Original Meaning
The Steadfast Love of God (107:1–2)
HIS LOVE ENDURES FOREVER. The psalmist instructs the community to “give thanks” to the Lord and then provides a rationale for giving thanks. The NIV renders the Hebrew term hesed as “love” in this verse. While not incorrect, such a rendering may fail to convey the full meaning of the term being employed in this context. The covenantal and enduring commitment of Yahweh to his people may not be fully captured with the word “love,” particularly given our own culture’s penchant for use of the term. Martin Leuenberger suggests that the opening line of Psalm 107 introduces one of, if not the, dominant theme for Book 5 of the Psalter.7
The hesed of the Lord shapes the community’s understanding of their own history (cf. Pss 106:1; 136:1) and God’s faithful, covenantal commitment throughout it, but the term also reminds the community that the hesed of the Lord remains the foundational hope for deliverance, both in the past and in the future (cf. Pss 107:1; 118:1).
Let the Redeemed of the LORD tell their story. The psalmist invites the community to testify to the steadfast love of the Lord mentioned in verse 1. The word “redeemed” comes from the root g’l, which elsewhere alludes to the deliverance from Egypt (Exod 6:6; 15:13; Pss 74:2; 77:16). When the term is appropriated in the book of Isaiah, the exodus imagery is invoked but with a clear reference to the exodus out of exile (e.g., Isa 41:14; 44:6; 47:4; 48:17; 60:16; 63:16). In the Isaiah texts, the term serves as a title for God (i.e., “Redeemer”). He was the redeemer for those exiled in Babylon. Similarly, the psalmist joins in the proclamation that Israel’s God has redeemed his people from captivity. In Psalm 107, however, the passive participial form of ga’al appears. The NIV correctly translates the phrase as “the redeemed of the LORD.” While such a translation acknowledges the relationship between the people and their God (i.e., they are the redeemed ones of God), it may fail to capture the connection between the redemption of the people and the active work of the Redeemer. A more explicit reading of the relationship might be rendered, “Those redeemed by the LORD.” The four scenes depicted in verses 4–32 illustrate the need the people had for God to do his redemptive work on their behalf because “there was no one to help” (v. 12).
Those he gathered from the lands. In verses 2–3 the psalmist calls upon the people to confess that they have been gathered “from the lands, from east and west, from north and south” (NIV). The four cardinal points are mentioned in Isaiah 49:12, a text that also alludes to Israel’s being brought back from the lands. In Psalm 107, however, the last term in verse 3 is actually yam, “sea.” When used directionally, this term typically refers to the west, but almost never to the south. Some scholars have attempted to interpret yam in a way that retains the four cardinal points, but these efforts seem largely unconvincing.8
Such a reading fails to capture the more metaphorical and symbolic language invoked in Psalm 107.9
The term zaphon, “north,” is imbued with considerable theological and metaphorical meaning in the Old Testament. The term often alludes to the enemies from the north (i.e., Assyria and Babylon), while also equating those locations with the more metaphorical understanding of the term as a place of disaster and chaos (cf. Ezek 38:15; 39:2). Similarly, the term yam (“sea”) appears throughout the Psalter and much of the Old Testament, where it often functions as a metaphor for pending chaos or chaos overcome (e.g., Pss 33:7; 65:7; 74:13). To limit the interpretation of verse 3c to a geographic understanding alone fails to capture the full range of possible meanings. The people are to give thanks to the Lord because he has gathered them from the lands, from the east to the west, but also because he has delivered them from the “north” and the “sea,” from places that threatened to unleash chaos into the lives of God’s people.
Bridging Contexts
THE STEADFAST LOVE OF GOD. As suggested above, the steadfast love (hesed) of God functions as the foundational theme for the entire psalm from beginning to end. Within the book of Psalms the term appears 125 times. No other book in the Old Testament uses the term with such frequency. The next closest is 2 Samuel, with only twelve occurrences! The affirmation of and dependence upon the steadfast love of God was foundational to the language of piety expressed in the Psalter. In Psalm 107 the people are called to give thanks for the steadfast love of God in verse 1; it was this love that provided the redemption of his people. Throughout the four scenes in verses 4–32, the community is asked to testify to the steadfast love of God in light of their deliverance (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31), and the psalm concludes by defining the wise as those who consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43). As James Mays suggests, Psalm 107 not only exalts the notion of God’s steadfast love, it is also “an exposition” of the term itself.27
The very actions of God are predicated on God’s love for his people. This same theme resonates throughout the New Testament. Both 1 John 4:9–10 and the oft-quoted John 3:16 explain that it was the love of God—the one who loved us first—that prompted him to send Jesus as the Reconciler (1 John 4:10). In both testaments redemption is the result of divine love, steadfast love.28
The acknowledgment of God’s steadfast love for his people yields two additional themes in this psalm.
The incomprehensible reach of God. The Babylonian exile not only resulted in physical and economic devastation that led to considerable human suffering, but it also threatened to undercut many of Israel’s foundational theological claims concerning Yahweh and Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Despite the challenge of the exile to Israel’s theology, Israel’s faith “did not disappear in the wake of the catastrophe that struck Judah and Jerusalem, as was the standard outcome in comparable situations in the ancient Near East.”29
On the contrary, Israel reaffirmed her belief in Yahweh’s steadfast love in certainty that their only hope was in the faithfulness of this God. The request at the end of Psalm 106 for Yahweh to gather all those who have been scattered among the nations was grounded in that hope. That text suggests a continued faith in Yahweh to act in behalf of his people despite their unfaithfulness to him (e.g., Ps 106:34–39). Psalm 107 functions as a theological response to the plight of a sinful nation scattered among the nations as a result of their own covenantal faithlessness.
Following the opening celebration of the steadfast love of God in Psalm 107, the psalmist implores those redeemed by Yahweh (v. 2a) to give thanks because he has gathered them from the lands (v. 3a) and because he has in fact responded to their earlier plea in Psalm 106:47. The testimony in Psalm 107:3 counters any claim that their sin has reduced them to a people literally exiled from the land forever, or worse yet, a people exiled from their God. Instead the psalmist claims that from the east to the west, God’s reach extends in pursuit of his people, and neither human threats from the “north” (zaphon) nor the chaotic waters of the sea (yam) can cut short that reach. The four scenes in Psalm 107 give graphic testimony to the incomprehensible reach of God as a result of his steadfast love. Whether wasting away in foreign prisons (v. 10) or clinging to life at the gates of death (v. 18), God heard their cry and delivered them because of his steadfast love. Whether tracking aimlessly in the desert or tossed about upon the stormy waters, God heard their cry and delivered them because of his great love for them.
The God who responds. Scenes of Israel crying out to Yahweh appear repeatedly in the Old Testament but especially in Exodus 1–15 (e.g., Exod 2:23; 3:7, 9; 5:8, 15; 8:12; 11:6; 12:30; 14:10, 15) and throughout the book of Judges. In these instances, the people cry out to the Lord because they are incapable of overcoming the forces that threaten them, whether it be Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire or the strong kingdoms that threaten them in the promised land. In the exodus story and the stories found in Judges, the cries of the people do not go unheeded by Israel’s God. Instead, Yahweh, the God of the covenant, responds by delivering them from the oppressive forces that have threatened them. To cry out to God is to invoke memories of a redeeming God who has faithfully responded to the cries of his people before and to believe this God is inclined to do so again because of his steadfast love. In Psalm 107, those in the first scene are said to have cried out to their God in the belief that he can redeem them from the “desert wastelands” in which they have found themselves. Davidson notes the obvious connections between the language and imagery in these psalms and that associated with the exile in Isaiah.30
Yet because these scenes are “types,” Davidson acknowledges that “anyone in the community . . . who had gotten lost while traveling across barren terrain” could identify with the scene in a “profoundly personal way.”31
Even further, this psalm and the scenes depicted in verses 4–32 make a much more fundamental claim about Israel’s God. It is because of Yahweh’s steadfast love that he responds again and again to his people. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern religions that demote the role and relationship of humankind to the gods, Israel confesses that Yahweh, the God of the covenant, takes this relationship seriously.32
God’s response to Israel’s cry is evidence of that seriousness and, even more, is evidence of the steadfast love undergirding that commitment.
Contemporary Significance
EXILED COMMUNITIES. Psalm 107 may appear to be too historically located for contemporary application. After all, when is the last time you’ve heard people describe themselves as “exiles” needing to be “gathered in from the lands”? But nightly there are tragic news stories of people groups around the world for whom the threat of becoming exiled is no longer metaphorical—it is existential and real. In those contexts exile and the threat of exile remain daily realities. In many industrial countries, however, such stories seem a world away, and the thought of being exiled and alone seems inconceivable. For many in the congregations where I preach, the thought of literally being lost in the wilderness or being threatened upon the stormy seas likely never crosses the mind.
