Chapter 106
1Praise the LORD! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his kindness endures forever.
2Who can speak the mighty acts of the LORD or make all his praise heard?
3Blessed are those who keep justice, who do righteousness at all times.
4Remember me, O LORD, in the acceptance of your people; visit me with your salvation.
5That I may see the welfare of your chosen ones, rejoice in the joy of your nation, and boast with your inheritance.
6We have sinned with our fathers; we have perverted and acted wickedly.
7Our fathers in Egypt did not understand your wonders; they did not remember the abundance of your kindness but rebelled at the sea, at the Red Sea.
8He saved them for the sake of his name, to make his might known.
9He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; he led them through the depths as through a wilderness.
10He saved them from the hand of those who hated them and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.
11Waters covered their enemies; not one of them remained.
12They believed his words; they sang his praise.
13They hastened; they forgot his works; they did not wait for his counsel.
14They desired a desire in the wilderness and tested God in the wasteland.
15He gave them their petition and sent leanness into their soul.
16They were jealous of Moses in the camp, of Aaron the holy one of the LORD.
17The land opened and swallowed Dathan and covered the congregation of Abiram.
18Fire burned among their congregation; a flame set the wicked ablaze.
19They made a calf at Horeb and bowed down to a molten image.
20They changed their glory for the pattern of an ox that eats vegetation.
21They forgot God their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt.
22Wonders in the land of Ham, awesome deeds at the Red Sea.
23He said to destroy them—unless Moses his chosen one had stood in the breach before him to turn back his rage from destroying.
24They rejected the land of desire; they did not believe his word.
25They grumbled in their tents; they did not listen to the voice of the LORD.
26He lifted his hand to them to make them fall in the wilderness.
27To make their seed fall among the nations and to scatter them in the lands.
28They joined themselves to Baal of Peor and ate sacrifices of the dead.
29They provoked him by their deeds, and a plague broke out among them.
30Phinehas stood and intervened, and the plague was restrained.
105
Psalm
Psalms 103–106 (part 3)
Psalm 105:32-106:30
Key words in this passage
Cross-references
Study notes
These verses move from the final plagues that emptied Egypt and the provisions that sustained the people in the wilderness to a confession that links the present generation to their fathers' repeated failures. Divine acts rest on the remembered word to Abraham, yet the people respond with rebellion at the sea, craving in the desert, jealousy of their leaders, the calf at Horeb, refusal of the land, and attachment to Baal of Peor. Judgment follows each turn, interrupted only when Moses or Phinehas stands between the people and destruction. The summons to praise arises from a community that has just admitted its pattern of forgetting the very kindness it now asks to receive again.
What is Psalms 103–106 (part 3) about?
Psalm 105:32 opens with the hail and fire that struck Egypt’s crops, then moves through the locusts, the death of the firstborn, and the departure with silver and gold. The account continues with the cloud, the quail, and water from the rock, all tied to the promise made to Abraham. By 105:45 the tone shifts to a call to keep statutes, followed at once by the fresh summons to praise in 106:1.
The central tension appears when the same people who received these acts are shown forgetting them. They rebel at the sea, crave food in the wilderness, grow jealous of Moses and Aaron, fashion the calf at Horeb, reject the land, and join the rites of Baal of Peor. Each episode ends with swift judgment, yet the psalm also records moments when one person’s stand—Moses in the breach or Phinehas at Peor—halts the destruction.
These verses therefore sit at the hinge between two long historical psalms. They display the pattern of divine provision met by human rebellion, and they raise the question of how a people can still appeal for acceptance when their fathers’ record is one of repeated provocation.
Where does this passage sit in Psalm?
Psalm 105:32 begins inside the chain of signs already under way in the preceding verses, where the hail and locusts continue the pattern of direct divine speech that empties the land. That same pattern reaches its climax at the death of the firstborn and the exodus with silver and gold, then shifts without pause into the cloud, quail, and rock that sustain the people on the way to the land promised to Abraham. The closing line of the recital, “So that they might keep his statutes,” therefore hands the reader directly to the fresh summons of 106:1. The praise that opens the next psalm is immediately qualified by the confession that the same people “have sinned with our fathers,” and the catalogue of rebellions that follows mirrors the earlier sequence of mercies point for point: the sea crossing, the craving in the wilderness, the jealousy of Moses and Aaron, the calf at Horeb, the refusal of the land, and the rites at Peor. Each failure is answered by swift judgment, yet each judgment is interrupted by a single intervening figure—Moses in the breach, Phinehas at the plague—so that the destruction does not run its full course. The two psalms thus stand as paired movements within the larger collection of 103–106: the first traces the unbroken line from promise to fulfillment, the second traces the repeated line from fulfillment to rebellion, and the hinge between them is the single imperative to keep the statutes that the people have already shown themselves unable to observe.
How is the passage structured?
After the inheritance of lands the psalm states its purpose in a single clause about keeping statutes, then closes with the command to praise the LORD. The following psalm begins with the same imperative and adds a question about declaring the mighty acts, followed by a blessing on those who maintain justice at all times. A personal petition for remembrance comes next, after which the tone changes to corporate confession of sin with the fathers.
