Psalms 106

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The psalm opens with the liturgical formula halelu Yah and the confession hodu la-YHVH ki tov ki le-olam chasdo ('give thanks to the LORD for He is good, for His faithful love is forever'). This exact phrase appears in Psalms 107:1, 118:1, 136:1, and 1 Chronicles 16:34. The confession of God's goodness and eternal chesed precedes the confession of Israel's sin — grace comes first, even in penitential liturgy.

Translator Notes

1. The rhetorical question mi yemallel gevurot YHVH ('who can speak the mighty acts of the LORD?') acknowledges that God's acts exceed human capacity to narrate them. The verb mallel ('to speak, to recount') means that even the longest psalm cannot exhaust the subject.

Translator Notes

1. The beatitude ashrei shomerei mishpat ('blessed are the keepers of justice') sets the standard that the rest of the psalm will show Israel failing to meet. The phrase oseh tsedaqah be-khol et ('doing righteousness at all times') is the ideal — continuous, unfailing obedience. The psalm will now demonstrate that Israel achieved this at almost no point in their history.

Translator Notes

1. The psalmist makes a personal request within the communal psalm: zokhreini YHVH ('remember me, LORD'). The verb paqdeini ('visit me') uses paqad, which means to attend to, to take note of, to act on behalf of. The psalmist asks to be included in the favor (ratson) God shows His people and in the salvation (yeshu'ah) God provides.

Translator Notes

1. Three purpose clauses: lir'ot ('to see'), lismo'ach ('to rejoice'), lehithallel ('to boast'). The psalmist wants to witness God's goodness to Israel, participate in the nation's joy, and share in the glory of being God's nachalah ('inheritance, possession'). This personal prayer frames the communal confession that follows.

Translator Notes

1. The three sin-verbs (chata, avah, rasha) correspond to the three sin-nouns in Psalm 103:10-12 (chet, avon, pesha). What Psalm 103 celebrated God forgiving, Psalm 106 confesses Israel committing. The two psalms are in theological conversation.

Translator Notes

1. The first failure: lo hiskilu nifle'otekha ('they did not understand your wonders') — Israel saw the plagues but did not comprehend their meaning. The phrase lo zakheru et rov chasadekha ('they did not remember the multitude of your faithful loves') uses the plural of chesed — God's faithful love was manifold, and Israel forgot all of it. The rebellion at the yam suf ('Sea of Reeds') refers to Exodus 14:11-12, where Israel complained that Moses had brought them to die in the wilderness.

Translator Notes

1. The pattern that will repeat throughout the psalm: Israel sins, yet God saves. The motivation is le-ma'an shemo ('for His name's sake') — not for Israel's merit but for God's own reputation. The phrase lehodi'a et gevurato ('to make known His might') means the salvation was a display of divine power intended for witness beyond Israel.

Translator Notes

1. God rebuked (vayyig'ar) the sea as He rebuked the waters in Psalm 104:7 — the same authority over chaos. The tehomot ('depths, abysses') through which Israel walked became like a midbar ('desert, wilderness') — dry ground in the middle of the ocean. The imagery collapses the distinction between land and sea: where God commands, any terrain becomes walkable.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyoshi'em ('He saved them') and vayyig'alem ('He redeemed them') pair salvation with redemption. The go'el concept from Psalm 103:4 returns — God acts as kinsman-redeemer, buying Israel back from the enemy's grasp.

Translator Notes

1. The sea that parted for Israel closed over their enemies: echad mehem lo notar ('not one of them remained'). The totality is emphatic — the destruction was complete. The same waters that served as walls for Israel became a grave for Egypt.

Translator Notes

1. Brief, conditional faith: vayyaaminu vidvarav ('they believed His words') — but only after seeing the miracle. The singing (yashiru tehillato) refers to the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15). The psalm will immediately show how short-lived this faith was.

Translator Notes

1. The verb miharu ('they hurried') modifies the forgetting — they forgot quickly (shahekhu ma'asav). The phrase lo chikku la'atsato ('they did not wait for His counsel') means impatience drove their rebellion. They wanted answers and provision on their schedule, not God's. Speed of forgetting is the measure of shallow faith.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase vayyit'avvu ta'avah ('they desired a desire, they craved a craving') is an intensified form — the cognate accusative emphasizes the force of the desire. The reference is to Numbers 11:4-6, the craving for meat. The verb vayyenassu ('they tested') means they put God on trial, demanding proof of His ability and willingness to provide.

Translator Notes

1. The word razon is debated — it could mean physical illness (Numbers 11:33, where a plague struck those who ate the quail) or spiritual emptiness. Both readings are theologically productive. The principle is the same: desire fulfilled outside God's timing and will produces not satisfaction but wasting.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyeqan'u ('they were jealous') introduces the Korah rebellion (Numbers 16). The jealousy targeted Moses' authority and Aaron's priestly status as qedosh YHVH ('the holy one of the LORD'). The title qedosh designates Aaron as set apart by God — the jealousy is ultimately against God's appointments, not merely human leaders.

Translator Notes

1. The earth itself executed judgment: tiftach erets vattiblah Datan ('the earth opened and swallowed Dathan'). The reference is Numbers 16:31-33. The verb bala ('to swallow') pictures the ground consuming the rebels like a mouth. The addat Aviram ('assembly of Abiram') was covered (vattekhas) — buried alive. The creation that Psalm 104 celebrated now serves as instrument of judgment.

Translator Notes

1. The fire (esh) that burned among the rebels (Numbers 16:35) is here presented as divinely directed: lehavah tellahet resha'im ('a flame devoured the wicked'). The 250 men who offered unauthorized incense were consumed by fire from the LORD.

Translator Notes

1. The golden calf: ya'asu egel be-Chorev ('they made a calf at Horeb'). The mountain of revelation became the mountain of idolatry. The massekah ('cast image, molten idol') is the work of human hands substituted for the invisible God. The verb vayyishtachavu ('they bowed down') — the posture of worship directed toward a metal animal.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The word tavnit ('form, pattern, image') means they did not merely make an idol but created a representation — they reduced the unrepresentable God to a visible form. The specification okhel esev ('eating grass') is the psalm's contemptuous detail: the 'god' they made was herbivorous.

Translator Notes

1. The verb shakhekhu ('they forgot') echoes verse 13 — forgetting is Israel's habitual sin. The God they forgot is El moshi'am ('God their savior, the God who delivers them'). The irony is extreme: they forgot the One who had just done gedolot ('great things') in Egypt. The proximity between salvation and forgetting measures the shallowness of Israel's memory.

Translator Notes

1. The nifla'ot ('wonders') in Egypt and nora'ot ('terrible things, awesome acts') at the Sea of Reeds are the very events the psalm described in verses 7-11. The repetition emphasizes the magnitude of what Israel forgot.

Translator Notes

1. The image of standing in the breach (perets) became a standard metaphor for intercessory prayer. Ezekiel 22:30 uses the same image: God sought someone to stand in the gap, and found no one. Moses is the paradigmatic intercessor — the one person whose prayer could halt divine judgment.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyim'asu ('they rejected, they despised') is applied to erets chemdah ('the desirable land, the land of delight'). The reference is Numbers 13-14: the spies returned with a report of giants, and the people refused to enter. The phrase lo he'eminu lidvaro ('they did not believe His word') identifies the root cause: unbelief. God had promised the land; they did not believe the promise. The rejection of the land is ultimately a rejection of God's word.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyeragenu ('they grumbled, they murmured') uses ragan, a word for discontented whispering — the kind of complaint that spreads through a camp tent by tent. The phrase be-oholeihem ('in their tents') locates the grumbling in private spaces — it was not public protest but corrosive private complaint. They would not listen (lo shame'u) to God's voice.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase vayyissa yado ('He raised His hand') is an oath gesture — God swore with an uplifted hand. The content of the oath: lehappil otam bamidbar ('to make them fall in the wilderness'). This is the judgment of Numbers 14:29-35: the exodus generation would die in the wilderness and never enter the land.