Yet if exile by definition means to be forced from one’s homeland, from the place that creates both memory and meaning, then there are many who know something of exile in its metaphorical sense. The four scenes in Psalm 107 remind us all of the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity.”33
Those essential qualities of our human condition remind us that we stand at some distance from God. Those essential qualities remind us that we are a long way from home. At times our lives feel as though the north (zaphon) has come crashing down upon us and the waters (yam) have threatened to overtake us. We need for God to gather us back to himself again.
Even in our technological age, people are falling into exile in new and more sophisticated ways. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that people have started to use social technology as a means of a self-imposed exile.34
When circumstances become challenging or conversations become difficult, people resort to social media as a means of escape. Rather than engaging others, people withdraw into a sophisticated form of isolationism. Ironically, for many people deliverance is associated with being exiled from others—a concept foreign to the psalmist and to the church.
Whether through wandering, confinement, sickness, or sinfulness, each one of us knows the truth of the claim that to be exiled means one is not at home. The psalmist does not minimize the threat of exile, and neither should we. Exile has the capacity to undo us all—and it would, “if the LORD had not been on our side” (Ps 124:1). The psalmist is clear: God alone is our source of deliverance from such desperate circumstances.
The faithful God. Psalm 107 takes seriously the plight of exile, but perhaps even more it takes seriously the only remedy, Yahweh. As noted above, the Hebrew word hesed appears throughout the psalm, thus declaring to all who were in exile and to all who are in exile that the steadfast love of God is a source of deliverance. The psalmist makes clear that this steadfast love manifests itself not as an emotion but instead through the power of God. To announce to those in our congregations who are enduring the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity” that God loves them may not be enough. “Love” has become so stripped of its meaning in our culture that, regrettably, such a claim may be little more than an “empty metaphor” for some. They likely need more.
Those who occupy our pews know something of the “hunger and thirst” mentioned by the psalmist, and, even more, they know something of what it feels like when life seems to be ebbing away (v. 5). Some have sat in darkness and felt the weight of the shadow of death (v. 10). And many, if not all, have felt both their courage and their hope melt away amid calamity (v. 26). To tell a person that she or he is loved in those moments does little to extinguish the pain and angst associated with those times. Instead, people long to know of a faithful God who refuses to let exile have the final word. They want to know of a God who has performed “wonderful deeds” for his people in the past, even lifting up the needy out of affliction (v. 41), and they want to know that this God will act again even in their behalf. The final verse of the psalm instructs us in this way. If we are wise, we will give “heed” to these things and we too will consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43).
Original Meaning
Deliverance from the Desert Wasteland (107:4–9)
THE FIRST SCENE DEPICTS A GROUP lost in the wilderness with no hope of delivering themselves. Their only hope rests in the God to whom they call.
Wandered in desert wastelands. The psalmist goes to great lengths to present a dire scenario for those mentioned in this scene. The people are not traveling; they are “wandering.” The verb ta‘ah, which means “to wander,” suggests much more than simply to meander. Perhaps more ominously, ta‘ah means to wander because one has erroneously left the path or, worse yet, to wander because there is no longer a path to follow.10
So far off the beaten path are they, the psalmist says, that they cannot even find a city in which to dwell. Instead of following the path, these people are in the midbar, “the desert,” a place further described as the “waste places” (yeshimon). Beyond the threat of attack by humans, the waste places of the desert prove deadly because they lack roads or a clearly marked road system.11
In short order, those wandering aimlessly will be overtaken by hunger and thirst.
They cried out to the LORD. In each scene of deliverance the psalmist recounts how the people cried out to God and how they were delivered (vv. 6, 13, 19, 28). The verb “to cry out” (tsa‘aq) appears repeatedly in the Old Testament, especially in contexts associated with the exodus. The cry of the people stirs God to act on their behalf by bringing deliverance (Exod 2:23).
Give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love. Central to all four scenes is the repeated refrain, “Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love; and his wonderful deeds for mankind” (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31). The NIV’s translating hesed in these verses as “unfailing love,” while translating the same term as “love endures” in verse 1, inadvertently severs the opening verse from the remainder of the psalm, thus preventing the reader in English from seeing the theological thread that has been woven throughout the poem. The entire psalm, from beginning (v. 1) to end (v. 43), confesses the hesed of Yahweh, his unfailing love to his people. Deliverance from the wastelands (and the deliverance articulated in each of the three other scenes) is described as a “wonderful deed” deserving of thanksgiving to Yahweh. In describing each event as one of Yahweh’s “wonderful deeds” (nipla’ot), the psalmist employs a term rife with historical, confessional, and theological overtones. Frequently in the Psalter, nipla’ot recalls the major events in Israel’s redemption (cf. Pss 78:4, 11, 32; 105:5; 106:7, 22). Even outside the Psalter the poetic use of the term is appropriated (e.g., Neh 9:17; 1 Chr 16:9, 12). With the use of nipla’ot, the poet folds these episodes of redemption, these “wonderful deeds,” into the larger narrative of Israel’s encounter with her Redeemer God. Because of the Lord’s steadfast love and his capacity to perform “wonderful deeds,” the people are delivered from “their trouble” and “their distress.” They are given a city to live in, and their appetites are satiated (v. 7b, 9).
Bridging Contexts
THE STEADFAST LOVE OF GOD. As suggested above, the steadfast love (hesed) of God functions as the foundational theme for the entire psalm from beginning to end. Within the book of Psalms the term appears 125 times. No other book in the Old Testament uses the term with such frequency. The next closest is 2 Samuel, with only twelve occurrences! The affirmation of and dependence upon the steadfast love of God was foundational to the language of piety expressed in the Psalter. In Psalm 107 the people are called to give thanks for the steadfast love of God in verse 1; it was this love that provided the redemption of his people. Throughout the four scenes in verses 4–32, the community is asked to testify to the steadfast love of God in light of their deliverance (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31), and the psalm concludes by defining the wise as those who consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43). As James Mays suggests, Psalm 107 not only exalts the notion of God’s steadfast love, it is also “an exposition” of the term itself.27
The very actions of God are predicated on God’s love for his people. This same theme resonates throughout the New Testament. Both 1 John 4:9–10 and the oft-quoted John 3:16 explain that it was the love of God—the one who loved us first—that prompted him to send Jesus as the Reconciler (1 John 4:10). In both testaments redemption is the result of divine love, steadfast love.28
The acknowledgment of God’s steadfast love for his people yields two additional themes in this psalm.
The incomprehensible reach of God. The Babylonian exile not only resulted in physical and economic devastation that led to considerable human suffering, but it also threatened to undercut many of Israel’s foundational theological claims concerning Yahweh and Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Despite the challenge of the exile to Israel’s theology, Israel’s faith “did not disappear in the wake of the catastrophe that struck Judah and Jerusalem, as was the standard outcome in comparable situations in the ancient Near East.”29
On the contrary, Israel reaffirmed her belief in Yahweh’s steadfast love in certainty that their only hope was in the faithfulness of this God. The request at the end of Psalm 106 for Yahweh to gather all those who have been scattered among the nations was grounded in that hope. That text suggests a continued faith in Yahweh to act in behalf of his people despite their unfaithfulness to him (e.g., Ps 106:34–39). Psalm 107 functions as a theological response to the plight of a sinful nation scattered among the nations as a result of their own covenantal faithlessness.
Following the opening celebration of the steadfast love of God in Psalm 107, the psalmist implores those redeemed by Yahweh (v. 2a) to give thanks because he has gathered them from the lands (v. 3a) and because he has in fact responded to their earlier plea in Psalm 106:47. The testimony in Psalm 107:3 counters any claim that their sin has reduced them to a people literally exiled from the land forever, or worse yet, a people exiled from their God. Instead the psalmist claims that from the east to the west, God’s reach extends in pursuit of his people, and neither human threats from the “north” (zaphon) nor the chaotic waters of the sea (yam) can cut short that reach. The four scenes in Psalm 107 give graphic testimony to the incomprehensible reach of God as a result of his steadfast love. Whether wasting away in foreign prisons (v. 10) or clinging to life at the gates of death (v. 18), God heard their cry and delivered them because of his steadfast love. Whether tracking aimlessly in the desert or tossed about upon the stormy waters, God heard their cry and delivered them because of his great love for them.
The God who responds. Scenes of Israel crying out to Yahweh appear repeatedly in the Old Testament but especially in Exodus 1–15 (e.g., Exod 2:23; 3:7, 9; 5:8, 15; 8:12; 11:6; 12:30; 14:10, 15) and throughout the book of Judges. In these instances, the people cry out to the Lord because they are incapable of overcoming the forces that threaten them, whether it be Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire or the strong kingdoms that threaten them in the promised land. In the exodus story and the stories found in Judges, the cries of the people do not go unheeded by Israel’s God. Instead, Yahweh, the God of the covenant, responds by delivering them from the oppressive forces that have threatened them. To cry out to God is to invoke memories of a redeeming God who has faithfully responded to the cries of his people before and to believe this God is inclined to do so again because of his steadfast love. In Psalm 107, those in the first scene are said to have cried out to their God in the belief that he can redeem them from the “desert wastelands” in which they have found themselves. Davidson notes the obvious connections between the language and imagery in these psalms and that associated with the exile in Isaiah.30
Yet because these scenes are “types,” Davidson acknowledges that “anyone in the community . . . who had gotten lost while traveling across barren terrain” could identify with the scene in a “profoundly personal way.”31
Even further, this psalm and the scenes depicted in verses 4–32 make a much more fundamental claim about Israel’s God. It is because of Yahweh’s steadfast love that he responds again and again to his people. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern religions that demote the role and relationship of humankind to the gods, Israel confesses that Yahweh, the God of the covenant, takes this relationship seriously.32
God’s response to Israel’s cry is evidence of that seriousness and, even more, is evidence of the steadfast love undergirding that commitment.
