Let the Redeemed of the Lord Say So
107 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble
3 and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.
4 Some wandered in desert wastes,
finding no way to a city to dwell in;
5 hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainted within them.
6 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
7 He led them by a straight way
till they reached a city to dwell in.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
9 For he satisfies the longing soul,
and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
10 Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
12 So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
16 For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron.
17 Some were fools through their sinful ways,
and because of their iniquities suffered affliction;
18 they loathed any kind of food,
and they drew near to the gates of death.
19 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
20 He sent out his word and healed them,
and delivered them from their destruction.
21 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
22 And let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving,
and tell of his deeds in songs of joy!
23 Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
24 they saw the deeds of the Lord,
his wondrous works in the deep.
25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
26 They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
27 they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits’ end.
28 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
29 He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 Then they were glad that the waters were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.
31 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
32 Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
33 He turns rivers into a desert,
springs of water into thirsty ground,
34 a fruitful land into a salty waste,
because of the evil of its inhabitants.
35 He turns a desert into pools of water,
a parched land into springs of water.
36 And there he lets the hungry dwell,
and they establish a city to live in;
37 they sow fields and plant vineyards
and get a fruitful yield.
38 By his blessing they multiply greatly,
and he does not let their livestock diminish.
39 When they are diminished and brought low
through oppression, evil, and sorrow,
40 he pours contempt on princes
and makes them wander in trackless wastes;
41 but he raises up the needy out of affliction
and makes their families like flocks.
42 The upright see it and are glad,
and all wickedness shuts its mouth.
43 Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things;
let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord. 1
1 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Ps 107:1–43). (2016). Crossway Bibles.
Psalm 107:1-23
The Pilgrims’ Psalm: Part 1
Through Many Dangers, Toils, and Snares
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say this—
those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands,
from east and west, from north and south.
Some wandered in desert wastelands,
finding no way to a city where they could settle.…
Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom,
prisoners suffering in iron chains.…
Some became fools through their rebellious ways
and suffered affliction because of their iniquities.…
Others went out on the sea in ships;
they were merchants on the mighty waters.…
verses 1–23
It may seem strange to anyone who knows anything about the English Puritans to speak of Psalm 107 as “The Pilgrims’ Psalm,” not because they did not know, frequently read, and greatly cherish it, but because being people of the Book they loved and cherished the other psalms too. In fact, they cherished the entire Bible.
But that is not the whole story. As anyone who knows anything about the Pilgrims is aware, Psalm 107, more than any other portion of the Bible, aptly describes the many dangers, toils, and snares they experienced prior to, during, and after their courageous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean to found America’s Plymouth Colony. Did they recognize this description themselves? There is reason to think they did, since Governor William Bradford in his account of the founding of the Plymouth Plantation explicitly referred to Psalm 107 in his well-known summation of their achievement:
May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: “Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice and looked on their adversity,.… “Let them therefore praise the Lord, because he is good: and his mercies endure forever.” “Yes, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, shew how he hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord his loving kindness and his wonderful works before the sons of men.”
Those words are based on Psalm 107, which suggests that the psalm was often in the Pilgrims’ minds. Since the Pilgrims came ashore on Monday, December 11, 1620, after having spent the prior day worshiping God, it is even likely that Psalm 107 was the basis for that Sabbath’s meditation.
In its own setting Psalm 107 is a praise song of the regathered people of Israel after their Babylonian bondage. Thus Psalms 105, 106, and 107 form a trilogy. Psalm 105 recounts Israel’s experience from the time of God’s covenant with Abraham to the people’s entrance into the promised land; Psalm 106 tracks their unfaithfulness during that same time period and reflects the years of their exile to Babylon; and Psalm 107 thanks God for their deliverance from that exile. Still, the psalm was aptly used by the Pilgrims and may be loved by us as well, since the examples it gives of the perils from which the people of God are delivered are at once common, varied, and suggestive. We can see ourselves in each of these situations.
The psalm has three parts: an opening (vv. 1–3), the main body (vv. 4–32), and a closing grateful reflection on God’s sovereignty in human affairs (vv. 33–43, the subject of our next chapter).
A Call to Praise God
Charles Spurgeon wrote that the theme of the psalm is “thanksgiving and the motives for it.” Thanksgiving is the note struck in the opening verses as well as in the refrain of verses 8–9, 15–16, 21–22, and 31–32. The opening says,
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say this—
those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands,
from east and west, from north and south.