Translator Notes

1. The judgment extends beyond the wilderness generation: u-lehappil zar'am baggoyim ('to make their seed fall among the nations'). The verb lezarotam ('to scatter them') points to the exile — the diaspora is foreshadowed here as a consequence of the same pattern of unbelief that characterized the wilderness generation. The psalm reads exile as the long-delayed consequence of Kadesh Barnea.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyitsamdu ('they yoked themselves, they attached themselves') uses tsamad, a word for binding or yoking — Israel bound itself to a foreign deity the way an ox is yoked to a plow. Ba'al Pe'or was a Moabite deity associated with the incident of Numbers 25. The phrase zivchei metim ('sacrifices of the dead') means either sacrifices offered to dead gods (idols) or sacrifices associated with death cults. Either way, Israel ate what was offered to that which is not God.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyakh'isu ('they provoked, they angered') uses ka'as, the word for deep vexation. The ma'alaleihem ('their deeds, their practices') refers to the sexual and cultic participation with Moab. The maggefah ('plague, striking') that broke out killed 24,000 (Numbers 25:9).

Translator Notes

1. Phinehas (Pinchas) is the second intercessor after Moses. The verb vayefallel ('he intervened, he judged, he interceded') can mean judicial execution or intercessory prayer — in Numbers 25:7-8, Phinehas drove a spear through the Israelite man and the Midianite woman. The plague stopped (vatte'atsar) because of his decisive action. Like Moses in verse 23, one person's intervention saved the nation.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase vattechasev lo litsedaqah ('it was counted to him as righteousness') uses the same language as Genesis 15:6 (Abraham 'believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness'). Phinehas' act of zeal was evaluated by God as tsedaqah — righteous action. The scope is le-dor va-dor ad olam ('to generation and generation forever'). Numbers 25:12-13 confirms this: God gave Phinehas a covenant of perpetual priesthood.

Translator Notes

1. The mei Merivah ('waters of Meribah/Strife') refers to Numbers 20:1-13. The people's quarreling (riv) at Meribah provoked God, but the consequence fell on Moses: vayyera le-Mosheh ba'avuram ('it went badly for Moses because of them'). Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it and was barred from entering the land. The people's sin caused Moses' punishment — collective sin has individual casualties.

Translator Notes

1. The verb himru ('they embittered, they rebelled against') has God's spirit as its object in some readings, or Moses' spirit in others. The result: vayvatte bishfatav ('he spoke rashly with his lips'). Moses, the paradigmatic intercessor, was provoked into rash speech. The phrase acknowledges that even the greatest leader can be broken by sustained rebellion. Numbers 20:10 ('Listen, you rebels!') is the rash speech in view.

Translator Notes

1. The scene shifts to the conquest and settlement period. Israel failed to carry out the herem ('devoted destruction') commanded in Deuteronomy 7:1-2. The verb lo hishmidu ('they did not destroy') is a direct indictment of disobedience.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyit'arevu ('they mingled, they mixed') indicates social and cultural integration. The result: vayyilmedu ma'aseihem ('they learned their practices'). The knowledge was not neutral — it was adoption. Israel absorbed the religious practices of the surrounding nations. What Deuteronomy warned against (7:3-4) happened precisely as predicted.

Translator Notes

1. The atsabbeihem ('their idols') is from the root atsav ('to shape, to form, to grieve') — idols are both shaped things and sources of grief. The metaphor moqesh ('a snare, a trap') means the idols that seemed harmless became instruments of entrapment. Israel could not free itself once caught.