Contemporary Significance
EXILED COMMUNITIES. Psalm 107 may appear to be too historically located for contemporary application. After all, when is the last time you’ve heard people describe themselves as “exiles” needing to be “gathered in from the lands”? But nightly there are tragic news stories of people groups around the world for whom the threat of becoming exiled is no longer metaphorical—it is existential and real. In those contexts exile and the threat of exile remain daily realities. In many industrial countries, however, such stories seem a world away, and the thought of being exiled and alone seems inconceivable. For many in the congregations where I preach, the thought of literally being lost in the wilderness or being threatened upon the stormy seas likely never crosses the mind.
Yet if exile by definition means to be forced from one’s homeland, from the place that creates both memory and meaning, then there are many who know something of exile in its metaphorical sense. The four scenes in Psalm 107 remind us all of the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity.”33
Those essential qualities of our human condition remind us that we stand at some distance from God. Those essential qualities remind us that we are a long way from home. At times our lives feel as though the north (zaphon) has come crashing down upon us and the waters (yam) have threatened to overtake us. We need for God to gather us back to himself again.
Even in our technological age, people are falling into exile in new and more sophisticated ways. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that people have started to use social technology as a means of a self-imposed exile.34
When circumstances become challenging or conversations become difficult, people resort to social media as a means of escape. Rather than engaging others, people withdraw into a sophisticated form of isolationism. Ironically, for many people deliverance is associated with being exiled from others—a concept foreign to the psalmist and to the church.
Whether through wandering, confinement, sickness, or sinfulness, each one of us knows the truth of the claim that to be exiled means one is not at home. The psalmist does not minimize the threat of exile, and neither should we. Exile has the capacity to undo us all—and it would, “if the LORD had not been on our side” (Ps 124:1). The psalmist is clear: God alone is our source of deliverance from such desperate circumstances.
The faithful God. Psalm 107 takes seriously the plight of exile, but perhaps even more it takes seriously the only remedy, Yahweh. As noted above, the Hebrew word hesed appears throughout the psalm, thus declaring to all who were in exile and to all who are in exile that the steadfast love of God is a source of deliverance. The psalmist makes clear that this steadfast love manifests itself not as an emotion but instead through the power of God. To announce to those in our congregations who are enduring the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity” that God loves them may not be enough. “Love” has become so stripped of its meaning in our culture that, regrettably, such a claim may be little more than an “empty metaphor” for some. They likely need more.
Those who occupy our pews know something of the “hunger and thirst” mentioned by the psalmist, and, even more, they know something of what it feels like when life seems to be ebbing away (v. 5). Some have sat in darkness and felt the weight of the shadow of death (v. 10). And many, if not all, have felt both their courage and their hope melt away amid calamity (v. 26). To tell a person that she or he is loved in those moments does little to extinguish the pain and angst associated with those times. Instead, people long to know of a faithful God who refuses to let exile have the final word. They want to know of a God who has performed “wonderful deeds” for his people in the past, even lifting up the needy out of affliction (v. 41), and they want to know that this God will act again even in their behalf. The final verse of the psalm instructs us in this way. If we are wise, we will give “heed” to these things and we too will consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43).
Original Meaning
Deliverance from Prison (107:10–16)
THE SECOND SCENE DEPICTS individuals suffering in captivity. Unlike the first scene, however, those in prison make a correlation between their dire circumstances and their lack of faithfulness to God (v. 11).
Some sat in darkness. The psalmist explains that some sat in “darkness, in utter darkness” (hoshek wetsalmawet). The depths of their peril are captured in particular with the latter term. Rather than being rendered as “utter darkness,” tsalmawet can be rendered as “deathly shadow” or “shadow of death,” a phrase emphasizing threat to human life.12
Elsewhere in the Old Testament the two terms appear in reference to the Babylonian exile (Isa 42:7, 22; 49:9; Jer 13:16; Lam 3:2), which is likely the meaning in Psalm 107 as well, particularly given the overall thrust of the psalm. Although the images in verse 10b only enhance the image of the imprisoned Israelite, the same phrase “darkness, in utter darkness” (hoshek wetsalmawet) appears five times in Job (3:5; 10:21; 12:22; 28:3; 34:22), but in that context the meaning is associated with “the sphere of death and destruction” more broadly.13
In Psalm 107, even as those who had wandered in the desert wasteland teetered on the edge of life and death, those imprisoned under foreign powers found themselves in the “sphere of death and destruction” and in need of divine intervention.
Because they rebelled against God’s commands. As mentioned above, the psalmist provides no rationale for the suffering endured in the desert wastelands. In the second scenario, however, the poet is explicit as to the reason for their plight: “they rebelled against God’s commands, and despised the plans of the Most High.” In Hebrew poetry, writers often make subtle wordplays based on the sound of Hebrew words—a connection that, unfortunately, gets lost in English translation. Frequently these wordplays make a significant contribution to the meaning of the text. In verse 11 the psalmist explains that the punishment came because the people had rebelled (himru) against the very words (’imre) of God.
There was no one to help. Similar to the hopelessness in verses 4–9, the psalmist now notes “there was no one to help” those “subjected . . . to bitter labor.” Consequently, they cried out to Yahweh (v. 13), and he delivered them out of “darkness, . . . utter darkness” (hoshek wetsalmawet) and broke the chains that bound them (v. 14). And in the final verse of the section the psalmist refers to Yahweh’s breaking the bronze doors. In Isaiah 45:2 the prophet announces that Cyrus, the anointed one of Yahweh, will break down the doors of bronze and cut in two the bars of iron. As Hossfeld and Zenger note, the image could refer to the barred doors of a prison, but it could easily represent the doors of the city more generally. In Isaiah the reference was to Cyrus’s deliverance of those in exile in Babylon. In Psalm 107, however, Cyrus has been replaced by Yahweh; it is Yahweh alone who delivered his people from “darkness, . . . utter darkness” (hoshek wetsalmawet). Because of this act of covenantal faithfulness, the people are invited to give thanks for the steadfast love (hesed) of Yahweh.14
Bridging Contexts
THE STEADFAST LOVE OF GOD. As suggested above, the steadfast love (hesed) of God functions as the foundational theme for the entire psalm from beginning to end. Within the book of Psalms the term appears 125 times. No other book in the Old Testament uses the term with such frequency. The next closest is 2 Samuel, with only twelve occurrences! The affirmation of and dependence upon the steadfast love of God was foundational to the language of piety expressed in the Psalter. In Psalm 107 the people are called to give thanks for the steadfast love of God in verse 1; it was this love that provided the redemption of his people. Throughout the four scenes in verses 4–32, the community is asked to testify to the steadfast love of God in light of their deliverance (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31), and the psalm concludes by defining the wise as those who consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43). As James Mays suggests, Psalm 107 not only exalts the notion of God’s steadfast love, it is also “an exposition” of the term itself.27
The very actions of God are predicated on God’s love for his people. This same theme resonates throughout the New Testament. Both 1 John 4:9–10 and the oft-quoted John 3:16 explain that it was the love of God—the one who loved us first—that prompted him to send Jesus as the Reconciler (1 John 4:10). In both testaments redemption is the result of divine love, steadfast love.28
The acknowledgment of God’s steadfast love for his people yields two additional themes in this psalm.
The incomprehensible reach of God. The Babylonian exile not only resulted in physical and economic devastation that led to considerable human suffering, but it also threatened to undercut many of Israel’s foundational theological claims concerning Yahweh and Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Despite the challenge of the exile to Israel’s theology, Israel’s faith “did not disappear in the wake of the catastrophe that struck Judah and Jerusalem, as was the standard outcome in comparable situations in the ancient Near East.”29
On the contrary, Israel reaffirmed her belief in Yahweh’s steadfast love in certainty that their only hope was in the faithfulness of this God. The request at the end of Psalm 106 for Yahweh to gather all those who have been scattered among the nations was grounded in that hope. That text suggests a continued faith in Yahweh to act in behalf of his people despite their unfaithfulness to him (e.g., Ps 106:34–39). Psalm 107 functions as a theological response to the plight of a sinful nation scattered among the nations as a result of their own covenantal faithlessness.
