A Promise That Travels Through Famine and Chains

Verses 1 to 15 appear again as the first part of the song sung when David brought the ark to Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 16:8–22), which then continues with Psalm 96. The opening line is also nearly identical to Isaiah 12:4: “call upon his name, declare his doings among the people.”

“Sing” and “sing psalms” are two verbs, shiru and zammeru, the voice and then the voice with instruments. “Talk ye” means rehearse aloud, go over the deeds in conversation. The long list of wonders that follows is exactly that talk, written out.

“Glory ye” is hithallelu, make your boast, from the same root as hallelujah. Jeremiah 9:24 uses it: “let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me.” Those who seek, not those who have already arrived, are told to rejoice.

Two different verbs for seeking are used, darash and biqqesh. In the Psalms the ark can be called God’s “strength”: Psalm 78:61 says he “delivered his strength into captivity”, and Psalm 132:8 speaks of “the ark of thy strength”. Sung when the ark came to Zion, “seek his strength” may point to it.

“The judgments of his mouth” are the verdicts God pronounced. Exodus 12:12 calls the last plague exactly that: “against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment”. The psalm will spend verses 26 to 36 recalling those sentences.

Where this line says “seed of Abraham”, 1 Chronicles 16:13 reads “seed of Israel”. God calls Abraham “my servant” in Genesis 26:24. “His chosen” is plural in Hebrew, “his chosen ones”, so it applies to the children of Jacob, not to Jacob alone.

The sentence narrows at once: the LORD whose judgments reach the whole earth is “our God”, the God of one family. The rest of the psalm explains how a God of all the earth came to be bound to that family.

1 Chronicles 16:15 turns this into a command to the people: “Be ye mindful always of his covenant.” Here it is God who remembers. “A thousand generations” is the measure of Deuteronomy 7:9, the God who “keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him... to a thousand generations”.

The covenant with Abraham was “made”, literally cut, in Genesis 15:18, among the halved animals. The oath to Isaac is recorded in Genesis 26:3: “I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father.” Three patriarchs, one promise handed on.

Both of Jacob’s names appear. At Bethel, in Genesis 35:10–12, God renamed him Israel and repeated the land promise under the new name. “Law” is choq, a statute or fixed decree: the promise is given the permanence of a legal ordinance.

“Unto thee” is singular and “your inheritance” is plural: one man is promised, and a nation receives. “Lot” is chevel, a measuring cord, so the inheritance is land surveyed and parcelled out, as the tribes’ portions were in Joshua 17:5.

“Few men in number” is the phrase Jacob used in Genesis 34:30, after Shechem, when he feared the Canaanites would destroy him: “I being few in number.” 1 Chronicles 16:19 has “When ye were but few”, placing the singers themselves among the vulnerable ancestors.

Abraham moved from Ur to Haran to Canaan to Egypt and to Gerar; Isaac lived in Gerar among the Philistines; Jacob went to Haran and back, then down to Egypt. The verse compresses three generations of tents moving from one ruler’s land to another’s.

Two kings were rebuked for the patriarchs’ sake: Pharaoh was struck with plagues for taking Sarai (Genesis 12:17), and Abimelech king of Gerar was warned in a dream, “thou art but a dead man” (Genesis 20:3). The same thing happened to Isaac with a later Abimelech (Genesis 26).

The patriarchs were never anointed with oil; “anointed” here means set apart by God. Abraham is the first person the Bible calls a prophet, in God’s words to Abimelech: “he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee” (Genesis 20:7).

“Called for” is qara, to summon, as a master calls a servant: the famine comes when it is sent for. “Staff of bread” is the phrase of Leviticus 26:26, bread as the stick a person leans on to stay upright. Break it, and a whole land falls.

Joseph said it himself to his brothers: “God did send me before you to preserve life” (Genesis 45:5). Genesis 37:28 gives the price, twenty pieces of silver. The psalm places “sent” and “sold” in one sentence and does not resolve the tension between them.

Genesis never says Joseph was put in chains; the psalm supplies the detail. The second half is literally “his soul came into iron”, which the Latin rendered “the iron pierced his soul”, and the old English Prayer Book made famous as “the iron entered into his soul”.

Whose word “came” is disputed: Joseph’s interpretation of the dreams coming true, or God’s promise reaching its moment. “Tried” is tsaraf, to refine, the smelter’s verb for purifying silver in a furnace. The iron of verse 18 was part of the refining.

Genesis 41:14: “Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon.” In verse 14 God reproved kings; here a king becomes the instrument of the promise, sending and loosing on God’s timetable.

Pharaoh’s words were “Thou shalt be over my house” (Genesis 41:40), and Joseph later calls himself “lord of all his house” (Genesis 45:8). “Substance” is qinyan, possessions, the grain and wealth of Egypt stored against the famine.

“At his pleasure” is literally “by his soul”, the same word nefesh as in verse 18, where his soul came into iron. The man once bound now binds princes. “Senators” is zeqenim, elders; Pharaoh called Joseph “discreet and wise” (Genesis 41:39).

