The author of this psalm is unknown, as is the occasion on which it was composed. It resembles the seventy-eighth psalm in the fact that both are of an historical nature, recounting the dealings of God with his people in their deliverance from the bondage in Egypt. The object of the former psalm however, seems to have been “to recall the nation from their sins,” and to vindicate the dealings of God with the Hebrews in his arrangements for their government, or in the change of the administration, by giving the government to the tribe of Judah under David, rather than to Ephraim; the object of this psalm is “to excite the people to gratitude” by the remembrance of the goodness of God to the people in former times. Accordingly this psalm is occupied with recounting the mercies of God - his various acts of intervention in their history - all apppealing to the nation to cherish a grateul remembrance of those acts, and to love and praise him.
The first sixteen verses of the psalm are substantially the same as the first part of the psalm composed by David when he brought up the ark, as recorded in 1 Chronicles 16:8-22. But at that point the resemblance ceases. Probably the author of this psalm found in the one composed by David what was suitable to the occasion on which this was composed, and adopted it without any material change. In the remainder of the psalm, he has simply carried out in the history of the Jews what was suggested by David in the psalm in 1 Chronicles 16, and has applied the idea to the other events of the Jewish history, as furnishing a ground of praise. The psalm is a mere summary of the principal events of that history to the time when the people entered the promised land - as laying the foundation of praise to God.