Today’s Passage: Psalm 106
Yesterday’s psalm told Israel’s story as pure celebration. This one tells nearly the same story again, but this time as confession.
As you read, hold this: watch how directly this psalm names each specific failure, no vague generalities, followed each time by God’s specific mercy anyway.
Psalm 106:1-5 (BSB)
Hallelujah! Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His loving devotion endures forever. ² Who can describe the mighty acts of the LORD or fully proclaim His praise? ³ Blessed are those who uphold justice, who practice righteousness at all times. ⁴ Remember me, O LORD, in Your favor to Your people; visit me with Your salvation, ⁵ that I may see the prosperity of Your chosen ones, and rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, and give glory with Your inheritance.
Context Closing Book IV of the Psalter
Verse 48’s closing doxology, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel… Amen! Hallelujah!” formally closes what scholars call Book IV of the Psalter (Psalms 90-106), one of the five traditional divisions of this collection. This series has already noted where Book III began, with Psalm 73’s honest wrestling. It is fitting that Book IV closes the same way, with unflinching honesty about failure held together with real hope.
Psalm 106:6-12 (BSB)
⁶ We have sinned like our fathers; we have done wrong and acted wickedly. ⁷ Our fathers in Egypt did not grasp Your wonders or remember Your abundant kindness; but they rebelled by the sea, there at the Red Sea. ⁸ Yet He saved them for the sake of His name, to make His power known. ⁹ He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up; He led them through the depths as through a desert. ¹⁰ He saved them from the hand that hated them; He redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. ¹¹ The waters covered their foes; not one of them remained. ¹² Then they believed His promises and sang His praise.
The confession begins immediately, “we have sinned like our fathers,” a present generation owning the same pattern, not distancing itself from ancestors’ mistakes.
Psalm 106:13-23 (BSB)
¹³ Yet they soon forgot His works and failed to wait for His counsel. ¹⁴ They craved intensely in the wilderness and tested God in the desert. ¹⁵ So He granted their request, but sent a wasting disease upon them. ¹⁶ In the camp they envied Moses, as well as Aaron, the holy one of the LORD. ¹⁷ The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan; it covered the assembly of Abiram. ¹⁸ Then fire blazed through their company; flames consumed the wicked. ¹⁹ At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped a molten image. ²⁰ They exchanged their Glory for the image of a grass-eating ox. ²¹ They forgot God their Savior, who did great things in Egypt, ²² wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. ²³ So He said He would destroy them—had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach to divert His wrath from destroying them.
Verse 20 lands with real force: an entire nation traded the actual Glory of God for the image of “a grass-eating ox,” a trade the psalm refuses to soften with kinder language.
Psalm 106:24-31 (BSB)
²⁴ They despised the pleasant land; they did not believe His promise. ²⁵ They grumbled in their tents and did not listen to the voice of the LORD. ²⁶ So He raised His hand and swore to cast them down in the wilderness, ²⁷ to disperse their offspring among the nations and scatter them throughout the lands. ²⁸ They yoked themselves to Baal of Peor and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods. ²⁹ So they provoked the LORD to anger with their deeds, and a plague broke out among them. ³⁰ But Phinehas stood and intervened, and the plague was restrained. ³¹ It was credited to him as righteousness for endless generations to come.
Word study Credited — chashab (Psalm 106:31)
“Credited” translates חָשַׁב (chashab, khah-SHAV) — Strong's H2803, chashab, “to reckon, to count, to credit to one’s account.” This is the identical Hebrew word used generations earlier when “Abram believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). The parallel is striking, though the two cases differ: Abraham’s righteousness was credited through faith, Phinehas’s through decisive, zealous action against sin, two very different pictures joined by the same word for how God counts something as right.
Psalm 106:32-39 (BSB)
³² At the waters of Meribah they angered the LORD, and trouble came to Moses because of them. ³³ For they rebelled against His Spirit, and Moses spoke rashly with his lips. ³⁴ They did not destroy the peoples as the LORD had commanded them, ³⁵ but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. ³⁶ They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. ³⁷ They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. ³⁸ They shed innocent blood—the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. ³⁹ They defiled themselves by their actions and prostituted themselves by their deeds.
The confession does not stop at the wilderness. It follows Israel into the Promised Land itself, naming a slow, compromising assimilation that ended in the darkest possible failure.
Psalm 106:40-48 (BSB)
⁴⁰ So the anger of the LORD burned against His people, and He abhorred His own inheritance. ⁴¹ He delivered them into the hand of the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them. ⁴² Their enemies oppressed them and subdued them under their hand. ⁴³ Many times He rescued them, but they were bent on rebellion and sank down in their iniquity. ⁴⁴ Nevertheless He heard their cry; He took note of their distress. ⁴⁵ And He remembered His covenant with them, and relented by the abundance of His loving devotion. ⁴⁶ He made them objects of compassion to all who held them captive. ⁴⁷ Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from the nations, that we may give thanks to Your holy name, that we may glory in Your praise. ⁴⁸ Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Let all the people say, “Amen!” Hallelujah!
Verse 47’s plea, “gather us from the nations,” reveals where this psalm’s own generation is actually standing: not merely remembering old failures, but still living in their consequences, scattered, and asking God to bring them home.
Study notes The same closing plea, sung at the ark's arrival
This psalm’s final request is not unique to this passage. Nearly identical wording closes the very same song David gave Asaph to sing when the ark came into Jerusalem.
"Then cry out: 'Save us, O God of our salvation; gather and deliver us from the nations, that we may give thanks to Your holy name, that we may glory in Your praise.'" 1 Chronicles 16:35 (BSB)
The same community that once sang Psalm 105’s confident praise, this series’ companion reading, also sang this exact plea to be gathered from among the nations, even at a moment of celebration. Confession, praise, and hope for future gathering were never treated as separate moods to choose between. They belonged in the same song.
Personal Application
- This psalm confesses specific, named failures rather than vague generalities, the golden calf, Meribah, Baal of Peor. Is there a specific sin, named plainly rather than kept vague, that you need to confess honestly to God today?
- Verse 43 notes that God rescued His people “many times,” yet they kept returning to rebellion. Is there a pattern of sin in your own life that God has already rescued you from more than once?
Decision of the day: Name one specific, recurring sin honestly in prayer today, the way this psalm names Israel’s specific failures, rather than offering God a vague, general confession.
Pray to Close
The truth to carry from this psalm: honest confession and real hope are not opposites. This psalm names its people’s worst failures in detail and still ends asking to be gathered home.
Praise: for the LORD whose loving devotion endures forever, even toward a people who have repeatedly forgotten Him.
Confess: the specific, recurring pattern of sin this psalm’s honesty invites you to actually name.
Ask: to be gathered and restored, the way this psalm’s closing generation still dared to ask.
Worship for Today
Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) · Chris Tomlin
This song’s own confession, “I once was lost, but now am found,” matches this psalm’s own pattern exactly: honest, specific admission of repeated failure, met every time by grace that “will lead me home.”
Listen: