Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 (NRSV)
1 Praise the Lord!
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever.
2 Who can utter the mighty doings of the Lord,
or declare all his praise?
3 Happy are those who observe justice,
who do righteousness at all times.
4 Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people;
help me when you deliver them;
5 that I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones,
that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation,
that I may glory in your heritage.
6 Both we and our ancestors have sinned;
we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.
19 They made a calf at Horeb
and worshiped a cast image.
20 They exchanged the glory of God
for the image of an ox that eats grass.
21 They forgot God, their Savior,
who had done great things in Egypt,
22 wondrous works in the land of Ham,
and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
23 Therefore he said he would destroy them—
had not Moses, his chosen one,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn away his wrath from destroying them.
Psalm 106 has the theme of Israel’s recurring disobedience contrasted with God’s enduring covenant faithfulness. The psalm uses Israel’s history as a theological pattern: God saves, the people forget and rebel, judgment follows, and God responds again with mercy. The document develops this pattern well, especially through the contrast between divine action and human response. Its strongest insight is that confession becomes an act of hope: because God remained merciful in the past, the community can seek restoration in the present.
Praise and thanksgiving: The psalm begins by affirming God’s goodness and steadfast love.
Communal confession: The speaker identifies the present generation with the sins of its ancestors, making guilt collective rather than merely historical.
Rebellion through forgetfulness: Israel repeatedly forgets God’s saving acts, leading to distrust, idolatry, and injustice.
Judgment and mercy: God disciplines Israel, yet judgment is repeatedly interrupted by compassion, covenant loyalty, and intercession.
History as hope: The past is not reviewed simply to condemn Israel; it provides grounds for believing that God will forgive and restore the exiled community.
Restoration: The request to be gathered from among the nations makes the psalm both a confession and a prayer for renewed covenant life.
Introduction
This psalm has a connection to Deuteronomy. It is like Psalm 105, but the focus now is disobedience. In fact, this psalm may have had a connection with Psalm 105 exceedingly early. The Psalm shows God as acting on behalf of Israel while Israel responds with disobedience. Some scholars look at it as a post-exilic psalm that presents a history of the sins of Israel that culminates in idolatrous practices that polluted the land of Israel and led to the destruction and exile. The catalogue of sins shows how forbearing and forgiving the Lord has been throughout the past, and by implication, how forgiving the Lord will continue to be, since the Lord maintains the covenant and is merciful. The confession of the failure of Israel to trust the Lord leads to an affirmation of the compassion of the Lord. The history of the Lord and Israel is the model for the future. The exile of 586 BC, says the poet, is no different from earlier punishments, after which the Lord took Israel back into divine favor. The psalm is both a praise to the Lord and a request to be gathered from the nations and thus returned from exile. Like Psalm 105, this psalm invokes Torah traditions along with interpretive comments. It adopts a Deuteronomic view that the exile was caused by the sins of Israel.
Verse by verse study
In Psalm 106: 1-6, we find a call to the community to testify to the everlasting goodness of the Lord. 1 Praise the Lord! O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. This ritual exclamation was common in the exilic period, as we see in Psalm 107, 118:1, 29, 136:1, I Chronicles 16:41, and II Chronicles 7:6. The summons to offer praise and thanksgiving in prayer has its underlying thought and motivation in the goodness of God.[1]We find the same call in I Chronicles 16:34. In distinction from Greek worship of the cosmos, which is perishable, the goodness of the Lord will remain. We have a reminder of the eternity of God in Christian theology.[2] 2 Who can utter the mighty doings of the Lord, or declare all his praise? Speech itself is not worthy of offering this praise of the multiplicity of the divine acts of the Lord.[3] 3 Happy are those who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times. Obedience to the divine command in the sense of justice and righteousness brings blessedness. In verse 4-5, the supplication refers to promises of salvation and the saving deeds. The psalmist wishes to be included in the national favor that the Lord will grant. 4 Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people; help me when you deliver them; 5 that I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the gladness of your nation, that I may glory in your heritage. He refers to the people of the Lord as the chosen ones, the nation, and the heritage of the Lord. Yet, in a confession of guilt that unites present with past, 6 Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.The poet owns and confesses present failure. The present generation joins itself to past generations of sinners, implicitly suggesting that it should be forgiven, as they were.
Psalm 106: 19-23 are part of a larger section that extends to verse 33, in which the poet is numbering the sins of the nation. Referring to Exodus 32:1-14, the Israelite tribes already breaking the first and second commandments, 19 They made a calf at Horeb, a favored term of Deuteronomy for Sinai, and worshiped a cast image. 20 They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass, an interpretive comment belittling the molten calf. 21 They forgot God, their Savior. The people of God forgot God, who had done great things in Egypt, 22 wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. God saved by mighty deeds or acts. In a disturbing way to our modern sensitivities, the psalm has no problem presenting God as vindictive. 23 Therefore he said he would destroy them—had not Moses, as we are told of the intercession by Moses in Exodus 32:11-14, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them. Even Moses had more mercy that did the Lord, it appears.
Application
Forgetfulness has a humorous side. Studies show that people forget about four things a day. They forget the car keys, they forget the phone, they forget to buy something at the store, they forget where the car was parked, they forget someone's name and they forget their reason for going into a certain room. It is like, "What am I doing here?" These same studies show that men tend to be more forgetful and that they rely on their wives to help them. The same studies show that the wives do not rely on their husbands to help them when they happen to forget something. They know their husbands are hopeless. Yes, we tend to forget.
Of course, the forgetfulness described here is not of the humorous.
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