Following the opening celebration of the steadfast love of God in Psalm 107, the psalmist implores those redeemed by Yahweh (v. 2a) to give thanks because he has gathered them from the lands (v. 3a) and because he has in fact responded to their earlier plea in Psalm 106:47. The testimony in Psalm 107:3 counters any claim that their sin has reduced them to a people literally exiled from the land forever, or worse yet, a people exiled from their God. Instead the psalmist claims that from the east to the west, God’s reach extends in pursuit of his people, and neither human threats from the “north” (zaphon) nor the chaotic waters of the sea (yam) can cut short that reach. The four scenes in Psalm 107 give graphic testimony to the incomprehensible reach of God as a result of his steadfast love. Whether wasting away in foreign prisons (v. 10) or clinging to life at the gates of death (v. 18), God heard their cry and delivered them because of his steadfast love. Whether tracking aimlessly in the desert or tossed about upon the stormy waters, God heard their cry and delivered them because of his great love for them.
The God who responds. Scenes of Israel crying out to Yahweh appear repeatedly in the Old Testament but especially in Exodus 1–15 (e.g., Exod 2:23; 3:7, 9; 5:8, 15; 8:12; 11:6; 12:30; 14:10, 15) and throughout the book of Judges. In these instances, the people cry out to the Lord because they are incapable of overcoming the forces that threaten them, whether it be Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire or the strong kingdoms that threaten them in the promised land. In the exodus story and the stories found in Judges, the cries of the people do not go unheeded by Israel’s God. Instead, Yahweh, the God of the covenant, responds by delivering them from the oppressive forces that have threatened them. To cry out to God is to invoke memories of a redeeming God who has faithfully responded to the cries of his people before and to believe this God is inclined to do so again because of his steadfast love. In Psalm 107, those in the first scene are said to have cried out to their God in the belief that he can redeem them from the “desert wastelands” in which they have found themselves. Davidson notes the obvious connections between the language and imagery in these psalms and that associated with the exile in Isaiah.30
Yet because these scenes are “types,” Davidson acknowledges that “anyone in the community . . . who had gotten lost while traveling across barren terrain” could identify with the scene in a “profoundly personal way.”31
Even further, this psalm and the scenes depicted in verses 4–32 make a much more fundamental claim about Israel’s God. It is because of Yahweh’s steadfast love that he responds again and again to his people. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern religions that demote the role and relationship of humankind to the gods, Israel confesses that Yahweh, the God of the covenant, takes this relationship seriously.32
God’s response to Israel’s cry is evidence of that seriousness and, even more, is evidence of the steadfast love undergirding that commitment.
Contemporary Significance
EXILED COMMUNITIES. Psalm 107 may appear to be too historically located for contemporary application. After all, when is the last time you’ve heard people describe themselves as “exiles” needing to be “gathered in from the lands”? But nightly there are tragic news stories of people groups around the world for whom the threat of becoming exiled is no longer metaphorical—it is existential and real. In those contexts exile and the threat of exile remain daily realities. In many industrial countries, however, such stories seem a world away, and the thought of being exiled and alone seems inconceivable. For many in the congregations where I preach, the thought of literally being lost in the wilderness or being threatened upon the stormy seas likely never crosses the mind.
Yet if exile by definition means to be forced from one’s homeland, from the place that creates both memory and meaning, then there are many who know something of exile in its metaphorical sense. The four scenes in Psalm 107 remind us all of the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity.”33
Those essential qualities of our human condition remind us that we stand at some distance from God. Those essential qualities remind us that we are a long way from home. At times our lives feel as though the north (zaphon) has come crashing down upon us and the waters (yam) have threatened to overtake us. We need for God to gather us back to himself again.
Even in our technological age, people are falling into exile in new and more sophisticated ways. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that people have started to use social technology as a means of a self-imposed exile.34
When circumstances become challenging or conversations become difficult, people resort to social media as a means of escape. Rather than engaging others, people withdraw into a sophisticated form of isolationism. Ironically, for many people deliverance is associated with being exiled from others—a concept foreign to the psalmist and to the church.
Whether through wandering, confinement, sickness, or sinfulness, each one of us knows the truth of the claim that to be exiled means one is not at home. The psalmist does not minimize the threat of exile, and neither should we. Exile has the capacity to undo us all—and it would, “if the LORD had not been on our side” (Ps 124:1). The psalmist is clear: God alone is our source of deliverance from such desperate circumstances.
The faithful God. Psalm 107 takes seriously the plight of exile, but perhaps even more it takes seriously the only remedy, Yahweh. As noted above, the Hebrew word hesed appears throughout the psalm, thus declaring to all who were in exile and to all who are in exile that the steadfast love of God is a source of deliverance. The psalmist makes clear that this steadfast love manifests itself not as an emotion but instead through the power of God. To announce to those in our congregations who are enduring the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity” that God loves them may not be enough. “Love” has become so stripped of its meaning in our culture that, regrettably, such a claim may be little more than an “empty metaphor” for some. They likely need more.
Those who occupy our pews know something of the “hunger and thirst” mentioned by the psalmist, and, even more, they know something of what it feels like when life seems to be ebbing away (v. 5). Some have sat in darkness and felt the weight of the shadow of death (v. 10). And many, if not all, have felt both their courage and their hope melt away amid calamity (v. 26). To tell a person that she or he is loved in those moments does little to extinguish the pain and angst associated with those times. Instead, people long to know of a faithful God who refuses to let exile have the final word. They want to know of a God who has performed “wonderful deeds” for his people in the past, even lifting up the needy out of affliction (v. 41), and they want to know that this God will act again even in their behalf. The final verse of the psalm instructs us in this way. If we are wise, we will give “heed” to these things and we too will consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43).
Original Meaning
Deliverance from Sheol (107:17–22)
SOME BECAME FOOLS THROUGH THEIR REBELLIOUS WAYS. Questions concerning the precise meaning of verse 17a have led to a number of different renderings of this verse. The NIV follows the Hebrew text closely: “Some are fools [’ewilim] through their rebellious behavior.” The text-critical apparatus in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) proposes “languishing” (’umlalim) or perhaps “sickness” (holim), with the latter reading having been adopted in the NRSV.15
The subsequent verse’s mention of nearing the “gates of death” provides some rationale for such a reading of the text, as does the presupposed connection between illness and sin, mentioned elsewhere in the Psalter (cf. Pss 32; 38; 39). Despite the presumed logic of such suggested changes, the Hebrew text should be retained (cf. NIV). From the perspective of the psalmist, those who were foolish and turned aside or rebelled (peshah; cf. Ps 107:17a) from the ways of God followed a pathway that appeared to lead to the gates of death (v. 18b). Later in this section (v. 20), these gates of death are referred to as “the pit” or “the grave” (shehit).16
Strikingly however, the psalmist personalizes the term by adding a third person masculine plural suffix to the end of the word—an ending that would result in rendering the word “their pit.” In other words, their iniquities have led to their pit. The connection between cause and effect appears rather explicit. Nonetheless, those sick under the weight of sin cry to Yahweh for deliverance (v. 19), and he delivers them from their oppression or distress.
He sent out his word and healed them. Yahweh sends his word to heal those near to the pit. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, Yahweh sends forth his word. In Isaiah 55:11, for example, Yahweh sends forth his word to accomplish his purposes for his people (i.e., delivering and restoring those in exile). In Psalm 147 the sending forth of Yahweh’s word alludes to Yahweh’s governance over all creation (vv. 15, 18), which ensures the presence of God with his people (v. 20). Goldingay, however, has suggested that Psalm 107:20 “presupposes . . . things do happen when a powerful person speaks. Yhwh only has to say the word and a person gets healed.”17
Perhaps the text is working at a much deeper level theologically. Yahweh’s word operates as a surrogate for Yahweh himself. Those who are sick due to rebellion and iniquity run the risk of separation from God; those who were ill in this psalm “drew near the gates of death” (v. 18b). Yet Yahweh heard their cries, overcame the perceived distance (i.e., “sent his word”), and remedied their affliction.
Bridging Contexts
THE STEADFAST LOVE OF GOD. As suggested above, the steadfast love (hesed) of God functions as the foundational theme for the entire psalm from beginning to end. Within the book of Psalms the term appears 125 times. No other book in the Old Testament uses the term with such frequency. The next closest is 2 Samuel, with only twelve occurrences! The affirmation of and dependence upon the steadfast love of God was foundational to the language of piety expressed in the Psalter. In Psalm 107 the people are called to give thanks for the steadfast love of God in verse 1; it was this love that provided the redemption of his people. Throughout the four scenes in verses 4–32, the community is asked to testify to the steadfast love of God in light of their deliverance (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31), and the psalm concludes by defining the wise as those who consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43). As James Mays suggests, Psalm 107 not only exalts the notion of God’s steadfast love, it is also “an exposition” of the term itself.27
The very actions of God are predicated on God’s love for his people. This same theme resonates throughout the New Testament. Both 1 John 4:9–10 and the oft-quoted John 3:16 explain that it was the love of God—the one who loved us first—that prompted him to send Jesus as the Reconciler (1 John 4:10). In both testaments redemption is the result of divine love, steadfast love.28
The acknowledgment of God’s steadfast love for his people yields two additional themes in this psalm.
