Psalms 136

The psalm opens with the line that everything else hangs on: O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. Two reasons are given for the thanks, and they are really one. God is to be thanked because he is good - good not in what He gives but in what He is, good at the root. And that goodness has a name and a duration: his mercy endureth for ever. This is the thesis the whole psalm will defend, and it defends it in the most patient way imaginable - not by argument but by recital, walking through act after act of God and answering each one with the same refrain. Notice that the call is not feel grateful but give thanks: thanksgiving here is something done, said aloud, offered. And it is the first move of a soul that has understood what God is like. Before the psalm asks for anything, before it even remembers anything, it gives thanks - because the most accurate thing that can be said about the Maker of all things is that He is good, and His goodness will not wear out.

The thanks rises at once to the highest possible address: O give thanks unto the God of gods… O give thanks to the Lord of lords (vv. 2-3). These titles deliberately stack superlatives. Whatever powers the ancient world bowed to - whatever it called a “god” or a “lord” - the One being praised here stands over all of them, supreme and unrivalled. The phrasing echoes the words of Moses: the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty (Deut. 10:17). The psalm is not conceding that the other gods are real rivals; it is using the language of the highest rank to say that this God answers to no one, that there is no court above His. And here is the quiet wonder of the psalm's logic: the very next breath after God of gods is the same refrain as every other line - for his mercy endureth for ever. The One at the top of all things is merciful. Supreme power and steadfast love are not in tension in Him; the highest authority in existence is also the kindest. That is precisely what the rest of the psalm sets out to show.

Verses 7 to 9 walk straight through the fourth day of the creation account: To him that made great lights… The sun to rule by day… The moon and stars to rule by night. The wording is almost a quotation of Genesis, and the psalmist clearly wants the reader to hear the echo. But he adds something Genesis leaves implicit. After each piece of the heavens - the great lights, the sun, the moon and stars - comes the refrain: for his mercy endureth for ever. The sun is not merely a fact of physics; it is an act of kindness, set to rule by day so that the world has warmth and light and a rhythm to live by. The moon and stars are mercy too, given to rule by night so that even the darkness is governed and marked and not left formless. There is a striking gentleness in the verb rule. The lights do not merely shine; they govern, they order, they keep the day and the night in their bounds - and that ordering is itself a gift. We so easily take the sky for granted, the dependable turning of day into night and back again. The psalm will not let us. It teaches the worshipper to look up at the most ordinary thing in the world - the sun coming up again - and read it as mercy that has not run out overnight.

The psalm now turns from creation to history, from the making of the world to the making of a people, and the first act it names is severe: To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn (v. 10). It is worth pausing over the fact that the psalm calls even this mercy. The same refrain that crowned the gift of sunlight crowns the night of the Passover. How? Because mercy toward the oppressed and judgement on the oppressor are, in this story, the same act seen from two sides. For four hundred years a people had been enslaved, their infants drowned by royal decree, their cries rising up unanswered - until they were not unanswered. The blow that fell on Egypt was the breaking of a chain that human power would not break on its own. The psalm does not gloat over Egypt; it gives thanks that mercy was strong enough to act. There is a sober comfort in this for anyone who has wondered whether God sees injustice and does nothing. The God of this psalm is not indifferent to the trampled. His mercy is not only tender; it is also a force that finally moves against everything that holds His people down.

The deliverance is described with two phrases that became almost a fixed signature of the Exodus: With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm (v. 12). This is how God Himself had announced what He would do - I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments (Exod. 6:6). The images are bodily and vivid: a hand strong enough to grip and to wrench free, an arm stretched out to its full reach, straining toward the rescue. The point of the language is that the deliverance was God's own doing, not Israel's. They did not fight their way out of Egypt; they were brought out, carried by a strength entirely outside themselves. And the verb the psalm has just used is worth holding onto: He brought out Israel from among them (v. 11). To be brought out is the most passive thing in the world - it is something done to you, not by you. The whole later memory of Israel rests on this: they were a redeemed people before they were anything else, hauled out of bondage by an arm not their own. The refrain insists on the reason: for his mercy endureth for ever. The strong hand was a merciful hand.

The recital moves from the wilderness to its destination: the land that lay on the far side, guarded by kings who would not let Israel pass. To him which smote great kings… And slew famous kings (vv. 17-18). The psalm calls them great and famous - not to flatter them, but to measure the rescue. These were no minor obstacles; they were the recognised powers of the region, names that carried weight, kings whose reputations went before them. And against the people who had nothing - no standing army, no fortified cities, no record of conquest - the difference was not Israel's strength but Israel's God. The same hand that broke Egypt's grip now cleared the road into the inheritance. It is the consistent witness of this whole section: at every point where Israel met a power too great for it, the story does not turn on Israel rising to the occasion but on God acting on their behalf. The refrain keeps the motive in view. Even the toppling of great kings is not raw conquest; it is mercy clearing a path for a homeless people to come home.

Two of the kings are named - Sihon king of the Amorites… And Og the king of Bashan (vv. 19-20) - the rulers Israel faced on the approach to the land, remembered ever after as the first victories on the threshold of the promise. And then comes the goal toward which the whole psalm has been moving since the Exodus began: And gave their land for an heritage… Even an heritage unto Israel his servant (vv. 21-22). The word heritage is tender and important. The land is not described as plunder seized by force; it is a gift given, an inheritance handed down to a people called God's servant. An inheritance is something received, not earned - you do not work for what is left to you; you are simply given it because of a relationship. And there is a deliberate arc here. The same people who were slaves with nothing in verse 11 are landholders with an inheritance by verse 22. The God who brought them out of bondage brought them in to a home. Mercy does not stop at rescue; it does not merely break the chain and leave the freed person standing in an empty field. It settles them, gives them a place, makes the homeless an heir. That is the shape of this enduring love - out of slavery, through the sea and the wilderness, and at last into a land to call their own.

The psalm turns, in its final movement, from them to us. All through the recital God has acted upon ancestors, nations, the figures of the old story; now the pronoun shifts and the worshipper is drawn personally inside the mercy: Who remembered us in our low estate… And hath redeemed us from our enemies (vv. 23-24). The God of the great deeds is not finished; the same mercy that split the sea long ago is the mercy that reached the people now singing. The word remembered carries more weight in Scripture than it does in ordinary speech. To say God remembered is never to suggest He had forgotten; it means He turned His attention into action, that He moved on behalf of those He had in mind. God's remembering is His helping. And notice where He remembered them: in our low estate - not after they had climbed back up, not once they had made themselves presentable, but at the bottom, in the place of weakness and defeat. This is the consistent direction of the whole psalm's mercy. It runs downhill, toward need. The God of gods, the maker of the heavens, the breaker of empires, bends His attention to a people at their lowest - and that bending is the same enduring love as everything that came before.