Psalms 136

Psalms 136:1-26

The confirmation. The answer is now given to this call to bear witness, and the ground traveled over in the former psalm is gone over here again, but in short sentences to every one of which the celebration of Jehovah’s loving-kindness in what is spoken of is attached. Be it creation; be it redemption; judgment on their enemies,or mercy to themselves, this seal is set upon all His work, that Jehovah’s loving-kindness has been working in it. And indeed in all His acts all that He is must act: if He be good, as God is, He must be good in everything He does.

1. First of all He is Jehovah, the Unchangeable, the covenant-God God of gods, the alone Supreme, and Lord of lords, -exhibiting now this supremacy.
2. Then He is spoken of in His works of wisdom, the One who alone doeth great wonders. His creative work -as given in the second, third, and fourth verses -evidently corresponds to that of the second, third, and fourth of the six days. The second speaks of the firmament of the heavens, therefore, the separation of the waters from the waters. The third, of the bringing up of the dry land from under the waters, by which man’s abode was formed for him. The fourth, of the luminaries, which condition, by the changing seasons which they occasion; all the activities of his practical life.* But this the psalmist cannot pass so briefly, but must expand it in the two following verses.

In the fifth place, the sun, as ruler in the day, is really the physical governor of man’s earth, and so of man: among material things the fullest representative of that goodness of God which wakes up all Nature in response, to minister to him. The moon; on the other hand, is but, as it were, a delegate of the sun; and can only imperfectly reflect his rays so as to limit the darkness. All this has abundance of teaching for us, and should help to make Nature, what God would have it for us, a great open lesson-book. But we have not space to dwell upon it here.**
3. The psalmist turns now to speak of God’s manifestations of Himself for His peculiar people; and as in the previous psalm; but in more detail, speaks first of His wonders in Egypt. First, the smiting of the first-born, smiting off their fetters. Then what was the direct consequence, their being brought out; the outstretched arm which manifested Him to all in this; the Sea yielding to His hand, and Himself bringing the people through; the victory over Pharaoh and all his host. The brief notice of the wilderness rounds off this section, completing, as it were, the deliverance in Egypt. 4. We now come to the land, in which the nations, dispossessed because of their sin, have now to yield to Israel their inheritance. The six verses here seem to be plainly three couplets: the first dwelling upon the power of those who are made to yield; the second specifies the twin Amorite kingdoms that opposed themselves at the threshold of their inheritance; the third speaks of the inheritance itself as made over to them. The language is of the very briefest. What seems possible in the way of spiritual application has been elsewhere dwelt upon; but here it is Israel’s song of praise, and doubtless for them these old histories may have new light shed upon them by their latter-day experiences. 5. The psalm closes with God’s remembrance of their low estate, and their new deliverance in the time to which the Psalms as a whole so constantly point forward. The third verse abruptly widens out to the acknowledgment of the full satisfaction for all flesh which the Lord of all has provided, and which may be surely applied in the fullest way to every kind of need. With Israel’s blessing, we are reminded that the blessing of the whole earth comes in; and the last verse may naturally be taken as the praise of all.