Jewish people were nervous without their leader. (When he was with them, they opposed him and criticized him!) In spite of what the Lord had taught them at Sinai, they wanted a god they could see (Deut. 4:12–19). Aaron collected gold jewelry and molded a calf for the people to see and worship, and Moses had to intercede with the Lord to turn away His wrath. They rejected the eternal God (their “glory”— Rom. 1:23) for a man-made piece of gold that could not see, hear, speak, or act! Once again, Israel forgot what the Lord had done for them. The phrase “stood ... in the breach” (v. 23) describes a soldier standing at a break in the city walls and preventing the enemy from entering. What a picture of intercessory prayer (Ezek. 22:30)!

Israel had been out of Egypt about two years when the Lord brought them to Kadesh Barnea on the border of the Promised Land (Num. 13–14). Instead of trusting God to give them the land, the people asked Moses to appoint a committee to survey the land. (God had already done this for them—Ezek. 20:6). But Israel did not need more facts; they needed more faith. It was a “pleasant [beautiful] land” (v. 24; Jer. 3:19; 12:10) and a “good land” (Deut. 8:7–9), but ten of the twelve spies reported that Canaan was a dangerous land filled with giants, high-walled cities, and formidable armies. The people reverted to their usual crisis mode of weeping, complaining, and planning to return to Egypt (Num. 14:1–10). The Lord announced that the generation twenty years and older would all die in the wilderness during the next thirty-eight years, and then He sent a plague that killed the ten unbelieving spies. What should have been a triumphant victory march became a tragic funeral march. That is what happens when we want our own way and refuse to trust the Lord and obey Him.

These two events occurred toward the end of Israel’s march through the wilderness, and both of them illustrate the high cost of willful disobedience to the Lord. The failure at Baal Peor is described in Numbers 25, but read Numbers 22–24 to get the background. The king of Moab hired the prophet Baalam to curse the nation of Israel, but God turned his curses into blessings (Deut. 23:5; Neh. 13:2; see 109:28). But Baalam knew how to trap Israel: he suggested that the king act like a good neighbor and invite the Jewish tribal leaders to share a feast with the Moabites. This would be a religious feast, of course, which meant eating meat dedicated to demons and dead people and cohabiting with cult prostitutes. Once more, the people of God yielded to their fleshly desires and tasted the wrath of God, and 24,000 people died (Num. 25:9). The plague would have claimed more lives, but Phinehas, the son of the high priest, killed a Jewish man and his Moabite partner as they arrogantly sinned in the camp of Israel. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). (On v. 30, see Gen. 15: and Rom. 4.)

The second demonstration of carnality was seen in Moses, not a sin of the flesh but of the spirit: he became proud and angry and took for himself the glory that belonged only to the Lord (Num. 20:1–13). Provoked by the people, the “pride of life” possessed Moses and he lost his temper and spoke rash words that offended the Lord (78:40; Isa. 63:10; 1 John 2:15–17). This sin cost Moses the privilege of leading the people into the Promised Land (Deut. 3:23–29). “Meribah” means “quarreling” (see Ex. 17:1–7).

God in His grace took His people into Canaan and gave them victory over the nations living there. The twelve tribes claimed their inheritance and settled down to enjoy the land and serve the Lord. They were faithful all during the leadership of Joshua and the elders that he selected and trained, but when the third generation came along, they compromised and began to serve the false gods of their defeated enemies (Judg. 2:7–23). The people knew the terms of the covenant that Moses had given them (Lev. 26; Deut. 28–30), but they disobeyed it. Instead of destroying the godless society of the nations in Canaan as God commanded (Num. 33:50–56; Deut. 7:12–26; 20:16–18), the Israelites gradually compromised with them and then imitated them, including the inhumane practices that defiled the land God gave them (Lev. 18:24–28; Num. 35:30–34; Deut. 21:22–23; Jer. 3:1–10). They had been “married” to Jehovah at Sinai, but now they prostituted themselves to idols and grieved the Lord, inviting His chastening. The Lord brought six nations against Israel and for over one hundred years punished His people right in their own land. When they cried out to Him for mercy, He heard them and raised up judges to deliver them from their enemies; but then the nation lapsed into idolatry again, and the cycle was repeated. In His mercy, the Lord heard their cries and forgave them (Judg. 3:9, 15; 4:3; 6:6–7; 10:10; Lev. 26:40–42), but this could not go on forever.

In His covenant, the Lord warned that if Israel continued to resist and disobey, even after experiencing His chastening, He would take them out of their land and scatter them (Lev. 26:27–39; Deut. 28:48–68). First, the kingdom was divided between the ten tribes of Israel (the northern kingdom) and the two tribes of Benjamin and Judah (the southern kingdom). In 722 BC, the Assyrians captured Israel and absorbed the ten tribes into their own empire. In 606–586 BC, the Babylonians invaded Judah, destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, and took the best of the people captive to Babylon. The Jewish people were rooted out of their own “beautiful land” and scattered among the nations. The Medes and Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC and the next year Cyrus decreed that the Jews could return to their land. However, the Davidic dynasty was not restored in their kingdom. The psalmist closed with a prayer that the scattered children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would one day be gathered together so that they might worship Jehovah and give glory to His name.

The last verse, written by an ancient editor, brings to a close the Fourth Book of the Psalms.

End Notes Book IV