Biblion Bible Commentary
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His Loving Kindness Endures Forever
Psalms 136:1-26
1 Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever. · WEB
Twenty-six verses, and the congregation says the same eight words after every one of them.
Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever Psalms 136:1.
The refrain is repeated in all twenty-six verses, which makes this the most repetitive chapter in Scripture and the most obviously antiphonal. A leader sang the first half of each line and the congregation answered.
What the arrangement does is worth stating. Every single act God is credited with in this psalm — creation, the exodus, the conquest, the daily feeding of animals — has the same clause attached to it. The congregation is not told that God's loving kindness is one of his attributes; they are made to say it twenty-six times, after twenty-six different pieces of evidence.
To him who by understanding made the heavens... to him who spread out the earth above the waters... to him who made the great lights Psalms 136:5–7.
The creation account in the order of Genesis, and the sun and moon are given the same job description they have there: the sun to rule by day... the moon and stars to rule by night Psalms 136:8–9.
To him who struck down the Egyptian firstborn... to him who divided the Red Sea apart Psalms 136:10–13.
The exodus, and here the refrain begins to do something uncomfortable. But overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, for his loving kindness endures forever Psalms 136:15. The drowning of an army is followed by the same eight words as the making of the stars.
The psalm does not soften it and neither should a reader. What it asserts is that the destruction of the force pursuing a nation of escaped slaves was an act of loving kindness — toward the slaves. Judgment and mercy are not two departments here; the same clause covers both, because from the point of view of the people in front of the chariots they were the same event.
Who remembered us in our low estate... and has delivered us from our adversaries Psalms 136:23–24.
The history arrives at the congregation itself, and the pronoun changes to us.
Who gives food to every creature, for his loving kindness endures forever Psalms 136:25.
The last item on the list before the closing verse, and it is the smallest and the widest. After the seas divided and the kings killed, the psalm ends its catalogue with the feeding of every living thing — daily, universally, and under the same refrain.
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