The People Forget, and the Covenant Is Remembered

This is the first psalm to open and close with hallelujah. When 1 Chronicles 16 gives the song sung before the ark, it ends with this psalm’s first verse and its last two (16:34–36), after Psalm 105 and Psalm 96, so the three were known together.

“Utter” is mallel, to speak out, recount; “mighty acts” is gevurot, deeds of power. The question expects no one to manage it. The psalm then does something stranger than list the acts: it lists the people’s failures in the middle of them.

“Keep judgment” means hold to justice. The blessing falls on those who do right “at all times”, and the rest of the psalm shows a people who managed it for a verse or two at most, which gives the beatitude an edge.

The voice turns singular, “Remember me”, the prayer Nehemiah repeats at the close of his memoirs: “Remember me, O my God, for good” (Nehemiah 13:31). Some Hebrew manuscripts and the ancient Greek read “remember us”. “Visit” is paqad, to attend to, here with favour.

Three names for the people: chosen, nation and inheritance. “Nation” is goy, the word normally used for the other nations, here used of Israel. The speaker asks only to be counted in when the good comes, to share the rejoicing rather than to lead it.

The three verbs match Solomon’s prayer for a captive people, “We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness” (1 Kings 8:47), and Daniel’s, “We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly” (Daniel 9:5). It was the set form of national confession.

On the shore of the Red Sea, with Pharaoh behind them, the people said, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:11). That is the provocation at the sea. The Red Sea is yam suf, the Sea of Reeds.

Ezekiel 20 retells the same history with the same refrain: “I wrought for my name’s sake, that it should not be polluted before the heathen” (Ezekiel 20:9). The reason for the rescue is found in God’s name, not in the people’s behaviour.

Isaiah 63:13 uses the same picture: God “led them through the deep, as an horse in the wilderness, that they should not stumble.” The seabed is walked like open desert. “Depths” is tehomot, the plural of the deep of Genesis 1:2.

Exodus 14:30 says almost the same: “Thus the LORD saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians.” “Him that hated them” is singular, Pharaoh himself. Two verbs for rescue, saved and redeemed, are set side by side.

Exodus 14:28 gives the count: “there remained not so much as one of them.” The psalm keeps the tally at zero. The same waters that were rebuked and dried for Israel return to cover the pursuers.

Exodus 14:31 says the people “believed the LORD, and his servant Moses”, and Exodus 15:1 begins, “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song.” The verse is the high point of the psalm’s account of the people, and it lasts one line.

“Soon” is literally “they hasted, they forgat”. Three days after the song, at Marah, “the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?” (Exodus 15:24). “Counsel” is God’s plan, which they would not wait to see unfold.

“Lusted exceedingly” is literally “they lusted a lust”, the phrase of Numbers 11:4, when the mixed multitude craved meat. The place was named Kibroth-hattaavah, “the graves of lust” (Numbers 11:34). “Desert” is yeshimon, the wasteland.

“Leanness” is razon, wasting; Numbers 11:33 says a plague struck while the quail meat was “yet between their teeth”. The ancient Greek reads a similar word as “fulness”, surfeit, which fits Numbers 11:20, where they would eat meat “until it come out at your nostrils”.

Korah and his company told Moses and Aaron, “Ye take too much upon you” (Numbers 16:3). Moses answered that the LORD would show “who is holy” (16:5). “Saint” is qedosh, holy one, the very title the rebels disputed.

The psalm names Dathan and Abiram and leaves out Korah, as Deuteronomy 11:6 also does. Numbers 26:11 notes that “the children of Korah died not”; their descendants became temple singers, and several psalms bear their name.

Numbers 16:35 records that fire “came out from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense”, men who had claimed the priesthood. The ground took some of the rebels and fire took the rest.

Horeb is the name Deuteronomy uses for Sinai; Deuteronomy 9:8 says, “Also in Horeb ye provoked the LORD to wrath.” The calf was made at the foot of the mountain where the law was being given. “Molten image” is massekhah, a figure cast in metal (Exodus 32:4).

Jeremiah 2:11 uses the same verb: “my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.” Jewish scribal tradition counts this line among the places where scribes altered the text for reverence, the original having read “my glory”. Paul’s phrase in Romans 1:23 echoes it.

Deuteronomy 32:18 names the same forgetting: “Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.” “Saviour” is the participle moshi’a, the one who saves, a title made from what he did in Egypt.

“The land of Ham” and the wonders borrow the vocabulary of Psalm 105:23–27. The two psalms recite the same events: the first as gifts, the second as the background to ingratitude. “Terrible things” are nora’ot, deeds that inspire dread.

The breach is perets, a gap broken in a city wall where attackers pour through. God had said, “let me alone... that I may consume them” (Exodus 32:10), and Moses would not let him alone. Ezekiel 22:30 laments a later day when God “sought for a man... that should stand in the gap” and found none.

“Pleasant land” is erets chemdah, a land of desire, Jeremiah’s phrase in 3:19, “a pleasant land, a goodly heritage”. “Despised” is the verb God used after the spies’ report: the children would know “the land which ye have despised” (Numbers 14:31).

Deuteronomy 1:27 uses the same words: “And ye murmured in your tents.” The complaint was private and indoors, the grumbling of households. It was enough to keep a generation out of the land.

