BackgroundAn anonymous communal confession that closes Book IV of the Psalter; the closing prayer to "gather us from among the nations" (verse 47) leads many scholars to date the psalm during or after the Babylonian exile.
Psalm 106: They Soon Forgot His Deeds
By Bea Zalel
Psalm 106
- Hallelujah! Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever.
- Who can describe the mighty acts of the LORD or fully proclaim His praise?
- Blessed are those who uphold justice, who practice righteousness at all times.
- Remember me, O LORD, in Your favor to Your people; visit me with Your salvation,
- that I may see the prosperity of Your chosen ones, and rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, and give glory with Your inheritance.
- We have sinned like our fathers; we have done wrong and acted wickedly.
- Our fathers in Egypt did not grasp Your wonders or remember Your abundant kindness; but they rebelled by the sea, there at the Red Sea.
- Yet He saved them for the sake of His name, to make His power known.
- He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; He led them through the depths as through a desert.
- He saved them from the hand that hated them; He redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.
- The waters covered their foes; not one of them remained.
- Then they believed His promises and sang His praise.
- Yet they soon forgot His works and failed to wait for His counsel.
- They craved intensely in the wilderness and tested God in the desert.
- So He granted their request, but sent a wasting disease upon them.
- In the camp they envied Moses, as well as Aaron, the holy one of the LORD.
- The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan; it covered the assembly of Abiram.
- Then fire blazed through their company; flames consumed the wicked.
- At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped a molten image.
- They exchanged their Glory for the image of a grass-eating ox.
- They forgot God their Savior, who did great things in Egypt,
- wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
- So He said He would destroy them— had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach to divert His wrath from destroying them.
- They despised the pleasant land; they did not believe His promise.
- They grumbled in their tents and did not listen to the voice of the LORD.
- So He raised His hand and swore to cast them down in the wilderness,
- to disperse their offspring among the nations and scatter them throughout the lands.
- They yoked themselves to Baal of Peor and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods.
- So they provoked the LORD to anger with their deeds, and a plague broke out among them.
- But Phinehas stood and intervened, and the plague was restrained.
- It was credited to him as righteousness for endless generations to come.
- At the waters of Meribah they angered the LORD, and trouble came to Moses because of them.
- For they rebelled against His Spirit, and Moses spoke rashly with his lips.
- They did not destroy the peoples as the LORD had commanded them,
- but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs.
- They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them.
- They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.
- They shed innocent blood— the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.
- They defiled themselves by their actions and prostituted themselves by their deeds.
- So the anger of the LORD burned against His people, and He abhorred His own inheritance.
- He delivered them into the hand of the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them.
- Their enemies oppressed them and subdued them under their hand.
- Many times He rescued them, but they were bent on rebellion and sank down in their iniquity.
- Nevertheless He heard their cry; He took note of their distress.
- And He remembered His covenant with them, and relented by the abundance of His loving devotion.
- He made them objects of compassion to all who held them captive.
- Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from the nations, that we may give thanks to Your holy name, that we may glory in Your praise.
- Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say, “Amen!” Hallelujah!
Theme
Psalm 106 is the dark companion to Psalm 105. The two psalms walk through the same history with the same scenes. Where Psalm 105 catalogs God's faithfulness, Psalm 106 catalogs Israel's failure. The psalm names Egypt (verses 7-12), the Red Sea (verses 9-12), the wilderness cravings (verses 13-15), the rebellions of Dathan and Abiram (verses 16-18), the golden calf at Horeb (verses 19-23), the refusal to enter the land at Kadesh (verses 24-27), the worship of Baal of Peor (verses 28-31), Meribah (verses 32-33) and the Canaanite syncretism after the conquest (verses 34-39). The pattern is relentless: God acts, the people forget, judgment falls, mercy intervenes. This is the long anatomy of how a covenant people loses its way.
The hinge of the psalm is verse 13: "They soon forgot his deeds." The Hebrew verb is "shakach", the inverse of the "zakar" (to remember) that filled Psalm 105. To forget the works of God is, in Hebrew thought, to step out of one's true identity. Memory and obedience are inseparable. The psalm gives the congregation a vocabulary for naming this drift in the first person plural. "We have sinned with our fathers; we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness" (verse 6). This is not the prayer of a single penitent but a corporate confession, the kind of prayer also offered by Daniel in Daniel 9:4-19 and by Nehemiah in Nehemiah 9:5-37 in the post-exilic period.
Verse 48 closes Book IV of the Psalter: "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say, Amen. Praise the LORD." Each of the five books of the Psalter ends with a similar doxology (compare 41:13, 72:18-19, 89:52, 150). These doxologies are not part of the psalms they conclude but liturgical seams that the editors of the Psalter inserted to mark the end of a major collection. Book IV, dominated by the kingship-of-God psalms (93-100) and the great hymns 103-106, ends with this confession that even at our worst the LORD is to be blessed. The psalm asks, in verse 47, that the LORD would save and gather his people from among the nations. That cry, sung in exile, would be carried forward into the rest of the Psalter and into the prayer of Israel through every dispersion.
Discussion questions
- Psalm 106 walks through the same history as Psalm 105 but tells the dark side. Why might the canon want both versions standing side by side?
- The Hebrew "shakach" (to forget, verse 13) is the inverse of Psalm 105's "zakar" (to remember). How does forgetting function as the seedbed of every other sin in this psalm?
- Verse 6 begins, "We have sinned with our fathers." How does corporate confession differ from individual confession? Where is each appropriate?
- The psalm is often dated post-exilic because of the closing prayer "gather us from among the nations" (verse 47). How does that historical setting shape your reading of the whole confession?
- Verse 48 is the doxology that closes Book IV of the Psalter. How does ending a book of the Psalter on confession-then-blessing speak to the rhythm of Israel's worshiping life?
- Phinehas appears in verses 30-31 and his act is "counted to him as righteousness". Compare this with Genesis 15:6 (Abraham). What does it mean that righteousness can be counted in such different stories?
- Verses 37-38 name child sacrifice to demons. How does the psalm refuse to soften the worst chapter of the people's history?
- Where are the corporate sins of your own community most easily forgotten? What would it take to sing them honestly before God?
- Compare Psalm 106 with the communal confessions in Daniel 9:4-19 and Nehemiah 9:5-37. What features do these prayers share?
- Verse 8 says God "saved them for his name's sake". How does that motive for divine action reshape what mercy means and does not mean?
Read this psalm in another translation
The inline text above is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB). Open in a new tab to compare with a modern licensed translation: