Praise ye the LORD. O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
Psalms 106:1-48.-Call to thanksgiving for God's mercy to His people-namely, such as always do righteousness. Israel, though remembering her unrighteousness, prays God to visit her with the gratuitous salvation which He gives to His people (Psalms 106:1-5); confession of the nation's sins in Egypt, entailing punishment (Psalms 106:6-12); in the wilderness (Psalms 106:13-33); and in Canaan, where their consummated sin led to the oppressive rule of the pagan (Psalms 106:34-43); but as God often heretofore regarded their affliction and cry, and remembered for them His covenant, so now He has begun to make them pitied by their captors: therefore they resume the prayer of Psalms 106:4-5, that God will gather them from among the pagan to thank His holy name forever (Psalms 106:44-48). The time is before the close of the captivity in Babylon, answering to the time of Daniel's prayer, at the beginning of the Medo-Persian dynasty (Daniel 9:1-27, to which our psalm is the lyrical echo, Hengstenberg.) The 'Hallelujah' at the beginning, and also at the close, marks this psalm third of the trilogy, Psalms 104:1-35; Psalms 105:1-45; Psalms 106:1-48.
This psalm solves the difficulty in the way of Israel's restoration (Psalms 105:45) - namely, that in order to regain Canaan according to God's covenant, they ought to have kept God's laws. Their unfaithfulness seems to deprive them of the help which nature (Psalms 104:1-35) and history (Psalms 105:1-45) assures them of. Here God's grace, pledged in His covenant of old, is shown to outweigh their sins: now that they repent and seek His grace, He will restore them to the praise of His grace forever. The Spirit overruled the words (1 Chronicles 16:34-36) which in David's time applied to the captive Jews whom the invading Edomites had taken (Psalms 60:1-12, title), to suit the nation in the Babylonian captivity, and still more in its present dispersion.