The incomprehensible reach of God. The Babylonian exile not only resulted in physical and economic devastation that led to considerable human suffering, but it also threatened to undercut many of Israel’s foundational theological claims concerning Yahweh and Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Despite the challenge of the exile to Israel’s theology, Israel’s faith “did not disappear in the wake of the catastrophe that struck Judah and Jerusalem, as was the standard outcome in comparable situations in the ancient Near East.”29
On the contrary, Israel reaffirmed her belief in Yahweh’s steadfast love in certainty that their only hope was in the faithfulness of this God. The request at the end of Psalm 106 for Yahweh to gather all those who have been scattered among the nations was grounded in that hope. That text suggests a continued faith in Yahweh to act in behalf of his people despite their unfaithfulness to him (e.g., Ps 106:34–39). Psalm 107 functions as a theological response to the plight of a sinful nation scattered among the nations as a result of their own covenantal faithlessness.
Following the opening celebration of the steadfast love of God in Psalm 107, the psalmist implores those redeemed by Yahweh (v. 2a) to give thanks because he has gathered them from the lands (v. 3a) and because he has in fact responded to their earlier plea in Psalm 106:47. The testimony in Psalm 107:3 counters any claim that their sin has reduced them to a people literally exiled from the land forever, or worse yet, a people exiled from their God. Instead the psalmist claims that from the east to the west, God’s reach extends in pursuit of his people, and neither human threats from the “north” (zaphon) nor the chaotic waters of the sea (yam) can cut short that reach. The four scenes in Psalm 107 give graphic testimony to the incomprehensible reach of God as a result of his steadfast love. Whether wasting away in foreign prisons (v. 10) or clinging to life at the gates of death (v. 18), God heard their cry and delivered them because of his steadfast love. Whether tracking aimlessly in the desert or tossed about upon the stormy waters, God heard their cry and delivered them because of his great love for them.
The God who responds. Scenes of Israel crying out to Yahweh appear repeatedly in the Old Testament but especially in Exodus 1–15 (e.g., Exod 2:23; 3:7, 9; 5:8, 15; 8:12; 11:6; 12:30; 14:10, 15) and throughout the book of Judges. In these instances, the people cry out to the Lord because they are incapable of overcoming the forces that threaten them, whether it be Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire or the strong kingdoms that threaten them in the promised land. In the exodus story and the stories found in Judges, the cries of the people do not go unheeded by Israel’s God. Instead, Yahweh, the God of the covenant, responds by delivering them from the oppressive forces that have threatened them. To cry out to God is to invoke memories of a redeeming God who has faithfully responded to the cries of his people before and to believe this God is inclined to do so again because of his steadfast love. In Psalm 107, those in the first scene are said to have cried out to their God in the belief that he can redeem them from the “desert wastelands” in which they have found themselves. Davidson notes the obvious connections between the language and imagery in these psalms and that associated with the exile in Isaiah.30
Yet because these scenes are “types,” Davidson acknowledges that “anyone in the community . . . who had gotten lost while traveling across barren terrain” could identify with the scene in a “profoundly personal way.”31
Even further, this psalm and the scenes depicted in verses 4–32 make a much more fundamental claim about Israel’s God. It is because of Yahweh’s steadfast love that he responds again and again to his people. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern religions that demote the role and relationship of humankind to the gods, Israel confesses that Yahweh, the God of the covenant, takes this relationship seriously.32
God’s response to Israel’s cry is evidence of that seriousness and, even more, is evidence of the steadfast love undergirding that commitment.
Contemporary Significance
EXILED COMMUNITIES. Psalm 107 may appear to be too historically located for contemporary application. After all, when is the last time you’ve heard people describe themselves as “exiles” needing to be “gathered in from the lands”? But nightly there are tragic news stories of people groups around the world for whom the threat of becoming exiled is no longer metaphorical—it is existential and real. In those contexts exile and the threat of exile remain daily realities. In many industrial countries, however, such stories seem a world away, and the thought of being exiled and alone seems inconceivable. For many in the congregations where I preach, the thought of literally being lost in the wilderness or being threatened upon the stormy seas likely never crosses the mind.
Yet if exile by definition means to be forced from one’s homeland, from the place that creates both memory and meaning, then there are many who know something of exile in its metaphorical sense. The four scenes in Psalm 107 remind us all of the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity.”33
Those essential qualities of our human condition remind us that we stand at some distance from God. Those essential qualities remind us that we are a long way from home. At times our lives feel as though the north (zaphon) has come crashing down upon us and the waters (yam) have threatened to overtake us. We need for God to gather us back to himself again.
Even in our technological age, people are falling into exile in new and more sophisticated ways. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that people have started to use social technology as a means of a self-imposed exile.34
When circumstances become challenging or conversations become difficult, people resort to social media as a means of escape. Rather than engaging others, people withdraw into a sophisticated form of isolationism. Ironically, for many people deliverance is associated with being exiled from others—a concept foreign to the psalmist and to the church.
Whether through wandering, confinement, sickness, or sinfulness, each one of us knows the truth of the claim that to be exiled means one is not at home. The psalmist does not minimize the threat of exile, and neither should we. Exile has the capacity to undo us all—and it would, “if the LORD had not been on our side” (Ps 124:1). The psalmist is clear: God alone is our source of deliverance from such desperate circumstances.
The faithful God. Psalm 107 takes seriously the plight of exile, but perhaps even more it takes seriously the only remedy, Yahweh. As noted above, the Hebrew word hesed appears throughout the psalm, thus declaring to all who were in exile and to all who are in exile that the steadfast love of God is a source of deliverance. The psalmist makes clear that this steadfast love manifests itself not as an emotion but instead through the power of God. To announce to those in our congregations who are enduring the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity” that God loves them may not be enough. “Love” has become so stripped of its meaning in our culture that, regrettably, such a claim may be little more than an “empty metaphor” for some. They likely need more.
Those who occupy our pews know something of the “hunger and thirst” mentioned by the psalmist, and, even more, they know something of what it feels like when life seems to be ebbing away (v. 5). Some have sat in darkness and felt the weight of the shadow of death (v. 10). And many, if not all, have felt both their courage and their hope melt away amid calamity (v. 26). To tell a person that she or he is loved in those moments does little to extinguish the pain and angst associated with those times. Instead, people long to know of a faithful God who refuses to let exile have the final word. They want to know of a God who has performed “wonderful deeds” for his people in the past, even lifting up the needy out of affliction (v. 41), and they want to know that this God will act again even in their behalf. The final verse of the psalm instructs us in this way. If we are wise, we will give “heed” to these things and we too will consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43).
Original Meaning
Deliverance from the Sea (107:23–32)
SOME WENT OUT ON TO THE SEA. This narrative section is longer than the previous three, with added attention to the crisis itself. As Hossfeld and Zenger suggest, this added attention “shifts the accent of God’s intervention more strongly toward the miraculous demonstration of YHWH’s power, which is transparent to the fundamental message that YHWH can defeat the sea’s chaos.”18
Three times the psalmist refers to the sea in terms that are metaphorically rich in meaning: “mighty waters” (v. 23b); “deep” (v. 24b); and “depths” or “primeval floods” (tehom [v. 26a]). Frequently these terms connote chaos and the threat of death (cf. Ps 69:1, 2, 15). Similar imagery is employed in the book of Jonah as well (Jonah 2:3, 5).
He spoke and stirred up a tempest. Unlike the two previous scenes, which explained disaster in the light of the people’s rebellion, the final scene attributes both the cause of the storm and its solution to God (Ps 107:25, 29). Yet in claiming God as both the cause and remedy of the storm, the psalmist does not imply a certain level of capriciousness for Israel’s God. Instead, the poet invokes a much richer theological tradition—that of the Divine King. Mastery over the sea is evidence of divine rule.19
The psalmist goes to considerable lengths to describe the destructive nature of the storm. Waves reached to the heavens and down to the depths of the “primeval floods” (tehom). So great was the storm that the sailors were “at their wits’ end.” Literally the Hebrew reads, “all their wisdom was swallowed up”—perhaps another allusion to Jonah. McCann suggests that “true wisdom is to cry out to God, to acknowledge one’s utter dependance upon God,” and to recognize that God’s steadfast love (hesed) is “sufficient for even the worst possible scenario.”20
Bridging Contexts
THE STEADFAST LOVE OF GOD. As suggested above, the steadfast love (hesed) of God functions as the foundational theme for the entire psalm from beginning to end. Within the book of Psalms the term appears 125 times. No other book in the Old Testament uses the term with such frequency. The next closest is 2 Samuel, with only twelve occurrences! The affirmation of and dependence upon the steadfast love of God was foundational to the language of piety expressed in the Psalter. In Psalm 107 the people are called to give thanks for the steadfast love of God in verse 1; it was this love that provided the redemption of his people. Throughout the four scenes in verses 4–32, the community is asked to testify to the steadfast love of God in light of their deliverance (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31), and the psalm concludes by defining the wise as those who consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43). As James Mays suggests, Psalm 107 not only exalts the notion of God’s steadfast love, it is also “an exposition” of the term itself.27
The very actions of God are predicated on God’s love for his people. This same theme resonates throughout the New Testament. Both 1 John 4:9–10 and the oft-quoted John 3:16 explain that it was the love of God—the one who loved us first—that prompted him to send Jesus as the Reconciler (1 John 4:10). In both testaments redemption is the result of divine love, steadfast love.28
The acknowledgment of God’s steadfast love for his people yields two additional themes in this psalm.
The incomprehensible reach of God. The Babylonian exile not only resulted in physical and economic devastation that led to considerable human suffering, but it also threatened to undercut many of Israel’s foundational theological claims concerning Yahweh and Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Despite the challenge of the exile to Israel’s theology, Israel’s faith “did not disappear in the wake of the catastrophe that struck Judah and Jerusalem, as was the standard outcome in comparable situations in the ancient Near East.”29
On the contrary, Israel reaffirmed her belief in Yahweh’s steadfast love in certainty that their only hope was in the faithfulness of this God. The request at the end of Psalm 106 for Yahweh to gather all those who have been scattered among the nations was grounded in that hope. That text suggests a continued faith in Yahweh to act in behalf of his people despite their unfaithfulness to him (e.g., Ps 106:34–39). Psalm 107 functions as a theological response to the plight of a sinful nation scattered among the nations as a result of their own covenantal faithlessness.
Following the opening celebration of the steadfast love of God in Psalm 107, the psalmist implores those redeemed by Yahweh (v. 2a) to give thanks because he has gathered them from the lands (v. 3a) and because he has in fact responded to their earlier plea in Psalm 106:47. The testimony in Psalm 107:3 counters any claim that their sin has reduced them to a people literally exiled from the land forever, or worse yet, a people exiled from their God. Instead the psalmist claims that from the east to the west, God’s reach extends in pursuit of his people, and neither human threats from the “north” (zaphon) nor the chaotic waters of the sea (yam) can cut short that reach. The four scenes in Psalm 107 give graphic testimony to the incomprehensible reach of God as a result of his steadfast love. Whether wasting away in foreign prisons (v. 10) or clinging to life at the gates of death (v. 18), God heard their cry and delivered them because of his steadfast love. Whether tracking aimlessly in the desert or tossed about upon the stormy waters, God heard their cry and delivered them because of his great love for them.
The God who responds. Scenes of Israel crying out to Yahweh appear repeatedly in the Old Testament but especially in Exodus 1–15 (e.g., Exod 2:23; 3:7, 9; 5:8, 15; 8:12; 11:6; 12:30; 14:10, 15) and throughout the book of Judges. In these instances, the people cry out to the Lord because they are incapable of overcoming the forces that threaten them, whether it be Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire or the strong kingdoms that threaten them in the promised land. In the exodus story and the stories found in Judges, the cries of the people do not go unheeded by Israel’s God. Instead, Yahweh, the God of the covenant, responds by delivering them from the oppressive forces that have threatened them. To cry out to God is to invoke memories of a redeeming God who has faithfully responded to the cries of his people before and to believe this God is inclined to do so again because of his steadfast love. In Psalm 107, those in the first scene are said to have cried out to their God in the belief that he can redeem them from the “desert wastelands” in which they have found themselves. Davidson notes the obvious connections between the language and imagery in these psalms and that associated with the exile in Isaiah.30
Yet because these scenes are “types,” Davidson acknowledges that “anyone in the community . . . who had gotten lost while traveling across barren terrain” could identify with the scene in a “profoundly personal way.”31
Even further, this psalm and the scenes depicted in verses 4–32 make a much more fundamental claim about Israel’s God. It is because of Yahweh’s steadfast love that he responds again and again to his people. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern religions that demote the role and relationship of humankind to the gods, Israel confesses that Yahweh, the God of the covenant, takes this relationship seriously.32
God’s response to Israel’s cry is evidence of that seriousness and, even more, is evidence of the steadfast love undergirding that commitment.
Contemporary Significance
EXILED COMMUNITIES. Psalm 107 may appear to be too historically located for contemporary application. After all, when is the last time you’ve heard people describe themselves as “exiles” needing to be “gathered in from the lands”? But nightly there are tragic news stories of people groups around the world for whom the threat of becoming exiled is no longer metaphorical—it is existential and real. In those contexts exile and the threat of exile remain daily realities. In many industrial countries, however, such stories seem a world away, and the thought of being exiled and alone seems inconceivable. For many in the congregations where I preach, the thought of literally being lost in the wilderness or being threatened upon the stormy seas likely never crosses the mind.
Yet if exile by definition means to be forced from one’s homeland, from the place that creates both memory and meaning, then there are many who know something of exile in its metaphorical sense. The four scenes in Psalm 107 remind us all of the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity.”33
Those essential qualities of our human condition remind us that we stand at some distance from God. Those essential qualities remind us that we are a long way from home. At times our lives feel as though the north (zaphon) has come crashing down upon us and the waters (yam) have threatened to overtake us. We need for God to gather us back to himself again.
Even in our technological age, people are falling into exile in new and more sophisticated ways. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that people have started to use social technology as a means of a self-imposed exile.34
When circumstances become challenging or conversations become difficult, people resort to social media as a means of escape. Rather than engaging others, people withdraw into a sophisticated form of isolationism. Ironically, for many people deliverance is associated with being exiled from others—a concept foreign to the psalmist and to the church.
Whether through wandering, confinement, sickness, or sinfulness, each one of us knows the truth of the claim that to be exiled means one is not at home. The psalmist does not minimize the threat of exile, and neither should we. Exile has the capacity to undo us all—and it would, “if the LORD had not been on our side” (Ps 124:1). The psalmist is clear: God alone is our source of deliverance from such desperate circumstances.
The faithful God. Psalm 107 takes seriously the plight of exile, but perhaps even more it takes seriously the only remedy, Yahweh. As noted above, the Hebrew word hesed appears throughout the psalm, thus declaring to all who were in exile and to all who are in exile that the steadfast love of God is a source of deliverance. The psalmist makes clear that this steadfast love manifests itself not as an emotion but instead through the power of God. To announce to those in our congregations who are enduring the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity” that God loves them may not be enough. “Love” has become so stripped of its meaning in our culture that, regrettably, such a claim may be little more than an “empty metaphor” for some. They likely need more.
Those who occupy our pews know something of the “hunger and thirst” mentioned by the psalmist, and, even more, they know something of what it feels like when life seems to be ebbing away (v. 5). Some have sat in darkness and felt the weight of the shadow of death (v. 10). And many, if not all, have felt both their courage and their hope melt away amid calamity (v. 26). To tell a person that she or he is loved in those moments does little to extinguish the pain and angst associated with those times. Instead, people long to know of a faithful God who refuses to let exile have the final word. They want to know of a God who has performed “wonderful deeds” for his people in the past, even lifting up the needy out of affliction (v. 41), and they want to know that this God will act again even in their behalf. The final verse of the psalm instructs us in this way. If we are wise, we will give “heed” to these things and we too will consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43).
Original Meaning
A Hymn on the Power of God (107:33–41)
FOLLOWING THE FOUR NARRATIVE PORTIONS of the psalm, the psalmist offers a poem that celebrates the awesome power of God over all aspects of creation.
He turned rivers into a desert. Verses 33–34 open the final hymn with a stark reminder of Yahweh’s power. In the fourth scene (vv. 23–32) the psalmist portrayed God as God over the sea, in effect declaring his power as divine king. The recognition of Yahweh’s power continues in the opening lines of the final hymnic portion of the psalm. In the second (vv. 10–16) and third (vv. 17–22) scenes, the disastrous circumstances were connected to human sinfulness and rebellion, and similarly in verses 33–34 this particular exercise of Yahweh’s power is a response to the wickedness (ra‘) of those who dwell in the land. According to the psalmist, sources of continuous water (“rivers” and “springs”) can be dried up by Yahweh, and land that is fruitful can be made nothing more than a “salt waste.”21
Such imagery is meant to highlight Yahweh’s role as “master of life and death.”22
There he brought the hungry to live. Although the first two verses in the hymn provide a general claim regarding Yahweh’s power, verses 36–38 recall Israel’s settlement in the land as further evidence of Yahweh’s transformative power. Just as God has the power to turn rivers into a desert and fruitful land into salty wastes, so also he has the power to transform that which is dead into that which is alive and flourishing. Into such a land, the psalmist affirms, Yahweh brought his people so that they might enjoy the benefits of his blessings (v. 38).
