PSALM 106 BEGINS, as we’ve seen, with an opening hallelujah and then an echo of David’s song of praise: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” (vs. 1, NIV). But as the psalmist suggests next, such praise and thanksgiving for the covenant faithfulness of God should be met with one’s own commitment to be faithful in turn:

Who can proclaim the mighty acts of the LORD
    or fully declare his praise?
Blessed are those who act justly,
    who always do what is right. (vss. 2-3)

The psalmist then prays directly to God for help in a way that suggests that the nation itself is in trouble. Most likely, that trouble is the Babylonian exile. The prayer anticipates that the God who has just been praised for his covenant love will eventually rescue his people as he has in the past. The people will once again have a reason to rejoice:

Remember me, LORD, when you show favor to your people,
    come to my aid when you save them,
that I may enjoy the prosperity of your chosen ones,
    that I may share in the joy of your nation
    and join your inheritance in giving praise. (vss. 4-5)

But why were the people in exile in the first place? It’s here that we get the confession of sin with which I began this post. The psalmist looks back over the history of God’s people and sees the same sorry pattern of sin and rebellion cascading down through the generations and even getting worse over time.

The psalmist begins, as we’ve seen, with the callousness of the people toward all that God did to rescue them from slavery in Egypt. They were the ones, remember, who for generations had cried out to God to be rescued. God heard their cries and sent them Moses, through whom God did jaw-dropping miracles until Pharaoh was forced to let the people go. But later, when the people found themselves trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the seemingly impassable waters of the Red Sea, they panicked and lamented that it would have been better to stay in Egypt.

This is just the first in a series of events the psalmist recounts, each one yet another example of the people’s corporate sin. They angrily clamor for food and water instead of trusting and waiting upon God. They rebel against Moses and Aaron’s authority, essentially saying, “Who made you so special?” (see Num 16). They make and worship a golden calf, even as Moses is atop Mount Sinai receiving the law from God (see Exod 32). Recalling that episode prompts the psalmist to think back once more to the people’s faithlessness even during the exodus:

They forgot the God who saved them,
    who had done great things in Egypt,
miracles in the land of Ham
    and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. (vss. 21-22)

The incident with the golden calf, moreover, becomes almost emblematic of the people’s ever-deepening idolatry. The psalmist refers back to the story in Numbers 25, in which Israelite men began having sex with Moabite women and worshiping their gods. Even as God was punishing them severely for their idolatry, one man was brazen enough to take a Midianite woman into his tent right in front of Moses and all of the people. Only Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, took immediate action; he executed both the man and the woman with a spear.

And still the idolatry continued, reaching its moral and spiritual nadir after the conquest of Canaan. The people took on the religious customs of their neighbors, even to the point of sacrificing their own children to false gods. I imagine the psalmist weeping when writing the following words:

They shed innocent blood,
    the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
    and the land was desecrated by their blood.
They defiled themselves by what they did;
    by their deeds they prostituted themselves. (vss. 38-39)

In righteous anger, therefore, “God gave them into the hands of the nations” (vs. 41); first Assyria and then Babylon would invade and carry the people into exile.

End of story? Not quite. Despite the people’s chronic rebellion, the psalmist still believes in the overriding covenant mercy of God:

Yet he took note of their distress
    when he heard their cry;
for their sake he remembered his covenant
    and out of his great love he relented.
He caused all who held them captive
    to show them mercy. (vss. 44-46)

This is why the psalmist can pray in verse 4, “Remember me, LORD, when you show favor to your people.” Sin cannot be the last word. Condemnation cannot be the last word. Exile cannot be the last word. With this God, a God who has repeatedly demonstrated his faithfulness to the covenant promise, the last word must be mercy.

It is in that spirit, that confidence, that the psalmist once more mirrors the words of David’s song:

Save us, LORD our God,
    and gather us from the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name
    and glory in your praise. (vs. 47)

As rebellious and disobedient as the people had been through the centuries, the psalmist knows that the covenant love and mercy must have the last word.

But here’s a final reminder, in case anyone asks: the actual last word of the psalm is hallelujah.

That sounds about right.