Egypt is “the land of Ham” because Mizraim, the Hebrew name for Egypt, was a son of Ham (Genesis 10:6). “Sojourned” is gur, to live as a resident alien. Jacob’s sons told Pharaoh, “For to sojourn in the land are we come” (Genesis 47:4).

Exodus 1:7 describes the growth with a pile of verbs: they “increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty”. Pharaoh’s complaint in Exodus 1:9, “the people... are more and mightier than we”, is the fear this verse confirms.

“Deal subtilly” is hitnakkel, to plot craftily, the verb of Genesis 37:18, where Joseph’s brothers “conspired against him to slay him”. Egypt plots against the family the way the brothers plotted against Joseph. The first half puts even Egypt’s hatred under God’s hand.

“Moses his servant” is the title of Moses’ epitaph, “Moses the servant of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 34:5). Aaron’s choosing was proved when his rod budded, blossomed and bore almonds overnight among the rods of the tribes (Numbers 17:8).

The Hebrew is literally “they set among them the words of his signs”. The signs were a message as well as a blow. “The land of Ham” is repeated from verse 23, keeping Egypt identified by its ancestor.

Darkness, the ninth plague in Exodus, comes first here. The Hebrew says “they rebelled not against his word”, meaning Moses and Aaron obeyed, or the darkness itself did; the ancient Greek and Syriac drop the “not” and make it the Egyptians who rebelled.

Exodus 7:21 records that “the fish that was in the river died; and the river stank”. The Nile was Egypt’s life. The psalm recalls eight plagues, not ten, and leaves out the cattle disease and the boils altogether.

“Brought forth” is sharats, to swarm, the verb of Genesis 1:20, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly”. Here the swarming is a curse. Exodus 8:3 says the frogs would come “into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed”, the king’s private rooms.

“Divers sorts of flies” renders arov, a swarm; the rendering follows the Jewish reading of the word as a mixture of creatures. “Lice” are kinnim, probably gnats or mosquitoes. The psalm reverses the Exodus order of these two. “Coasts” means borders, all their territory.

In Egypt rain was rare, the land being watered by the Nile, so rain itself was strange; this rain was hail. Exodus 9:24 describes “fire mingled with the hail, very grievous”, which is the flaming fire here, lightning running along the ground.

Exodus 9:25 says the hail “brake every tree of the field”. Vines and fig trees are the psalm’s own detail, and Egypt did grow vines; Pharaoh’s butler dreamed of one with three branches (Genesis 40:10). The trees of a vineyard and an orchard take years to replace.

“Caterpillers” is yeleq, young locusts in their hopping stage, one of the stages listed in Joel 1:4. Exodus 10:14 says of this swarm, “before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such”.

“Herbs” is esev, everything green. Exodus 10:15 reports, “there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field”. What the hail had spared, the locusts finished.

“The chief of all their strength” is reshit onam, the firstfruits of their vigour, Jacob’s phrase for Reuben in Genesis 49:3, “my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength”. Psalm 78:51 uses the same words for the same night.

Genesis 15:14 promised Abraham that his descendants would come out “with great substance”, and Exodus 12:35–36 records the silver and gold asked of the Egyptians. “Feeble” is koshel, one who stumbles. A column of slaves left with no straggler.

Exodus 12:33 records the Egyptians urging Israel out in haste: “We be all dead men.” “Fear” is pachad, dread, the terror that Exodus 15:16 says fell on the nations afterward. The oppressors ended by begging their slaves to leave.

“Covering” is masakh, a screen, the word for the hanging at the door of the tabernacle (Exodus 26:36). Here the cloud is shade from the desert sun rather than a guide, as in Isaiah 4:5–6, where a cloud by day is “a shadow in the daytime from the heat”.

The Hebrew verb is singular, “he asked”, the people as one. The psalm leaves out that the asking was grumbling (Exodus 16:2) and that the quails came with a plague (Numbers 11:33); Psalm 78:18–31 tells that side. “Bread of heaven” is the manna of Exodus 16:4.

Water from the rock came at Horeb (Exodus 17:6) and again at Kadesh (Numbers 20:11). “Gushed” is zuv, to flow, the verb of the land “flowing with milk and honey”. A river ran through dry ground, where no water should have been.

“Promise” is davar, word: “his holy word”, the “word which he commanded to a thousand generations” in verse 8. Genesis 15:13–14 had told Abraham of a four hundred year affliction in a strange land, and a going out afterward with great substance. The psalm has just told how that word came true.

“Joy” is sason and “gladness” rinnah, a ringing shout. The psalm tells the exodus without mentioning the crossing of the Red Sea at all, and without Pharaoh’s army; it goes straight from the plagues to the wilderness. Its interest is in what God gave, not in whom he defeated.

Deuteronomy 6:10–11 promised “great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not... vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not”, and Joshua 24:13 says it was fulfilled. “Labour” is amal, the toil of others, inherited without the sweat.

The psalm has not mentioned Sinai, yet it ends on statutes and laws. “Observe” and “keep” are shamar and natsar, two verbs of guarding. The final hallelujah closes this psalm, and Psalm 106 opens with the same word.