From that confession the account proceeds through a chain of episodes. The sea rebellion is met with deliverance that dries the waters and covers the enemy. The wilderness craving receives the requested food yet brings leanness to the soul. Jealousy of Moses and Aaron produces the earth swallowing Dathan and Abiram together with fire among the congregation. The calf at Horeb is presented as an exchange of glory for an image of an ox, prompting the declaration that God would have destroyed the people unless Moses had stood in the breach. Rejection of the land draws the lifted hand that sentences the generation to fall in the wilderness and their seed to be scattered. The attachment to Baal of Peor ends with plague, halted only when Phinehas stands and intervenes.
The movement therefore alternates between recital of divine provision, human rebellion, judgment, and the two moments of intercession that interrupt the pattern of destruction. The first half of the block gathers God’s acts into a continuous line from Egypt to Canaan; the second half breaks the same history into discrete failures, each marked by its own consequence and, in two cases, by a single figure who turns back the outcome.
What is the historical background?
The hail that ruined vines and fig trees points to the mixed agriculture of the Nile delta, where such crops supplied both daily food and trade goods for Egyptian households. Locust swarms appear in Egyptian records as recurring threats that could strip fields bare within days, matching the description of countless insects consuming every green thing. The death of every firstborn aligns with the cultural weight placed on the eldest son as the primary heir and bearer of family strength in both Egyptian and Israelite society.
The cloud that covered the people by day and the fire that lit their nights recalls the practical need for guidance across the arid stretches between Egypt and the Sinai peninsula. Water from the rock addresses the scarcity of reliable springs in that limestone terrain, where travelers depended on rare fissures for survival. Horeb, the site of the calf incident, designates the same mountain region later associated with covenant-making, a place where molten images could be fashioned from available metal.
Baal of Peor refers to a local Moabite deity whose rites included offerings to the dead, practices attested in ancient texts from the Transjordan. Such meals formed part of fertility cults that drew Israelite participants away from exclusive loyalty to the LORD. The intervention by Phinehas reflects the recognized authority of Aaron’s descendants to act decisively when plague threatened the camp, a role tied to priestly responsibility for maintaining ritual boundaries.
The lands given to the people represent territory previously held by Canaanite city-states, whose labor-intensive fields and vineyards became the inheritance described in the psalm. These details ground the remembered events in the physical and social world of the eastern Mediterranean rather than in abstract categories.
What does this passage teach about God?
God’s actions in these verses rest on his prior commitment. He sends hail, locusts, and the death of the firstborn because he remembers the word spoken to Abraham, then leads the people out with silver and gold and supplies quail and water in the wilderness. The same power that judges Egypt also opens the rock and spreads the cloud. Yet the account repeatedly shows that the people respond by forgetting what he has done. They rebel at the sea, test him with their craving, grow jealous of Moses and Aaron, fashion the calf, refuse the land, and attach themselves to Baal of Peor.
Sin here is not abstract rebellion but concrete refusal to trust the one who has already acted. The psalm records that they “did not understand your wonders” and “did not remember the abundance of your kindness.” Each failure meets swift judgment: the ground swallows Dathan and Abiram, fire consumes the congregation, a plague breaks out at Peor. At the same time the text notes two moments when one person’s intervention stops the destruction—Moses standing in the breach and Phinehas restraining the plague. These stands do not erase the people’s guilt; they show that God’s anger can be turned back when someone intercedes on behalf of the covenant community.
The opening summons to praise therefore stands beside the long record of failure. The call “Praise the LORD! Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his kindness endures forever” is voiced by people who have just confessed that they and their fathers “perverted and acted wickedly.” The endurance of that kindness is not presented as automatic approval of human conduct but as God’s decision to save for the sake of his name even when the people prove faithless. The verses leave the tension unresolved: the same God who scatters seed among the nations also hears the prayer “Remember me, O LORD, in the acceptance of your people.”
What are the interpretive difficulties?
The psalm records that the fathers in Egypt did not understand your wonders and did not remember the abundance of your kindness, yet it offers no further diagnosis of that failure. The statement stands beside the earlier claim that the LORD brought them out with rejoicing, leaving the reader to ask whether the lack of understanding arose before the first act of rebellion or developed across the sequence of events at the sea, in the wilderness, and at Horeb.
Moses is described as the one who stood in the breach before him to turn back his rage from destroying. The phrase pictures someone stepping into an opening to halt an advance, but the psalm supplies neither the words of his appeal nor any indication that the same action would produce the same restraint in every later crisis. Phinehas likewise intervened and the plague was restrained, again without comment on whether his deed established a repeatable pattern or remained a singular case.
The personal request in 106:4 asks to be remembered in the acceptance of your people and visited with salvation. Nothing in the surrounding verses clarifies whether this acceptance refers to a present standing the community already holds or to a future restoration still awaited. The request sits between the corporate admission of sin and the catalog of past judgments, so the text does not resolve how an individual’s hope relates to the larger pattern of rebellion and restraint.
