Psalms 136
Butler19-21. Let blessings in the sense of offered praises go forth out of Zion to Jehovah, who dwelleth in Jerusalem. Let all the people who constitute His Zion pour forth their ceaseless praises to their Almighty Lord who dwells in the midst of them. C.
21. Bless. Praise.** Blessing relateth to His benefits, praise to His excellencies. We bless Him for what He is to us, we praise Him for what He is in Himself. Now, whether we bless Him or praise Him, it is still to increase our love to Him and delight in Him; for God is not affected with the flattery of empty praises. It doth you good to consider Him as an infinite and eternal Being, and of glorious and incomprehensible majesty. It is pleasant and profitable to us. Manton.
A summons to praise Jehovah, who is exalted above the gods of the nations, addressed to the whole of Israel, rounds off the Psalm in such a way that it resumes the strain with which it began. Zion, from whence Jehovah’s self-attestation, rich in might and in grace, diffuses itself, is also to be the place from whence the glorifying attestation of Him by the mouth of men spreads itself abroad. History has realized this. D.
1. O GIVE thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: For his mercy endureth for ever.2 O give thanks unto the God of gods: For his mercy endureth for ever.3 O give thanks unto the Lord of lords: For his mercy endureth for ever.4 To him who alone doeth great wonders: For his mercy endureth for ever.5 To him that by understanding made the heavens: For his mercy endureth for ever.6 To him that spread forth the earth above the waters: For his mercy endureth for ever.7 To him that made great lights: For his mercy endureth for ever:8 The sun to rule by day: For his mercy endureth for ever:9 The moon and stars to rule by night: For his mercy endureth for ever.10 To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: For his mercy endureth for ever:11 And brought out Israel from among them: For his mercy endureth for ever:12 With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: For his mercy endureth for ever.13 To him which divided the Red Sea in sunder:
For his mercy endureth for ever:
14. And made Israel to pass through the midst of it: For his mercy endureth for ever:15 But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea: For his mercy endureth for ever.16 To him which led his people through the wilderness: For his mercy endureth for ever.17 To him which smote great kings: For his mercy endureth for ever:18 And slew famous kings: For his mercy endureth for ever:19 Sihon king of the Amorites: For his mercy endureth for ever:20 And Og king of Bashan: For his mercy endureth for ever:21 And gave their land for an heritage: For his mercy endureth for ever:22 Even an heritage unto Israel his servant: For his mercy endureth for ever.23 Who remembered us in our low estate: For his mercy endureth for ever:24 And hath delivered us from our adversaries: For his mercy endureth for ever.25 He giveth food to all flesh: For his mercy endureth for ever.26 O give thanks unto the God of heaven: For his mercy endureth for ever.
THIS Psalm is little more than a variation and repetition of the preceding Psalm. It opens with the same liturgical formula with which the one hundred and sixth and one hundred and eighteenth Psalms open, and was evidently designed to be sung antiphonally in the temple worship. Its structure is peculiar. The first line of each verse pursues the theme of the Psalm; the second line, “For His lovingkindness endureth forever,” being a kind of refrain or response, breaking in upon and yet sustaining the theme of the Psalm; the first would be sung by some of the Levites, the second by the choir as a body, or by the whole congregation together with the Levites. We have an example of a similar antiphonal arrangement in the first four verses of the one hundred and eighteenth Psalm; but there is no other instance in which it is pursued throughout the Psalm. In the Jewish liturgy this Psalm, with its twenty-six responses, is called “the Great Hallel,” by way of distinction from “the Hallel,” simply so called, which comprises Psalms 113-118, though there is some uncertainty as to the former designation; for according to some “the Great Hallel” comprises Psalm 135: 4-Psalm 136, and according to others, Psalms 120-136. P.
This Psalm consists of two parts: the first, of nine verses, referring to the God of creation; and the second, of seventeen, referring to the God of redemption. The first nine contain three of thanks to God, and a double three referring to creation. The following seventeen contain twice three on the deliverance from Egypt, one on the journey through the wilderness, a twofold three on the conquest of Peræa, three on the subsequent history of Israel, and one re-echoing the first three of thanksgiving. M.
Praise Him for what He is (vs. 1-3); for what He is able to do (v. 4); for what He has done in creation (vs. 5-9); for what He did in redeeming Israel from bondage (vs. 10-15); for what He did in His providence toward them (vs. 16-22); for His grace in times of calamity (vs. 23, 24); for His grace to the world at large (v. 25); and praise Him at the remembrance that this God is the God of heaven (v. 26). A. Bonar.
