Psalms 106:1

Praise ye the LORD. O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.

Psalms 106:1.-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); confession of the nation's sins in Egypt, entailing punishment (Psalms 106:6); in the wilderness (Psalms 106:13); and in Canaan, where their consummated sin led to the oppressive rule of the pagan (); 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, that God will gather them from among the pagan to thank His holy name forever (). 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, 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; Psalms 105:1; Psalms 106:1.

This psalm solves the difficulty in the way of Israel's restoration () - 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) and history (Psalms 105:1) 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 () which in David's time applied to the captive Jews whom the invading Edomites had taken (Psalms 60:1, title), to suit the nation in the Babylonian captivity, and still more in its present dispersion.