The repeated note that the LORD saved them for the sake of his name appears alongside the accounts of swift punishment. The psalm therefore presents both the motive of preserving reputation and the reality of measured destruction without stating how these two aspects of divine action fit together in any single episode.
Movement by movement
Closing Plagues and Exodus105:32-38
Hail and flames arrive in place of ordinary rain, striking vine and fig tree and shattering every tree along the border. A single word then summons locusts without number, and the young insects consume every plant and every fruit of the ground. The last plague strikes every firstborn in the land, cutting off the first of all their strength. Immediately after that blow the people depart carrying silver and gold, and not one person stumbles within the tribe. Egypt, which had held them, now rejoices at their going out because dread of them has fallen upon the Egyptians.
The movement records no further resistance once the firstborn die. The silver and gold travel with the people as part of the exit itself rather than as goods seized after battle. Egypt’s fear produces release instead of renewed pursuit, so the departure occurs under conditions of dread rather than open conflict. These events stand directly before the cloud that spreads for covering and the fire that gives light by night, showing that the same power that emptied Egypt also begins to guide and sustain the people on the way forward.
Wilderness Care and Covenant Purpose105:39-45
The cloud spread for a covering and the fire to give light at night mark the steady provision that follows the departure from Egypt. These signs continue when the people ask and receive quail along with bread from heaven, then watch the rock open so that waters flow and run like a river through dry places. The psalm anchors every act in the single claim that the LORD remembered the word of his holiness spoken to Abraham his servant. That memory produces the rejoicing with which he brought out his people and his chosen ones, and it extends to the gift of lands once held by the nations. The inheritance of the labor of the peoples stands as the concrete outcome of the earlier promise. The final clause states the intended result without elaboration: the gifts serve so that they might keep his statutes and observe his instructions. The same power that judged Egypt now sustains the people on the way to the land, yet the psalm leaves open how long the rejoicing and the keeping of statutes will last once the wilderness provisions give way to settled life.
Call to Praise and Personal Petition106:1-5
The double command in 106:1 repeats the imperative that ended the preceding recital yet immediately anchors it in the claim that divine kindness endures forever. That claim is followed at once by the question who can speak the mighty acts of the LORD or make all his praise heard, a question that registers the sheer scale of what has just been recounted. The next line pronounces blessing on those who keep justice and do righteousness at all times, setting a standard that stands in tension with the failures about to be confessed. Only then does the psalmist shift to first-person petition, asking the LORD to remember him in the acceptance shown to the people and to visit him with salvation. The stated aim of that visit is concrete: to see the welfare of the chosen ones, to rejoice in the joy of the nation, and to boast with the inheritance. These verses therefore move from renewed corporate praise through an admission of human limits to a personal request for inclusion among those who receive the benefits already described.
Rebellion at the Sea and Rescue106:6-12
The confession begins by linking the present generation to the fathers who sinned, perverted, and acted wickedly. Those fathers in Egypt did not understand the wonders performed there and did not remember the abundance of kindness shown them. Instead they rebelled at the sea, at the Red Sea. The psalm records no explanation for that failure of memory or understanding. What follows is rescue that does not wait for their response: he saved them for the sake of his name, to make his might known. He rebuked the Red Sea so that it dried up, then led them through the depths as through a wilderness. He saved them from the hand of those who hated them and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. Their pursuers disappeared when the waters returned. Only after that deliverance does the psalm note that they believed his words and sang his praise.
Wilderness Tests and the Golden Calf106:13-23
They hastened after the song at the sea and immediately forgot his works, refusing to wait for his counsel. That same impulse surfaces when they desired a desire in the wilderness and tested God in the wasteland. He grants the petition yet sends leanness into their soul. Jealousy follows: they envy Moses in the camp and Aaron the holy one of the LORD, so the land opens for Dathan and covers Abiram’s congregation while fire consumes the wicked. At Horeb they fashion a calf and bow to a molten image, exchanging their glory for the pattern of an ox that eats vegetation. They have forgotten God their Savior who performed great things in Egypt, wonders in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds at the Red Sea. He declares their destruction, yet Moses his chosen one stands in the breach and turns back the rage that would otherwise destroy them.
Rejection of the Land and Peor106:24-30
They rejected the land of desire and did not believe his word. That refusal appears in the grumbling inside their tents, where they refused to listen to the voice of the LORD. The consequence follows at once: he lifted his hand to make them fall in the wilderness and to scatter their seed among the nations. The same pattern of turning away continues when they joined themselves to Baal of Peor and ate sacrifices of the dead. Their deeds provoked him, and a plague broke out among them. At that point Phinehas stood and intervened, and the plague was restrained. Earlier Moses had stood in the breach to turn back rage after the calf at Horeb, yet here the refusal of the promised land itself draws the sentence of scattering. The eating of sacrifices of the dead marks a further step beyond grumbling, moving from complaint against the gift to open attachment to another power. The restraint of the plague comes only after that attachment is formed, showing how the intervention meets an already present provocation rather than preventing the turn itself.
Notes accompany the Anselm Project Bible, an AI translation from the original languages. Tap any verse above for the committee's word-level decisions.
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