1. Give thanks to the Lord, not only because He doeth good, but because He is good; all the streams must be run up to the fountain; not only because He is merciful to us, but because His mercy endures forever, and will be drawn out to those that shall come after us. We must give thanks to God, not only for that mercy which is now handed out to us here on earth, but for that which shall endure forever in the glories and joys of heaven. H.
His mercy endureth forever. This sentence is the wonder of Moses, the sum of revelation, and the hope of man. M.—Many sweet things are in the Word of God, but the name of mercy is the sweetest word in all the Scriptures, which made the Psalmist harp upon it twenty-six times in this Psalm, “For His mercy endureth forever.” H. Smith.—It is the sweetest stanza that a man can sing. What joy that there is mercy, mercy with Jehovah, enduring mercy, mercy enduring forever! We are ever needing it, trying it, praying for it, receiving it; therefore let us forever sing of it. S.
4. Doeth wonders. There is nothing that God has established in a constant course of nature, and which, therefore, is done every day, but would seem a miracle and exercise our admiration if it were done but once; nay, the ordinary things in nature would be greater miracles than the extraordinary, which we admire most, if they were done but once. Donne.—This power of preserving things in their station and motion, and the renewing of them, is more stupendous than that which we commonly call miraculous. We call those miracles which are wrought out of the track of nature, and contrary to the usual stream and current of it, which men wonder at because they seldom see them and hear of them, as things rarely brought forth in the world; when, the truth is, there is more of power expressed in the ordinary station and motion of natural causes than in those extraordinary exertings of power. Charnock.
God has wrought many miracles and daily works, but those miracles are much weakened in the sight of men because they are very usual. A greater miracle it is that God Almighty every day feeds all the world, and directs the good, than that miracle was that He filled five thousand men with five loaves; but men wondered at this, not because it was a greater marvel, but because it was unusual. Who now gives fruit to our fields, and multiplies the harvest from a few grains of corn, but He who multiplied the five loaves? Ælfric.—The philosophy of miracles is just the revelation of the living God, as the God of nature; the revelation of God, not as violating, but as maintaining the order of His world; a revelation sudden and startling, to show to us what could not be shown so effectually in any other way, what “His hand is daily doing for the beautifying and glorifying of the earth and of life.” As Westcott says, in his thoughtful work on Miracles, “The order of the universe has a spiritual root. The purpose of love which changes is also the purpose of love which directs it. He who can bind and loose the forces of nature has thus revealed the eternal purpose in which they originate.” Macmillan.
5-9. The general laws of nature are rules that God has laid down for the regulation of His own procedure. It is not that, as a Being omnipresent and omnipotent, ever watchful and ever active, He needs those helps which man requires in consequence of his infirmities. The Almighty can never be weighed down under the burden of His government. He adopts the mode of procedure by general laws, not for His own convenience, but for that of His intelligent creatures. “I call,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “the effects of Nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe His actions unto her is to devolve the honor of the principal agent upon the instrument, which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast that they have built our houses, and our pen receive the honor of our writings.” It is surely possible for us so to expand our minds as to discover both the agent and the instrument—to discover the goodness of God in the blessing sent, and the wisdom of God in the means, so adapted to our state, through which the blessing comes. M’Cush.
When God comes forth from the unvisioned light of His own eternal, self-adequate Being, and flashes into energy in creation, providence, or grace, the law of His working and His purpose are one in all regions. The unity of the Divine acts depends on this, that all flow from one deep source, and all move to one mighty end. This Psalm puts what people call the “philosophy” of creation and of providence very clearly in accordance with this thought, that the love of God is the source, and the blessedness of man the end of all His work. Creation, then, is the effluence of the loving heart of God. Though the sacred characters be but partially legible to us now, what He wrote, on stars and flowers, on the infinitely great and the infinitely small, on the infinitely near and the infinitely far off, with His creating hand, was the one inscription—God is love. And as in nature, so in providence. The origination and the support and the direction of all things are the works and the heralds of the same love. It is printed in starry letters on the sky. It is graven on the rocks and breathed by the flowers. It is spoken as a dark saying even by sorrow and pain. The mysteries of destructive and crushing providences have come from the same source. And he who can see with the Psalmist the ever-during mercy of the Lord, as the reason of creation and of judgments, has in his hands the golden key which opens all the locks in the palace chambers of the great King. He only hath penetrated to the secret of things material, and stands in the light at the centre, who understands that all comes from the one source—God’s endless desire for the blessedness of His creatures! A. M.