A lifted hand is the gesture of an oath; Abram says, “I have lift up mine hand unto the LORD” (Genesis 14:22). The oath here is the one of Numbers 14:28–30, that the wilderness generation would fall in the desert.

Ezekiel 20:23 has the same words: “I lifted up mine hand unto them also in the wilderness, that I would scatter them among the heathen.” The threat of Leviticus 26:33, “I will scatter you among the heathen”, is reached back to the desert and forward to the exile of the singers.

Baal-peor is the Baal of Mount Peor in Moab (Numbers 25:3). “Joined themselves” is tsamad, to be yoked, as oxen are coupled together. “Sacrifices of the dead” may mean offerings to lifeless gods or feasts held for the dead; Numbers 25:2 calls them “the sacrifices of their gods”.

“Brake in” is parats, the root of perets, the breach of verse 23. The plague broke in because nobody stood in the gap, and Numbers 25:9 counts twenty-four thousand dead before it stopped. “Inventions” means doings, things they devised.

Phinehas was Aaron’s grandson (Numbers 25:7). “Executed judgment” renders a verb from palal, which can mean to judge or to intercede; the ancient Greek rendered it “made propitiation”, matching Numbers 25:13, where he “made an atonement for the children of Israel”.

“Counted unto him for righteousness” is the phrase of Genesis 15:6, said of Abraham’s faith, and used of no one else in the Old Testament except here. Numbers 25:13 gives Phinehas “the covenant of an everlasting priesthood”, which is why the verse says “unto all generations”.

“Waters of strife” is Meribah (Numbers 20:13). Moses said, “the LORD was angry with me for your sakes” (Deuteronomy 1:37). The man who stood in the breach for them in verse 23 was barred from the land because of them.

Whose spirit was provoked is ambiguous: Moses’ own, or God’s, as in Isaiah 63:10, where they “vexed his holy Spirit”. “Unadvisedly” is bitte, to speak rashly, used in Leviticus 5:4 of a rash oath. Moses’ words were “Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?” (Numbers 20:10).

Judges 1:21–36 lists tribe after tribe that “did not drive out” the inhabitants of its territory, a roll of unfinished work. The psalm moves from the wilderness straight into the land without mentioning Joshua’s victories.

“Mingled” is hit’arev, to mix, intermarry; Ezra 9:2 complains that “the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands”. Deuteronomy 18:9 had warned, “thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.” Learning came after mixing.

“Snare” is moqesh, a bait-trap for birds or animals. The angel at Bochim told Israel, “their gods shall be a snare unto you” (Judges 2:3), and Exodus 23:33 had warned of the same. Idols are pictured as the bait, and the people as the catch.

“Devils” is shedim, a word found elsewhere only in Deuteronomy 32:17, “They sacrificed unto devils, not to God.” The word is related to the Akkadian shedu, a guardian spirit. The Hebrew gives sons and daughters no softening.

Jeremiah 7:31 names the place, Topheth in the valley of Hinnom, “to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire”. Numbers 35:33 says blood “defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood... but by the blood of him that shed it”. “Sons and daughters” is said twice in the same verse.

Exodus 34:15–16 used the language of whoring as a warning precisely against eating the sacrifices of other gods, what Israel did at Peor. “Their own inventions” repeats the word of verse 29: a religion they had devised for themselves.

“Abhorred” is ta’av, to loathe. “His own inheritance” turns verse 5 upside down: the singer wanted to glory with the inheritance, and here is the inheritance itself loathed by its owner. The cause is given in the verses before.

Judges 2:14 describes the pattern: God “delivered them into the hands of spoilers... and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about.” Those who hated them came to rule over them, the reverse of Psalm 105:14, where no one was allowed to do them wrong.

“Brought into subjection” is kana, to be bowed down, the verb of Judges 3:30, “So Moab was subdued under the hand of Israel.” The book of Judges uses it of Israel’s enemies being humbled; here Israel is the one bowed.

Nehemiah 9:28, another long confession of the nation’s history, has the same words: “many times didst thou deliver them according to thy mercies.” “Brought low” is makakh, to sink, to be worn down. The cycle is stated once for all its turns.

At the burning bush God said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people... and have heard their cry” (Exodus 3:7). The same seeing and hearing come round again, after all the provocations. “Regarded” is literally “looked upon”.

Judges 2:18 says “it repented the LORD because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them.” “Repented” means relented. “For them” is significant: the covenant is remembered on their behalf, not because of anything they remembered.

Solomon prayed that God would “give them compassion before them who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them” (1 Kings 8:50). 2 Kings 25:27–30 ends with such a kindness: Evil-merodach of Babylon released the captive king Jehoiachin and gave him a place at his table.

In 1 Chronicles 16:35 the same prayer is sung: “Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather us together, and deliver us from the heathen.” Deuteronomy 30:3–4 promised a gathering “from all the nations” even from “the outmost parts of heaven”. The request shows the singers are still scattered.

This doxology closes the fourth book of the Psalms. In 1 Chronicles 16:36 the line is followed by what happened: “And all the people said, Amen, and praised the LORD.” Here the Amen is still asked for, and the book ends with hallelujah.