He lifted the needy out of their affliction. The theology of the poor plays a significant role in the theology of the Psalter as a whole, and elements of such a theology are reflected in verses 39–41.23
The land that had been transformed from a desert into pools of water, a place where their numbers “greatly increased” (v. 38), became a place that suffered because of the oppression, calamity, and sorrow that had overtaken it. As Goldingay correctly notes, the conditions of oppression and calamity are not necessarily impositions by an outside force; rather, these conditions more likely reflect “the affliction [the community imposed] on others, or the affliction that characterizes the life of the community.”24
Consequently, the nobles, the ones with the power in the community and the ones tasked with maintaining justice within the community, are condemned to “wander in a trackless waste” (v. 40b). Literally the text says they will wander “in waste places [tohu] without a path.” While the word tohu appears to refer to the unformed chaotic space prior to creation in Genesis 1, it also refers to empty, desert-like regions. The latter, more mundane meaning, however, is certainly infused with the more cosmic overtones of the former. For those who wandered in tohu, there was little hope. For the needy (’ebyon), however, this was hope. Yahweh lifted them out of their affliction and blessed them by increasing their families. Hossfeld and Zenger suggest that with this claim of deliverance and blessing, Yahweh intended to make the poor “a great people with whom he will shape the history of the post-exilic restoration.”25
Bridging Contexts
THE STEADFAST LOVE OF GOD. As suggested above, the steadfast love (hesed) of God functions as the foundational theme for the entire psalm from beginning to end. Within the book of Psalms the term appears 125 times. No other book in the Old Testament uses the term with such frequency. The next closest is 2 Samuel, with only twelve occurrences! The affirmation of and dependence upon the steadfast love of God was foundational to the language of piety expressed in the Psalter. In Psalm 107 the people are called to give thanks for the steadfast love of God in verse 1; it was this love that provided the redemption of his people. Throughout the four scenes in verses 4–32, the community is asked to testify to the steadfast love of God in light of their deliverance (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31), and the psalm concludes by defining the wise as those who consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43). As James Mays suggests, Psalm 107 not only exalts the notion of God’s steadfast love, it is also “an exposition” of the term itself.27
The very actions of God are predicated on God’s love for his people. This same theme resonates throughout the New Testament. Both 1 John 4:9–10 and the oft-quoted John 3:16 explain that it was the love of God—the one who loved us first—that prompted him to send Jesus as the Reconciler (1 John 4:10). In both testaments redemption is the result of divine love, steadfast love.28
The acknowledgment of God’s steadfast love for his people yields two additional themes in this psalm.
The incomprehensible reach of God. The Babylonian exile not only resulted in physical and economic devastation that led to considerable human suffering, but it also threatened to undercut many of Israel’s foundational theological claims concerning Yahweh and Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Despite the challenge of the exile to Israel’s theology, Israel’s faith “did not disappear in the wake of the catastrophe that struck Judah and Jerusalem, as was the standard outcome in comparable situations in the ancient Near East.”29
On the contrary, Israel reaffirmed her belief in Yahweh’s steadfast love in certainty that their only hope was in the faithfulness of this God. The request at the end of Psalm 106 for Yahweh to gather all those who have been scattered among the nations was grounded in that hope. That text suggests a continued faith in Yahweh to act in behalf of his people despite their unfaithfulness to him (e.g., Ps 106:34–39). Psalm 107 functions as a theological response to the plight of a sinful nation scattered among the nations as a result of their own covenantal faithlessness.
Following the opening celebration of the steadfast love of God in Psalm 107, the psalmist implores those redeemed by Yahweh (v. 2a) to give thanks because he has gathered them from the lands (v. 3a) and because he has in fact responded to their earlier plea in Psalm 106:47. The testimony in Psalm 107:3 counters any claim that their sin has reduced them to a people literally exiled from the land forever, or worse yet, a people exiled from their God. Instead the psalmist claims that from the east to the west, God’s reach extends in pursuit of his people, and neither human threats from the “north” (zaphon) nor the chaotic waters of the sea (yam) can cut short that reach. The four scenes in Psalm 107 give graphic testimony to the incomprehensible reach of God as a result of his steadfast love. Whether wasting away in foreign prisons (v. 10) or clinging to life at the gates of death (v. 18), God heard their cry and delivered them because of his steadfast love. Whether tracking aimlessly in the desert or tossed about upon the stormy waters, God heard their cry and delivered them because of his great love for them.
The God who responds. Scenes of Israel crying out to Yahweh appear repeatedly in the Old Testament but especially in Exodus 1–15 (e.g., Exod 2:23; 3:7, 9; 5:8, 15; 8:12; 11:6; 12:30; 14:10, 15) and throughout the book of Judges. In these instances, the people cry out to the Lord because they are incapable of overcoming the forces that threaten them, whether it be Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire or the strong kingdoms that threaten them in the promised land. In the exodus story and the stories found in Judges, the cries of the people do not go unheeded by Israel’s God. Instead, Yahweh, the God of the covenant, responds by delivering them from the oppressive forces that have threatened them. To cry out to God is to invoke memories of a redeeming God who has faithfully responded to the cries of his people before and to believe this God is inclined to do so again because of his steadfast love. In Psalm 107, those in the first scene are said to have cried out to their God in the belief that he can redeem them from the “desert wastelands” in which they have found themselves. Davidson notes the obvious connections between the language and imagery in these psalms and that associated with the exile in Isaiah.30
Yet because these scenes are “types,” Davidson acknowledges that “anyone in the community . . . who had gotten lost while traveling across barren terrain” could identify with the scene in a “profoundly personal way.”31
Even further, this psalm and the scenes depicted in verses 4–32 make a much more fundamental claim about Israel’s God. It is because of Yahweh’s steadfast love that he responds again and again to his people. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern religions that demote the role and relationship of humankind to the gods, Israel confesses that Yahweh, the God of the covenant, takes this relationship seriously.32
God’s response to Israel’s cry is evidence of that seriousness and, even more, is evidence of the steadfast love undergirding that commitment.
Contemporary Significance
EXILED COMMUNITIES. Psalm 107 may appear to be too historically located for contemporary application. After all, when is the last time you’ve heard people describe themselves as “exiles” needing to be “gathered in from the lands”? But nightly there are tragic news stories of people groups around the world for whom the threat of becoming exiled is no longer metaphorical—it is existential and real. In those contexts exile and the threat of exile remain daily realities. In many industrial countries, however, such stories seem a world away, and the thought of being exiled and alone seems inconceivable. For many in the congregations where I preach, the thought of literally being lost in the wilderness or being threatened upon the stormy seas likely never crosses the mind.
Yet if exile by definition means to be forced from one’s homeland, from the place that creates both memory and meaning, then there are many who know something of exile in its metaphorical sense. The four scenes in Psalm 107 remind us all of the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity.”33
Those essential qualities of our human condition remind us that we stand at some distance from God. Those essential qualities remind us that we are a long way from home. At times our lives feel as though the north (zaphon) has come crashing down upon us and the waters (yam) have threatened to overtake us. We need for God to gather us back to himself again.
Even in our technological age, people are falling into exile in new and more sophisticated ways. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that people have started to use social technology as a means of a self-imposed exile.34
When circumstances become challenging or conversations become difficult, people resort to social media as a means of escape. Rather than engaging others, people withdraw into a sophisticated form of isolationism. Ironically, for many people deliverance is associated with being exiled from others—a concept foreign to the psalmist and to the church.
Whether through wandering, confinement, sickness, or sinfulness, each one of us knows the truth of the claim that to be exiled means one is not at home. The psalmist does not minimize the threat of exile, and neither should we. Exile has the capacity to undo us all—and it would, “if the LORD had not been on our side” (Ps 124:1). The psalmist is clear: God alone is our source of deliverance from such desperate circumstances.
The faithful God. Psalm 107 takes seriously the plight of exile, but perhaps even more it takes seriously the only remedy, Yahweh. As noted above, the Hebrew word hesed appears throughout the psalm, thus declaring to all who were in exile and to all who are in exile that the steadfast love of God is a source of deliverance. The psalmist makes clear that this steadfast love manifests itself not as an emotion but instead through the power of God. To announce to those in our congregations who are enduring the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity” that God loves them may not be enough. “Love” has become so stripped of its meaning in our culture that, regrettably, such a claim may be little more than an “empty metaphor” for some. They likely need more.
Those who occupy our pews know something of the “hunger and thirst” mentioned by the psalmist, and, even more, they know something of what it feels like when life seems to be ebbing away (v. 5). Some have sat in darkness and felt the weight of the shadow of death (v. 10). And many, if not all, have felt both their courage and their hope melt away amid calamity (v. 26). To tell a person that she or he is loved in those moments does little to extinguish the pain and angst associated with those times. Instead, people long to know of a faithful God who refuses to let exile have the final word. They want to know of a God who has performed “wonderful deeds” for his people in the past, even lifting up the needy out of affliction (v. 41), and they want to know that this God will act again even in their behalf. The final verse of the psalm instructs us in this way. If we are wise, we will give “heed” to these things and we too will consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43).