5. By wisdom made the heavens. God has built the heavens in wisdom, to declare His glory and to show forth His handiwork. There are no iron tracks with bars and bolts to hold the planets in their orbits. Freely in space they move, ever changing, but never changed; poised and balancing; swaying and swayed; disturbing and disturbed, onward they fly, fulfilling with unerring certainty their mighty cycles. The entire system forms one grand complicated piece of celestial machinery; circle within circle, wheel within wheel, cycle within cycle; revolutions so swift as to be completed in a few hours; movements so slow that their mighty periods are only counted by millions of years. Anon.
7. Great lights. The luminaries of heaven are unspeakable blessings to the children of men. The sun, in the greatness of his strength, measures their day, and exerts an influence over animal and vegetable life which surrounds them with innumerable comforts; and the moon and stars, walking forth in their brightness, give direction to them amid the hours of night, and both by land and sea proclaim the wisdom, benignity, and gracious arrangement of the adorable Creator. By these luminaries day and night, heat and cold, summer and winter are continually regulated; so that God’s covenant with the earth is maintained through their medium. How truly, then, may we exclaim, “His mercy endureth forever”! John Morison.
8. The sun. The lantern of the world, as Copernicus names the sun, enthroned in the centre, is the primary source of light and of radiating heat, and the generator of numerous terrestrial, electro-magnetic processes, and indeed of the greater part of the organic vital activity upon our planet, more especially that of the vegetable kingdom. The solar force, in its widest generality, gives rise to alterations on the surface of the earth—partly by gravitative attraction—as in the ebb and flow of the ocean (if we except the share taken in the phenomenon by lunar attraction); partly by light and heat-generating transverse vibrations of ether, as in the fructifying admixture of the aerial and aqueous envelopes of our planet, from the contact of the atmosphere with the vaporizing fluid element in seas, lakes, and rivers. The solar action operates, moreover, by differences of heat, in exciting atmospheric and oceanic currents; the latter of which have continued for thousands of years (though in an inconsiderable degree) to accumulate or waste away alluvial strata, and thus change the surface of the inundated land; it operates in the generation and maintenance of the electro-magnetic activity of the earth’s crust, and that of the oxygen contained in the atmosphere; at one time calling forth calm and gentle forces of chemical attraction, and variously determining organic life in the endosmose of cell-walls and in tissue of muscular and nervous fibres; at another time evoking light processes in the atmosphere, such as the colored coruscations of the polar light, thunder and lightning, hurricanes and water-spouts. But the waves of light not only exert a decomposing and combining action on the corporeal world; they not only call forth the tender germs of plants from the earth, generate the green coloring matter (chlorophyll) within the leaf, and give color to the fragrant blossom; they not only produce myriads of reflected images of the sun in the graceful play of the waves, as in the moving grass of the field; but the rays of celestial light, in the varied gradations of their intensity and duration, are also mysteriously connected with the inner life of man, his intellectual susceptibilities, and the melancholy or cheerful tone of his feelings. This is what Pliny the elder referred to in these words, “The sun chases sadness from the sky, and dissipates the clouds which darken the human heart.” Von Humboldt.
9. The stars guide the traveller both by sea and land; they direct the navigator in tracing his course through the pathless ocean. They serve “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” They direct the labors of the husbandman, and determine the return and conclusion of the seasons. They assist us in commerce and in endeavoring to propagate religion among the nations, by showing us our path to every region of the earth. They have enabled us to measure the circumference of the globe, to ascertain the density of the materials of which it is composed, and to determine the exact position of all places upon its surface. They cheer the long nights of several months in the polar regions, which would otherwise be overspread with impenetrable darkness. Above all, they open a prospect into the regions of other worlds, and tend to amplify our views of the Almighty Being who brought them into existence by His power, and “whose kingdom ruleth over all.” In these arrangements of the stars in reference to our globe, the Divine wisdom and goodness may be clearly perceived. T. Dick.
10. Up to this point it is God, the Creator of all things, to whose praise the poet stirs up men; from this point onward it is the God of the history of redemption. D.
10-15. Because the monarch of Egypt stood in the way of the Lord’s gracious purposes it became needful for the Lord to deal with him in justice; but the great design was mercy to Israel, and through Israel mercy to succeeding ages and to all the world. Mercy cleared the road, mercy cheered the host, mercy led them down, and mercy brought them up again. Even to the depth of the sea mercy reaches—there is no end to it, no obstacle in the way of it, no danger to believers in it, while Jehovah is all around. “Forward!” be our watchword, as it was that of Israel of old, for mercy doth compass us about. S.
