Psalms 135

Section 2. (Psalms 135:1-21; Psalms 136:1-26.)The testimony of history confirmed. The two psalms that follow are evidently a supplementary section; in which Israel’s witness to God is given; the acknowledgment which shall at last be made to Him as to His ways of perfect faithfulness and wisdom all through His dealings with them. There is a peculiarity in these psalms which this accounts for, that they both take up mainly the deliverance from Egypt and their being brought into the land His latter-day mercies to them only being brought in at the end, as if the completion of this, which no doubt is the truth. All their history between has been but an interruption of the blessing then ready to come, which their unbelief put away from them for the many generations that have intervened. Then; at last, that old Egyptian deliverance will be. as it were, repeated in a still more wondrous way: the broken-off history will be taken up again and completed, and thus its meaning will be at last fully shown.

Psalms 135:1-21

The summons to render it. The first of these psalms is the summons to celebrate this, to which the second is the response. In this recalling of their old history there are doubtless abundant lessons which we carelessly overlook, just because we are so familiar with it; and here the numerals ought to afford signal help, only that here also we are but too dull, though for an opposite reason.

1. We have first the exhortation to praise Jehovah as the Sovereign Lord and Disposer of all, and who has been pleased in this way to take up Jacob for Himself, -not surely for good in Jacob. He who has done so is Lord above all gods, with which His people have, alas, so constantly compared Him, -inconceivably great unto those so infinitely little. But Jehovah has done, spite of all opposition, just what He pleased in heaven and in earth. Vapor, and rain; and lightning, and wind -all the apparatus of storm are in His hand, and made to serve His beneficent purposes.
2. The psalmist then recalls His ways as the Deliverer of His people in Egypt, and right on into the land. The smiting of the first-born was the blow that struck off their shackles from them; though part only of a succession of signs and wonders in which He had displayed Himself for their deliverance. In the land given them for an inheritance also He smote many nations and mighty kings, and gave their land unto His people.
3. Briefly as all this is spoken of, a briefer section still speaks of His return now to the fulfillment of His purposes of love then intimated, now for so long seeming to be set altogether aside. Yet the words of Moses, song quoted (ver.14) show that all this had been anticipated before ever the land was entered. And this would be His remembrance for all generations that Jehovah had taken up again the cause of His people, to judge it in all its reality, not passing over the evil, and yet repenting for those now returned to be His servants.
4. Here again, therefore, and in language which is almost identical with that of the 115th psalm; the rebuke of the senseless idolatry which degraded its followers to its own level. Compare the notes upon the former psalm.
5. Israel are exhorted to go on with their own covenant-God, alone worthy of all blessing and praise, and now with them in His fixed abode in Zion. The first two verses of this last section correspond essentially also with the exhortation of the 115th psalm but here the house of Levi is added to the house of Aaron; though structurally joined with those “that fear Jehovah.” I am unable to assign a reason for this, and so for the numerical significance of these two verses.