Translator Notes

1. The darkest verse in the psalm: vayyizbechu et beneihem ve-et benoteihem ('they sacrificed their sons and their daughters'). The recipients are lashedim ('to demons') — the word shed appears only here and in Deuteronomy 32:17 in the Hebrew Bible. Child sacrifice is attested in 2 Kings 16:3, 17:17, and 21:6. The psalm presents it as the logical terminus of idolatry: begin by serving idols, end by killing your children for them.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase dam naqi ('innocent blood') is the legal term for the blood of those who have committed no crime. The children are innocent; their blood pollutes the land. The verb vattechenaf ('it was polluted, it was defiled') uses chanef, meaning the land itself became profane, contaminated. In Leviticus 18:25, the land vomits out inhabitants who defile it. The psalm traces the path from idolatry to child sacrifice to land pollution to exile — a chain of escalating defilement.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyitme'u ('they defiled themselves') uses tame ('unclean, impure') — ritual and moral defilement. The verb vayyiznu ('they prostituted themselves') uses zanah ('to commit sexual immorality, to be unfaithful'). In prophetic literature, idolatry is consistently described as sexual infidelity — Israel is God's wife, and worship of other gods is adultery. The psalm uses the same metaphor.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase vayyichar af YHVH ('the anger of the LORD burned') is the standard expression for divine wrath. The word vayyeta'ev ('He abhorred, He found detestable') is extreme — God found His own nachalatoh ('His inheritance, His possession') repulsive. The people God chose, the people God redeemed, the people God loved became detestable to Him through their sin. This is the low point of the psalm.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyittenem ('He gave them') means God actively handed Israel over to foreign power. This is the theology of the book of Judges compressed: Israel's subjection to foreign nations is not random political misfortune but divine judgment. The phrase vayyimshelu vahem son'eihem ('their enemies ruled over them') describes the exile as God's deliberate act.

Translator Notes

1. The verb vayyilchatsum ('they oppressed them, they pressed them') uses lachats, the same word used for Egypt's oppression of Israel in Exodus 3:9. The cycle is tragic: the people God freed from oppression now experience oppression again — this time as divine judgment, not Pharaoh's cruelty.

Translator Notes

1. The phrase pe'amim rabbot yatsilem ('many times He delivered them') summarizes the entire Judges cycle: sin, oppression, crying out, deliverance — repeated endlessly. The conjunction ve-hemmah yamru va'atsatam ('but they rebelled in their plans') shows the pattern was unbreakable from the human side. The verb vayyamokku ('they sank low, they were brought low') uses makakh, a word for decay and decline. Each cycle of rebellion brought Israel lower.

Translator Notes

1. The great 'but': vayyar batsar lahem ('He saw their distress'). Despite everything — the golden calf, the grumbling, the idolatry, the child sacrifice — when Israel cried out, God saw and heard. The verb shom'o et rinnatam ('when He heard their cry') echoes Exodus 2:24 — the same God who heard the cry in Egypt hears the cry in exile. God's responsiveness outlasts Israel's rebellion.

Key Terms

Translator Notes

1. The verb nacham applied to God is theologically significant: it does not mean God made a mistake and corrected it, but that God's response to Israel shifted from judgment to mercy. The trigger was not Israel's repentance but God's own covenant-faithfulness. chesed precedes and produces repentance; it does not wait for it.

Translator Notes

1. God arranged compassion (rachamim) for Israel even in captivity: vayyitten otam le-rachamim lifnei kol shoveihem ('He gave them to compassion before all who captured them'). The word shoveihem ('their captors') indicates exile is in view. Even foreign captors were moved to pity — not by Israel's appeal but by God's intervention.

Translator Notes

1. The psalm turns to direct petition: hoshi'enu YHVH Eloheinu ('save us, LORD our God'). The verb qabbe-tsenu min haggoyim ('gather us from among the nations') is the prayer of the diaspora — God's people are scattered and need to be regathered. The purpose of the gathering is worship: lehodot le-shem qodshekha ('to give thanks to your holy name'). Israel wants to be saved not merely for comfort but for praise. This verse appears in 1 Chronicles 16:35.

Translator Notes

1. This verse serves a dual function: it closes Psalm 106 and marks the end of Book IV (Psalms 90-106). The doxology formula appears in 1 Chronicles 16:36. The transition from confession to doxology enacts the psalm's theology: sin is real, but God's blessedness is the final word.