This call should cause us to ask a probing, personal question, namely, Am I among the redeemed? meaning, Am I one who has been delivered from sin and so been gathered from my aimless secular wanderings to be a part of God’s well-loved, well-grounded, and well-established covenant people? If you have been redeemed from your sin by the death of Jesus Christ, you should thank God for your deliverance and tell others that God is indeed “good” and that “his love endures forever,” as the psalm says. This is its first lesson. According to the first chapter of Romans, it is a mark of the unregenerate that “they neither [glorify God] as God nor [give] thanks to him” (v. 21).
Pictures of Peril
The main body of Psalm 107 is comprised of verses 4–32, which fall into four clearly marked sections. Each is a poetic picture of some deadly peril common to mankind but from which God regularly delivers his people. These pictures may be images of the Babylonian captivity or possibly even literal descriptions of the conditions from which the Jews of that time were rescued, but they also picture our own spiritual condition apart from Jesus Christ. In each of these sections, after describing our peril and God’s deliverance, the psalmist reminds us how much we should be thankful.
1. Homes for the homeless. Homelessness or perhaps just being lost in the wilderness is the first picture of peril (vv. 4–9). It is described in touching tones:
Some wandered in desert wastelands,
finding no way to a city where they could settle.
They were hungry and thirsty,
and their lives ebbed away.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress (vv. 4–6).
It is easy to understand why these words would have appealed to our Pilgrim fathers as describing their experiences. These poor people had been driven from their homes and were virtually hounded from place to place, at one time escaping England for Holland, until at last they set sail for the American continent. According to William Bradford, they “were hunted and persecuted on every side.… Some were taken and clapped up in prison, others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped their [enemies’] hands; and the most were fain [constrained] to flee and leave their houses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood.”
These were the problems they faced in the early 1600s. So when they finally came to America and were settled in their own homes from 1620 on, however rustic these rude shelters may have been, the Pilgrims felt enormous gratitude to God. As the psalmist says,
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He led them by a straight way
to a city where they could settle (vv. 6–7).
In our congregation at Tenth Presbyterian Church we have many people who have been homeless but who have cried out to the Lord and been given homes to live in. They are thankful for their homes. Even if you have never been homeless and have always had a home, should you not be even more grateful than those who have only been given homes recently? One of the greatest blessings of my life was the Christian home in which I was raised, where I was taught that Jesus is my Savior from sin, learned my first Bible verses, and was trained in such sound habits of Christian piety as prayer, regular church attendance, and joyful fellowship with God’s people. If you had a good home or have one now, then do what the psalm says:
Give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for men,
for he satisfies the thirsty
and fills the hungry with good things (vv. 8–9).
I have looked at this image as part of the Pilgrim’s experience and as our having literal homes today, but we are all homeless without God, who is our only true home. Apart from God we are like the prodigal son, who left his father’s home to squander his substance in a far country. Salvation began when he came to his senses, confessed his sin, and returned to his father. Have you returned to God, crying, “Father, I have sinned against you!”?
2. Freedom for captives. The second image of this central section of the psalm (vv. 10–16) describes the distress of prisoners. The Pilgrims’ leaders were often put in prison for dissenting from the established religion of the time, and when small groups tried to escape the persecution by sailing across the English Channel to Holland or elsewhere, they were frequently arrested on that account too.
Bradford tells of several such incidents. In one, the men were separated from their wives and children. “Pitiful it was to see the heavy case of these poor women in this distress; what weeping and crying on every side, some for their husbands that were carried away.… others not knowing what should become of them and their little ones; others again melting in tears, seeing their poor little ones hanging about them, crying for fear and quaking with cold. Being thus apprehended, they were hurried from one place to another and from one justice to another, till in the end they knew not what to do with them.” Bradford recounts how eventually they all nevertheless did manage to get to Holland, where they thanked God.
There are not many among us who can speak of being delivered from prison literally—though there are some—but all who are Christians can speak of being delivered from the prison house of sin. This prison is what Jesus seems to have had in mind in the synagogue at Nazareth when he spoke of having come “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners” (Luke 4:18; cf. Isa. 61:1–2). Jesus did not free anyone from a literal prison, as far as we know, but he has freed everyone who has ever believed on him from sin’s shackles. We have been slaves to sin, but by his atoning death we have been forever liberated.
Each of us can say that we have “rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High,” as the psalmist does in verse 11, and that God “brought [us] out of the darkness and the deepest gloom and broke away [our] chains,” as he does in verse 14. Shouldn’t we thank God for that deliverance? The refrain says (with appropriate variation from verses 8–9),
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for men,
for he breaks down gates of bronze
and cuts through bars of iron (vv. 15–16).
John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress and a Puritan, saw verse 16 as a description of Christ’s breaking through the bronze gates and iron bars of Bunyan’s tightly closed-up heart to save him. He resisted Jesus, but Jesus proved all-powerful. Has Jesus shown himself to be all-powerful for you? Shouldn’t you be thankful he is?
3. Healing for the sick. The third image (vv. 17–22) pictures people who “suffered affliction because of their iniquities” (v. 17). It describes illness so severe that it brought those afflicted “near the gates of death” (v. 18). This section describes the Pilgrim experience too. Four of the original small band of 102 passengers died before they even reached America, one just before the ship landed. Most terrible of all, half of the remainder died in that first cruel winter, which Bradford called “the starving time.” Only twelve of the original twenty-six heads of families and four of the original twelve unattached men or boys survived, and all but a few of the women perished. As for the rest, there was much sickness.
You may have experienced God’s deliverance from a serious illness, just as the psalmist describes and the Pilgrims experienced. The psalm is also depicting deliverance from spiritual sickness, since it refers to “affliction” caused by “their iniquities” and God’s “word” as the agent of our healing (v. 20).
God’s Word is the only thing that heals our spiritual sicknesses, for it is the only thing that has life. As the Bible pictures it, our condition apart from Christ is far worse than merely being sick. We are actually dead, so far as any ability to respond or come to God is concerned: “dead in [our] transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1). When God speaks his Word from the mouth of the preacher to our hearts, we experience a spiritual resurrection, just as Lazarus did when Jesus called him from the tomb (John 11:43–44). Using another image, Peter spoke of our being born again “not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).
If you are a Christian, God has saved you “from the grave” (v. 20) by that same life-giving Word. The psalm says you should be thankful for that salvation.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for men.
Let them sacrifice thank offerings
and tell of his works with songs of joy (vv. 21–22).
4. Safety for those at sea. In the opinion of many commentators the most beautiful, most poetic, and certainly the most stirring section of Psalm 107 is the part that describes the peril of God’s people while at sea (vv. 23–32). Although it was not, it might have been written as a description of that difficult sixty-five-day, late-fall crossing of the turbulent North Atlantic by the Pilgrim fathers and their families.
Others went out on the sea in ships;
they were merchants on the mighty waters.
They saw the works of the Lord,
his wonderful deeds in the deep.
For he spoke and stirred up a tempest
that lifted high the waves.
They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;
in their peril their courage melted away.
They reeled and staggered like drunken men;
they were at their wits’ end.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
and he brought them out of their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper;
the waves of the sea were hushed.
They were glad when it grew calm,
and he guided them to their desired haven (vv. 23–30).
A person needs to have been on the ocean in a violent storm to appreciate how accurate those frightening words are.
Forget the ocean. Perhaps you have been in a situation of an entirely different nature but in which you have also been at your wits’ end and cried to the Lord and were delivered. Perhaps you were facing a serious financial problem, a personality conflict at work, or a battle within your family. If you were delivered, listen to what the psalm says.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for men.
Let them exalt him in the assembly of the people
and praise him in the council of the elders (vv. 31–32).
There is nothing so becoming the children of God as public acknowledgment of his unmerited favors and unfathomable goodness to them.
Thanks, Exaltation, and True Praise
In the next chapter we are going to look at this psalm’s last section, in which the psalmist makes observations about God’s acts. Before we do so, let us consider the refrain ending each of the preceding sections as they deal with God’s rescue of the homeless, his deliverance of the prisoners, his healing of the sick, and his preservation of those who go to sea.
The refrain occurs four times. In each of these occurrences the first two lines are the same—“let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men”—but the next two lines vary. In the first two cases there are reasons for giving thanks to God: because God “satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things” (v. 9), and because “he breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron” (v. 16)—that is, because of God’s salvation. The last two cases suggest ways we can give God thanks: by offering him “thank offerings” (v. 22), and by exalting “him in the assembly of the people and prais[ing] him in the council of the elders” (v. 32).
How can we sacrifice thank offerings to God today? The only possible answer is by offering God ourselves. The apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship” (Rom. 12:1). Nothing less than the offer of our complete selves is adequate. Nothing else is demanded. Having done that, we must then also speak about God’s mercies to other people, as the psalm commands.
Psalm 107
The Pilgrims’ Psalm: Part 2
Grace Has Led Us Home
He turned the rivers into a desert,
flowing springs into thirsty ground,
and fruitful land into a salt waste,
because of the wickedness of those who lived there.
He turned the desert into pools of water
and the parched ground into flowing springs;
there he brought the hungry to live,
and they founded a city where they could settle.
They sowed fields and planted vineyards
that yielded a fruitful harvest;
he blessed them, and their numbers greatly increased,
and he did not let their herds diminish.
Then their numbers decreased, and they were humbled
by oppression, calamity and sorrow;
he who pours contempt on nobles
made them wander in a trackless waste.
But he lifted the needy out of their affliction
and increased their families like flocks.
The upright see and rejoice,
but all the wicked shut their mouths.
Whoever is wise, let him heed these things
and consider the great love of the Lord.
verses 33–43
John Newton was a Puritan. He was also a pilgrim in one sense, though he lived a hundred years after the Pilgrims we have been talking about (in the previous chapter). In the third stanza of his best-known hymn, “Amazing Grace,” he has given a summary of the Pilgrims’ experience as well as an outline of the Pilgrims’ psalm.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
’tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
and grace will lead me home.
In the first two parts of Psalm 107, the introduction (vv. 1–3) and the overview of the diverse deliverances of God’s people (vv. 4–32), we have seen how God delivers his people from the many dangers, toils, and snares of this life. Now we will see how he also brings us home, anchoring our souls in a safe harbor at last.
Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier wrote a book entitled A Place to Be, which claims that a place to belong, a home, is what we all most deeply desire. Tournier says we long for it all our lives and are restless until we find it. Psalm 107 tells us that God provides just such a home for his people. We have a home in God here and now, a home enriched by our having Christian brothers and sisters. Even more important, we have the assurance of a happy, eternal heavenly home hereafter.
The Experience of the Pilgrims
The Pilgrims were dispossessed of their homes in England. They left their temporary homes in Holland. While making their perilous three-month crossing of the Atlantic Ocean they were without a home; even the Mayflower did not belong to them. When they reached the shores of Massachusetts Bay at what came to be called Plymouth Colony, they had a home of their own at last. During that first desperate winter they constructed rustic shelters for themselves and thus established the first permanent English settlement in North America.
They suffered terribly that winter, but in the spring the few healthy men planted crops, the sick recovered, and in the fall they gathered in their first harvest. What American does not know the story of that harvest and the first Thanksgiving? William Bradford tells of an abundance of fish and wild game that were added to the harvest celebration that November. It is not from Bradford that we learn the details of that thanksgiving celebration; they are found in a letter written by Edward Winslow to a friend in England in December 1621. Winslow tells of a three-day feast attended not only by the Pilgrims but also by the local Indians, the great chief Massasoit himself arriving for the feast with ninety men.
Well might these hearty survivors have said, “Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men” (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31), for “there he brought the hungry to live, and they founded a city where they could settle” (v. 36). We also should always thank the Lord for similar blessings.
The Other Side of the Story
There is another side to this story: The good times were succeeded by hard times again. The Pilgrims suffered anxiety over divisions caused by new colonists from other places, distress at being cheated by ship captains, and fear of war with distant Indian tribes. Then the crops sometimes failed or did poorly, and sicknesses returned.
Have you noticed how Psalm 107 acknowledges this pattern? It is not talking about the Pilgrims, of course, but it tells how in other cases God gave a fruitful harvest and increased the numbers of the people and their livestock but then also allowed the harvests of these same people to fail and their numbers to decrease. In fact, it repeats this cycle twice in the last section: hard times (vv. 33–34), blessing (vv. 35–38), hard times again (vv. 39–40), and blessing again (vv. 41–42).