Original Meaning
Wisdom Conclusion (107:42–43)
THE FINAL TWO VERSES MAKE CLEAR the paraenetic-didactic purpose of the psalm. The upright are instructed to “see” and learn from the stories of deliverance and the testimonies of Yahweh’s transforming work in the world. Should they do so, they will be led to rejoicing, while those engaged in wickedness will have their mouths shut in the light of Yahweh’s power. The final verse refers to “the one who is wise.” Who are the wise? They are those who “heed” (shamar) these things. The word shamar, however, means much more than simply to “heed,” as in pay attention to, but instead implies “keeping,” “protecting,” and “preserving.”26
Only as the images and theology constructed in Psalm 107 are kept and preserved by the wise will the psalm’s meaning seep into their lives and prove to be formative. The opening verse in Psalm 107 implores the community to praise Yahweh because of his steadfast love (hesed). The psalm concludes by returning to the same idea (v. 43b). Those who consider or understand (bin) the hesed of Yahweh will not only have reason to give thanks (v. 1a); they will also be well on their way to becoming wise (v. 43b).
Bridging Contexts
THE STEADFAST LOVE OF GOD. As suggested above, the steadfast love (hesed) of God functions as the foundational theme for the entire psalm from beginning to end. Within the book of Psalms the term appears 125 times. No other book in the Old Testament uses the term with such frequency. The next closest is 2 Samuel, with only twelve occurrences! The affirmation of and dependence upon the steadfast love of God was foundational to the language of piety expressed in the Psalter. In Psalm 107 the people are called to give thanks for the steadfast love of God in verse 1; it was this love that provided the redemption of his people. Throughout the four scenes in verses 4–32, the community is asked to testify to the steadfast love of God in light of their deliverance (vv. 8, 15, 21, 31), and the psalm concludes by defining the wise as those who consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43). As James Mays suggests, Psalm 107 not only exalts the notion of God’s steadfast love, it is also “an exposition” of the term itself.27
The very actions of God are predicated on God’s love for his people. This same theme resonates throughout the New Testament. Both 1 John 4:9–10 and the oft-quoted John 3:16 explain that it was the love of God—the one who loved us first—that prompted him to send Jesus as the Reconciler (1 John 4:10). In both testaments redemption is the result of divine love, steadfast love.28
The acknowledgment of God’s steadfast love for his people yields two additional themes in this psalm.
The incomprehensible reach of God. The Babylonian exile not only resulted in physical and economic devastation that led to considerable human suffering, but it also threatened to undercut many of Israel’s foundational theological claims concerning Yahweh and Yahweh’s relationship with his people. Despite the challenge of the exile to Israel’s theology, Israel’s faith “did not disappear in the wake of the catastrophe that struck Judah and Jerusalem, as was the standard outcome in comparable situations in the ancient Near East.”29
On the contrary, Israel reaffirmed her belief in Yahweh’s steadfast love in certainty that their only hope was in the faithfulness of this God. The request at the end of Psalm 106 for Yahweh to gather all those who have been scattered among the nations was grounded in that hope. That text suggests a continued faith in Yahweh to act in behalf of his people despite their unfaithfulness to him (e.g., Ps 106:34–39). Psalm 107 functions as a theological response to the plight of a sinful nation scattered among the nations as a result of their own covenantal faithlessness.
Following the opening celebration of the steadfast love of God in Psalm 107, the psalmist implores those redeemed by Yahweh (v. 2a) to give thanks because he has gathered them from the lands (v. 3a) and because he has in fact responded to their earlier plea in Psalm 106:47. The testimony in Psalm 107:3 counters any claim that their sin has reduced them to a people literally exiled from the land forever, or worse yet, a people exiled from their God. Instead the psalmist claims that from the east to the west, God’s reach extends in pursuit of his people, and neither human threats from the “north” (zaphon) nor the chaotic waters of the sea (yam) can cut short that reach. The four scenes in Psalm 107 give graphic testimony to the incomprehensible reach of God as a result of his steadfast love. Whether wasting away in foreign prisons (v. 10) or clinging to life at the gates of death (v. 18), God heard their cry and delivered them because of his steadfast love. Whether tracking aimlessly in the desert or tossed about upon the stormy waters, God heard their cry and delivered them because of his great love for them.
The God who responds. Scenes of Israel crying out to Yahweh appear repeatedly in the Old Testament but especially in Exodus 1–15 (e.g., Exod 2:23; 3:7, 9; 5:8, 15; 8:12; 11:6; 12:30; 14:10, 15) and throughout the book of Judges. In these instances, the people cry out to the Lord because they are incapable of overcoming the forces that threaten them, whether it be Pharaoh and the Egyptian empire or the strong kingdoms that threaten them in the promised land. In the exodus story and the stories found in Judges, the cries of the people do not go unheeded by Israel’s God. Instead, Yahweh, the God of the covenant, responds by delivering them from the oppressive forces that have threatened them. To cry out to God is to invoke memories of a redeeming God who has faithfully responded to the cries of his people before and to believe this God is inclined to do so again because of his steadfast love. In Psalm 107, those in the first scene are said to have cried out to their God in the belief that he can redeem them from the “desert wastelands” in which they have found themselves. Davidson notes the obvious connections between the language and imagery in these psalms and that associated with the exile in Isaiah.30
Yet because these scenes are “types,” Davidson acknowledges that “anyone in the community . . . who had gotten lost while traveling across barren terrain” could identify with the scene in a “profoundly personal way.”31
Even further, this psalm and the scenes depicted in verses 4–32 make a much more fundamental claim about Israel’s God. It is because of Yahweh’s steadfast love that he responds again and again to his people. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern religions that demote the role and relationship of humankind to the gods, Israel confesses that Yahweh, the God of the covenant, takes this relationship seriously.32
God’s response to Israel’s cry is evidence of that seriousness and, even more, is evidence of the steadfast love undergirding that commitment.
Contemporary Significance
EXILED COMMUNITIES. Psalm 107 may appear to be too historically located for contemporary application. After all, when is the last time you’ve heard people describe themselves as “exiles” needing to be “gathered in from the lands”? But nightly there are tragic news stories of people groups around the world for whom the threat of becoming exiled is no longer metaphorical—it is existential and real. In those contexts exile and the threat of exile remain daily realities. In many industrial countries, however, such stories seem a world away, and the thought of being exiled and alone seems inconceivable. For many in the congregations where I preach, the thought of literally being lost in the wilderness or being threatened upon the stormy seas likely never crosses the mind.
Yet if exile by definition means to be forced from one’s homeland, from the place that creates both memory and meaning, then there are many who know something of exile in its metaphorical sense. The four scenes in Psalm 107 remind us all of the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity.”33
Those essential qualities of our human condition remind us that we stand at some distance from God. Those essential qualities remind us that we are a long way from home. At times our lives feel as though the north (zaphon) has come crashing down upon us and the waters (yam) have threatened to overtake us. We need for God to gather us back to himself again.
Even in our technological age, people are falling into exile in new and more sophisticated ways. In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that people have started to use social technology as a means of a self-imposed exile.34
When circumstances become challenging or conversations become difficult, people resort to social media as a means of escape. Rather than engaging others, people withdraw into a sophisticated form of isolationism. Ironically, for many people deliverance is associated with being exiled from others—a concept foreign to the psalmist and to the church.
Whether through wandering, confinement, sickness, or sinfulness, each one of us knows the truth of the claim that to be exiled means one is not at home. The psalmist does not minimize the threat of exile, and neither should we. Exile has the capacity to undo us all—and it would, “if the LORD had not been on our side” (Ps 124:1). The psalmist is clear: God alone is our source of deliverance from such desperate circumstances.
The faithful God. Psalm 107 takes seriously the plight of exile, but perhaps even more it takes seriously the only remedy, Yahweh. As noted above, the Hebrew word hesed appears throughout the psalm, thus declaring to all who were in exile and to all who are in exile that the steadfast love of God is a source of deliverance. The psalmist makes clear that this steadfast love manifests itself not as an emotion but instead through the power of God. To announce to those in our congregations who are enduring the “essential weakness, neediness, and sinfulness of humanity” that God loves them may not be enough. “Love” has become so stripped of its meaning in our culture that, regrettably, such a claim may be little more than an “empty metaphor” for some. They likely need more.
Those who occupy our pews know something of the “hunger and thirst” mentioned by the psalmist, and, even more, they know something of what it feels like when life seems to be ebbing away (v. 5). Some have sat in darkness and felt the weight of the shadow of death (v. 10). And many, if not all, have felt both their courage and their hope melt away amid calamity (v. 26). To tell a person that she or he is loved in those moments does little to extinguish the pain and angst associated with those times. Instead, people long to know of a faithful God who refuses to let exile have the final word. They want to know of a God who has performed “wonderful deeds” for his people in the past, even lifting up the needy out of affliction (v. 41), and they want to know that this God will act again even in their behalf. The final verse of the psalm instructs us in this way. If we are wise, we will give “heed” to these things and we too will consider the steadfast love of God (v. 43).