23-25. God’s everlasting mercy is here celebrated, first, in the redemption of His Church (vs. 23, 24); in the many redemptions wrought for the Jewish Church out of the hands of their oppressors; when, in the years of their servitude, their estate was very low, God remembered them and raised them up saviours—the judges—and David at length, by whom God gave them rest from all their enemies; but especially in the great redemption of the universal Church, of which these were types, we have a great deal of reason to say, “He remembered us, the children of men, in our low estate, in our lost estate, for His mercy endureth forever; He sent His Son to redeem us from sin, and death, and hell, and all our spiritual enemies; for His mercy endureth forever; He was sent to redeem us and not the angels that sinned; for His mercy endureth forever.” Second, in the provision He makes for all the creatures (v. 25), He gives food to all flesh. It is an instance of the mercy of God’s providence, that wherever He has given life He gives food agreeable and sufficient; and He is a good housekeeper that provides for so large a family. H.
The very air we breathe, the bread we eat, our common blessings, we have them all from grace, and all from the tender mercy of the Lord. You have here the story of the notable effects of God’s mercy, and he concludes it thus, “Who giveth food to all flesh; for His mercy endureth forever.” Mark, the Psalmist doth not only ascribe those mighty victories, those glorious instances of His love and power to His unchangeable mercy, but he traces our daily bread to the same cause. It is not only mercy which gives us Christ and salvation by Christ, and all those glorious deliverances and triumphs over the enemies of the Church; but it is mercy which furnisheth our tables, it is mercy that we taste with our mouths and wear at our backs. It is notable, our Lord Jesus, when there were but five barley loaves and two fishes, “lifted up His eyes and gave thanks.” Though our provision be never so homely, yet God’s grace and mercy must be acknowledged. Manton.
26. The God of heaven. The phrase, “God of heaven,” is not found in the earlier Scriptures. We meet it nowhere else in the Psalms; but we meet it in 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and Jonah, and it is twice found in the Apocalypse. It is a sublime and appropriate designation of the true God, expressive of His glorious elevation above the passions and perturbations of earth. To him all flesh should give thanks, for all receive His mercy in many forms and ways. His favors come down on generation after generation, and to His willing, obedient people they shall flow on during eternal ages. Plumer.
There is no reason to be given for grace but grace; there is no reason to be given for mercy but mercy; “for His mercy endureth forever.” Ralph Venning.
Jesus Christ is the organ and centre of all mercy for men. A merciful God is their God in Jesus Christ. It is part of His royal name and title, the Lord God, merciful and gracious—keeping mercy for thousands; longsuffering and of great mercy; He delighteth in mercy. Such are some of the phrases of the Old Testament, while in the New this is the great topic, and every page seems to exhale the fragrance of the benediction, grace, mercy, and peace. The goodness, the love, the grace, and the mercy of God are only so many phases of the same orb; all the outshining of one and the same benignant Jehovah; and all entitled to our praise.
If it was right for Israel to recount the memory of these national advantages, it is doubly incumbent on Christians to speak to the praise and the glory of that grace wherein we are accepted in the Beloved. Especially should we record the great transaction, the chosen display of Divine goodness to mankind, in the election of Messiah—His taking human flesh, His companying with rejecting men in circumstances of lowliness and shame and pain, His conflict with the hour of darkness, His bloody, mysterious death, and His godlike resurrection. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. The main channel and torrent of mercy flows in a majestic stream in the redemption of the soul; but its flood receives and embosoms ten thousand lesser currents of temporal bounty. Divine mercy does not neglect the less while she accomplishes the greater. As she marches heavenward, with eyes fixed upon the crown and kingdom, she scatters largesses at every step. All our blessings flow from this same open hand, and are, therefore, properly denominated mercies. The covenant includes these, and the believer hopes for them, on the principle that all is his. Our persons, our landscapes, our neighborhoods, our city, our State, our nation, our race, are recipients every moment of this boundless favor; magnified inconceivably when we consider that it descends upon the unworthy, and made most tender and impressive when we consider that it descends upon us. And there is no view of the Divine glory which so exalts Him, as when He is beheld as the source of incessant and innumerable and immeasurable rivers of good; Himself the great parent on whom all the ranks of creatures hang and are nourished. J. W. A.
How blessed to know of a love which cannot change or die! We may bring the blessedness of all the past into the present, and calmly face the misty future, sure that it cannot rob us of His love. Looking on all the flow of ceaseless change, the waste and fading, the alienation and cooling, the decrepitude and decay of earthly affection, we can lift up with gladness, heightened by the contrast, the triumphant song of the ancient Church, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good, because His mercy endureth forever!” A. M.