At verse 33 there is such an abrupt change in tone and even (to some extent) in subject matter that some of the more liberal writers imagine the psalm was put together from two otherwise unrelated poems. The first half of the psalm rejoices in the deliverances accomplished by God and calls on the people who were delivered to praise and thank God for it. The final section reflects in a distant, settled way on God’s sovereign workings by which his people are sometimes lifted up and sometimes brought low. The first few verses use images, noting how God “turned rivers into a desert” (v. 33) and “the desert into pools of water” (v. 35), “fruitful land into a salt waste” and “parched ground into flowing springs” (vv. 34–35). As far as the people were concerned, the psalm says God “blessed them, and their numbers greatly increased” but also that “their numbers decreased, and they were humbled by oppression, calamity and sorrow” (vv. 38–39).
The difference in tone and content is only a case of the psalmist’s honesty, depth, and spiritual sensitivity being greater than our own. He is acknowledging that not everything the people of God experience can be described as a deliverance and be received with utter joy. Life has its pain and tragedies, even for Christians. Yet in spite of them, we can and should praise God for his wisdom and goodness, as the Pilgrims did.
We can do this by seeing God’s wise, loving, and sovereign hand even in hardships. The psalm ends with a humble acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over all things and all circumstances, reminding us that even the bad things of life are in God’s hands. The late Lutheran commentator H. C. Leupold calls this the psalm’s important general truth: “The up’s and down’s, the success and the failure, the prosperity and calamity in the lives of individuals and nations are entirely in the control of and brought about by the will of the Almighty. None are brought low or raised on high unless he wills it.”
Here are two biblical confessions of that truth.
King Nebuchadnezzar had been struggling against the claims of the sovereign God, refusing to recognize that even his own destiny was in God’s hands. When he took the glory of God to himself, claiming, as he looked out over the magnificent city of Babylon, “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan. 4:30), God punished him with insanity. He was driven from human company and lived among animals for seven years.
Later, when he acknowledged God to be “the Most High” God and had his sanity restored, Nebuchadnezzar praised God:
His dominion is an eternal dominion;
his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
All the peoples of the earth
are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases
with the powers of heaven
and the peoples of the earth.
No one can hold back his hand
or say to him: “What have you done?”
“Everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble” (Dan. 4:34–35, 37). As I am fond of saying, not only is God able to humble people, he does humble them. In fact, Psalm 107 says this even of the righteous: “Then their numbers decreased, and they were humbled by oppression, calamity and sorrow” (v. 39).
The second biblical confession that none are brought low or raised on high unless God wills it is in the New Testament, in the psalm of the Virgin Mary that we know as the Magnificat.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty (Luke 1:52–53).
Probably Mary was thinking only of the lifting up of the righteous and the debasing of the wicked, but we learn from Psalm 107, as well as from other passages of Scripture, that the righteous are sometimes brought low also.
Uses of This Doctrine
Since we are talking about the Pilgrims, who were Puritans, I want to do what the Puritan preachers often did. If you read their sermons, you will find that often, after having stated what they call “the doctrine,” they give what they call “uses” of it. I suggest four uses of the doctrine that even for the righteous God sends sorrow as well as joy, hardship as well as material blessing—yet is not arbitrary.
1. Reverence for God. Since God’s ways are not our ways and his ultimate purposes in life are usually beyond our finding out, we must revere him and be humble.
The apostle Paul ended the third section of Romans by explaining God’s choice to bypass the majority of Jewish people in order to bring the gospel to the Gentiles but one day to work among the Jews again so that “all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26). This is one of the most profound passages in the Bible, one that has proved difficult even for the most astute commentators. Paul seems to be probing the mind of God as only an inspired apostle could. Yet when he has finished his explanation of God’s sovereign purposes in history, he does not boast in his understanding, as if he were saying, “Look what I have figured out.” Instead he breaks into a doxology, writing,
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen (Rom. 11:33–36).
There is nothing wrong with trying to understand the judgments, paths, and mind of God. We are encouraged to do so. But we should never forget that God’s ways will always be beyond our full understanding and that many times we will simply have to clap our hands over our mouths and wait to see what God will himself do or say, if anything.
Habakkuk tried to understand why God was raising up the Babylonians to overthrow his people, but he could not. So he concluded,
I will stand at my watch
and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,
and what answer I am to give to this complaint (Hab. 2:1).
When God did speak he gave Habakkuk one of the greatest revelations in the Bible—“the just shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4 kjv)—the words that meant so much to Martin Luther.
