Psalm 105

Psalms 105:1-6

The psalm opens as a summons to worship before it turns to history, thanks, calling, singing, and talking of his wondrous works stacked as commands before a single act of God is named. Seek the Lord, and his strength, seek his face evermore closes the invitation with continual seeking rather than a single approach, and verse 6 names the audience directly, the seed of Abraham his servant, the children of Jacob his chosen, so the recital that follows belongs to a specific family before it belongs to the world.

Psalms 105:7-11

He is the Lord our God: He is the Lord our God, his judgments are in all the earth sets the scope before the covenant is even named, one God ruling everywhere yet binding himself to one family. The covenant made with Abraham, sworn to Isaac, confirmed to Jacob for a law and to Israel for an everlasting covenant is traced through three generations in four verses, the same promise renamed at each handing on. Barnes notes the psalm calls it covenant, oath, and law in successive lines, one promise wearing every word Scripture has for a binding word.

Psalms 105:12-15

When they were but a few men in number, and strangers in the land they had been promised, God is shown reproving kings for the patriarchs' sake, touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm, language drawn from his dealings with Pharaoh and Abimelech over Sarah and Rebekah. The titles anointed and prophets applied to Abraham and Isaac, men who held no office by those names, read the patriarchal history back through later vocabulary. Henry takes the verse as proof that protection did not wait for the nation to exist before it took effect.

Psalms 105:16-22

The Joseph narrative compresses eleven chapters of Genesis into six verses, the famine that drives the family, the man sent before them, sold for a servant, feet hurt with fetters, until the word of the Lord tried him, and the king who looses him and sets him ruler of his house and his substance. The word of the Lord tried him in verse 19 reads Joseph's imprisonment as a testing the Lord himself administered, not simply Potiphar's own injustice. Gill notes the psalm gives Joseph the same shape as the exodus proper, affliction and testing followed by an exaltation with authority to bind princes and teach senators wisdom.

Psalms 105:23-25

Israel also came into Egypt, and Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham names Egypt by Ham's line rather than by Mizraim or Pharaoh, tying the account back to the table of nations in Genesis 10. He increased his people greatly, and made them stronger than their enemies is stated as God's own doing before the turn against them is named, so the growth that alarmed Pharaoh in Exodus 1 is credited here to the same hand that gave the promise to Abraham. He turned their heart to hate his people sets the coming oppression under God's own sovereignty without excusing Egypt's own cruelty, a reading the older commentators hold without softening either side.

Psalms 105:26-31

sent Moses his servant: Moses and Aaron are named as sent servants before a single plague is described, the recital keeping the emphasis on God's initiative rather than on the resistance the book of Exodus records at length. Darkness, blood, frogs, and flies and lice follow in the psalm's own order rather than the order of Exodus, darkness named first though it fell late in that book's own sequence. Spurgeon reads the reordering as deliberate, the psalm grouping the plagues by kind rather than narrating them by date, poetry organizing what prose narrates in order.

Psalms 105:32-36

gave them hail for rain: Hail and flaming fire, then locusts and caterpillars without number, strip Egypt's vines, fig trees, herbs, and ground before the final plague, all the firstborn in the land, the chief of all their strength, closes the list in a single verse. The two notes together give nine plagues in eleven verses, condensing what Exodus spreads across ten chapters into a recital meant for repetition rather than for teaching detail. Henry observes the psalm passes over the plague of boils and the plague on the livestock by name, naming only what best displays the pattern of a word spoken and a judgment following.

Psalms 105:37-41

He brought them forth also with silver and gold, and there was not one feeble person among their tribes answers Exodus 12's plunder of the Egyptians and reads the nation's health at departure as its own wonder, no invalid left behind after four centuries in bondage. Egypt was glad when they departed, for the fear of them fell upon them turns Pharaoh's earlier fear of Israel's numbers into the whole nation's fear at their leaving. The wilderness provisions, the cloud and fire, the quails and the bread of heaven, and the water from the opened rock, are named in one breath as continuous care rather than as four separate crises.

Psalms 105:42-45

he remembered his holy promise: For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant closes the recital where it began, the whole history read as one long act of promise-keeping rather than a string of separate rescues. The land of the heathen given as inheritance is called the labour of the people, Israel receiving cities and fields and vineyards it did not build, language Deuteronomy 6:10-11 also uses of the conquest. The psalm's own purpose statement ends the recital, that they might observe his statutes and keep his laws, so the whole history is told to produce obedience rather than gratitude alone, and the closing Praise ye the Lord seals the psalm as a hallel.