Chapter 106

Last Psalm of Book 4.

2021 - As the last Psalm was a recounting of God's faithfulness in keeping his promises to Israel, this Psalm is a recounting of the failures of the people of Israel and God's dealing with them.  The last Psalm is set in Egypt, and recounts what God did to the Egyptians.  This Psalm is set "on the road from Egypt", and recounts how God dealt with Israel.

1st stanza is a praise.

2nd is a plea to be included when God blesses His people.

3rd is very long.  A confession for not believing when in Egypt and a recounting of the Red Sea crossing.

2021 - This verse:

9 He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry, and he led them through the deep as through a desert. [Psa 106:9 ESV]  Through the deep, not through the shallow reeds that had a few inches of water around them.  This verse says deep.  Strong's says the word means "abyss", or "the deep".  It is hard to make this word apply to a knee deep marsh.

2022 - This verse, again:

9 He rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry, and he led them through the deep as through a desert. [Psa 106:9 ESV].  So the Bible clearly says that the Red Sea dried up so dry that it was like a desert.  It didn't "push the swamp out toward the Sea and get it dry enough to walk across, where normally it would have been boggy quicksand".  No.  Dry as a desert.   So when you look for alternatives to this, you are looking for direct contradiction of scripture.

4th.  The first falling away, when they had "a wanton craving".  God supplied it, but sent a wasting disease among them.

5th.  God also puts down those who opposed Moses and Aaron.

6th.  (It mentions that Egypt is the "Land of Ham".  Second time I've seen this reference.)  The making of the golden calf, and Moses standing in the breach to turn away God's wrath, lest he destroy the whole people of Israel.

7th.  The refusal to take the land, the 40 years of wandering.

8th.  30 Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and [so] the plague was stayed. 31 And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore. [Psa 106:30-31 KJV]

     I thought only Abraham's faith was counted as righteousness.  But if you go back to Numbers 25:11-13, and previous, Phinehas jealousy on God's behalf when the people worshiped the gods of Moab was also counted so, and for all time...MSB says it is the same kind of evidenced faith, and shows that the perpetual priestly line of the Levites, and through Aaron, continues through Phinehas.

9th.  Meribah.  A big deal, mentioned many times. 

     32 They angered [him] also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes: 33 Because they provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips. [Psa 106:32-33 KJV]

     So this is why Moses couldn't enter Canaan.  He was angry, and spoke out of his own anger, rather than just for God.  The meekest man ever, yet his temper got him into this kind of trouble.

10th.  The people in Canaan did not wipe out the people living there, as they were ordered to do, but mixed with them, worshiped their gods, and even sacrificed their children to demons there.  "Thus they became unclean...", vs 39.

11th.    43 Many times he delivered them, but they were rebellious in their purposes and were brought low through their iniquity. [Psa 106:43 ESV]

     A good summary of the time from conquest through the end of judges.

12th.  But God kept his own promise, no matter how undeserving they were.

13th, only one verse.  A plea to reunite Israel from the nations.

14th.  One verse.  A praise.

2021 - Look at this story as a progression of how God deals with an unfaithful nation:

At the Red Sea, they rebel.  God saves them anyway by parting the sea for them to cross.

They indulge their cravings in the wilderness.  God obliges, but sends a wasting disease.

They rebel against God's appointed leaders, the earth opens and fire consumes the wicked.

They make the golden calf and worship it.  God would have ended them for this, but there was one to intervene on their behalf - they had a savior.

They are too afraid to go into Canaan the first time.  They all die in the wilderness, and a sort of "future curse" is put on their descendants.

They worship a false god - Baal of Peor.  God sends a plague that might have killed them all.  But another savior intercedes - Phinehas.

They rebel at Meribah.  Moses is pushed past his limit.

They don't wipe out the inhabitants of the land as ordered, and so become like those people.  They become unclean in God's sight.  God allows them to be conquered repeatedly, escalating in volume and intensity.

Even now, they are scattered, in captivity, despised by much of the world.  The end of this psalm is a cry for deliverance.

2022 -