2. Looking for things that are eternal. Looking beyond the seen to the unseen and eternal is faith. Abraham is one example of those with faith. He was called out of his home city of Ur to go to a land that God would give him. He never actually owned that land, except for the small part he purchased as a burial plot for his wife, Sarah, and his life was not easy even when he was living where God had told him to go. There were famines, disagreements with his nephew Lot, danger from marauding desert tribes. Difficulty was all right with Abraham because he knew that the best blessings he was promised were not to be enjoyed in this life but in the life to come. Hence the author of Hebrews sums up Abraham’s lifetime walk of faith by saying, “He was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10).
Although there are ups and downs in this life, the end of all things for God’s people is not down but up. We can know this and look for it because we know that God is both good and sovereign. God loves us, and because he does he comforts us, preserves us, and brings us through even the hardest experiences of life. Psalm 107 ends on this note, for it calls us to “heed these things and consider the great love of the Lord” (v. 43, italics added).
3. Calling sinners to repentance. Although the ways of God in this life are not always within our understanding, nevertheless we do discern some important patterns, and one of them is that arrogance, strife, self-love, greed, and other forms of wickedness are generally punished, while virtue is frequently rewarded. This fact enables us to argue that we inhabit a moral universe governed by a moral God and to warn sinners against persisting in behavior that will eventually result in their eternal condemnation by God. The psalm’s last verse is telling not only the righteous but also everyone to wise up and consider how things actually are.
4. Thanksgiving. Believers should thank God for being what he is and acting as he does—and not only when things are going our way or we have it easy.
The apostle Paul suffered enormous hardships in his efforts to take the gospel throughout the known Roman world, including an imprisonment at the end of which he was beheaded. But it was this very apostle who wrote, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Phil. 4:12) and who told the Philippians, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (vv. 6–7, italics added).
Heeding and Considering
Alexander Duff was an eloquent pastor and missionary pioneer, the first sent to India by the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. On October 14, 1829, he and his wife set out for the Indian subcontinent on a ship called the Lady Holland, and four months later, at midnight on the 13th of February 1830, the ship ran aground while attempting to navigate the Cape of Good Hope. The pounding surf soon destroyed the ship, washing everything it held away, but miraculously all the passengers and crew made it safely to land.
Nothing remained of their belongings, but as one sailor walked along the shore looking for food and fuel, he came upon two books, a Bible and the Scottish Psalm Book. He found the name of Alexander Duff in both of them, so he brought them to the missionary. Duff had been transporting eight hundred books to India, where he hoped to (and later did) establish a college, but of those eight hundred books only these two remained. In spite of this loss, Duff at once opened the Bible to Psalm 107 and read it to the other survivors, concluding with the words,
Whoever is wise, let him heed these things
and consider the great love of the Lord (v. 43).
Can you do that? What matters most in life is not the number or severity of the perils from which we are delivered, but whether we are actually in the hands of that greatly loving God. If we are in his hands, we can “heed these things,” “consider the great love of the Lord,” and then praise him as Psalm 107 does. By this praise it has been a blessing to God’s people throughout the ages.1
Psalm 107: A Call for the Redeemed to Praise the Lord
This psalm has no heading. Consistent with its placement at the beginning of Book Five of Psalms, this psalm focuses on, and hence introduces the main theme of the fifth book, about the ingathering of the people of Israel to the land of Israel. The design of the book of Psalms parallels the Pentateuch (see Introduction: Title, Structure, and Place in the Canon). Thus this fifth book of Psalms parallels Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Pentateuch, and concerns the arrival of God’s people to the promised land (see v. 3) and their living under the perfect and intimate rule of their divine King. God revealed these truths to those who came out from Egypt. They are repeated in Deuteronomy for the subsequent generation born in the wilderness who did not witness them first hand. “Deuteronomy,” the name for the book in the LXX, means “repeated or reiterated Law.”
Book Five of Psalms often focuses on the ingathering of God’s people after the exile, with some references to the advent of God’s kingdom on earth. This theme is emphasized by the repetition of the key expression “Hallelujah,” (of which 20 of its 24 biblical occurrences are in Book Five, the other four being in Pss 104:35; 105:45; and 106:1, 48).
Ps 106 closed with a prayer for God to regather His people from the nations (see 106:47). Ps 107 contains an expression of thanks for God regathering the people after exile (107:1–3).
A. Praise the Lord for Restoring His People to Their Land (107:1–3)
107:1–3. This psalm opens with the call O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. This call to give thanks is repeated throughout the psalm (cf. vv. 8, 15, 21, 31). The psalm emphasizes that God’s lovingkindness is everlasting (also repeated in vv. 1, 8, 15, 21, 31). This statement is the most repeated qualification of praise in the book of Psalms, occurring most often in this fifth book (see 118:1–4, 29; 136). God’s lovingkindness (chesed; cf. comments on 5:7) more than anything else is represented by His regathering of Israel to their land of Israel and the consequent fulfillment of all that He promised to do for them ultimately under the reign of King Messiah.
That this has in view the final fulfillment of all God’s promises (per the Abrahamic covenant) both to and through Israel is evident from: (1) the past tense (perfect) verbal forms has redeemed and [has] gathered (vv. 2–3), which indicates that these actions are viewed as completed (whereas from the time of the Babylonian exile to the present they are still ongoing); (2) the specific phraseology describing Israel’s regathering from all points of the compass, east/west/ north/south, using prophetic phraseology to describe Israel’s final regathering and redemption, not just the return from Babylon (cf. Is 43:5–6; 56:12; Ezk 11:17; 20:33ff.); and (3) the specific use (in v. 2) of the term redeemed, signifying (Is 35:9; 62:12), both spiritual and physical redemption.
B. Praise the Lord for Correcting His People for Their Sins (107:4–22)
107:4–9. This is an overview of Israel’s history of the exodus as they wandered in the wilderness yet when they cried out to the Lord … He delivered them out of their distresses (vv. 4, 6, cf. vv. 13, 28). Therefore Let them give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness (v. 8).
107:10–16. The reference to those who dwelt in darkness and in the shadow of death (cf. v. 14; 23:4) begins a graphic image of distress (cf. 18:28; Jb 36:8; Is 5:30; 8:22; 59:9; Jr 13:16; Lm 3:7). The reference to prisoners in misery and chains relates to Israel being taken away to captivity in Babylon (cf. 2Ch 36:6; Jr 52:12–30). They were judged because they rebelled against the words of God yet when they cried out to the Lord in their trouble (vv. 11, 13; cf. vv. 6, 28) He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death (v. 14; cf. v. 10). Therefore the psalmist exhorted his people to give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness (v. 15; cf. vv. 9, 21) not only for redeeming them from the afflictions of those disciplines but also for bringing those corrections on them in the first place (cf. Pr 3:11–12; Heb 12:4–11).
107:17–22. These fools, people who had refused to believe in and follow the Lord (cf. 14:1; 53:1), were suffering physically for their iniquities. They had lost their appetites, abhorred all kinds of food, coming almost to the point of death (v. 18). When they cried out to the Lord in their trouble (v. 19; cf. vv. 6, 28) He healed them (v. 20). Therefore they were exhorted to give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness indicating the people will be back in the Land of Israel with a rebuilt temple, the place to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving with a heart of worship (vv. 21–22; cf. Lv 7:12–15; 22:29–30; Pss 50:7–15; 116:17).
C. Praise the Lord for Preserving His People through Their Distress (107:23–43)
107:23–38. In keeping with the overall theme of Book Five, the psalmist moved on from focusing on God’s lovingkindness as expressed in the process of correction throughout Israel’s history to focusing on God’s lovingkindness as expressed in God’s absolute dominion over nature. He is in control of the wonders in the oceans, the stormy wind and waves of the sea (vv. 24–25) as well as the rivers … springs … fruitful land … so people can establish an inhabited city … sow the fields because He blesses them (vv. 33–34; 36–38). Therefore, they should give thanks to the Lord for His lovingkindness (vv. 31–32; cf. 8, 15, 21).
107:39–43. Because of God’s dominion, He cannot be impeded either by events in nature nor from human agency (from political or social sources) in the process of restoring His people to their land. He set the needy securely on high … and makes his families like a flock (v. 41; cf. Ps 23 and comments there). The conclusion of this psalm is in the style of a proverb: The wise person will give heed (carefully watch/meditate upon) the instruction of this psalm and consider the lovingkindness of the Lord (v. 43).2
1 Boice, J. M. (2005). Psalms 107–150: An Expositional Commentary (pp. 863–876). Baker Books.
2 Rydelnik, M. A., & Vanlaningham, M., eds. (2014). Psalms. In The moody bible commentary (pp. 846–848). Moody Publishers.
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