Scripture Daily

Context No. 140 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 105:33-45: in context

33He struck their vines and also their fig trees, and shattered the trees of their country. 34He spoke, and the locusts came with the grasshoppers, without number. 35They ate up every plant in their land, and ate up the fruit of their ground. 36He struck also all the firstborn in their land, the first fruits of all their manhood. 37He brought them out with silver and gold. There was not one feeble person among his tribes. 38Egypt was glad when they departed, for the fear of them had fallen on them. 39He spread a cloud for a covering, fire to give light in the night. 40They asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of the sky. 41He opened the rock, and waters gushed out. They ran as a river in the dry places. 42For he remembered his holy word, and Abraham, his servant. 43He brought his people out with joy, his chosen with singing. 44He gave them the lands of the nations. They took the labor of the peoples in possession, 45that they might keep his statutes, and observe his laws. Praise the LORD!

Psalm 105 retells Israel's history from Abraham to the entry into Canaan, and it is built as praise rather than chronicle. This passage covers the last plagues on Egypt, the departure, and the years in the wilderness.

The telling is compressed and one-sided by design. He struck their vines and fig trees, sent locusts without number, struck down all the firstborn. Then the departure: he brought them out with silver and gold, and there was not one among his tribes who stumbled. Egypt was glad when they left, for dread of Israel had fallen on them. Then the desert: a cloud for a covering, fire to light the night, quail and bread from heaven, water running through the dry places like a river.

What the psalm leaves out is everything Israel did. There is no golden calf, no complaining, no refusal to enter the land, no forty years of dying in the wilderness. Numbers and Exodus tell all of it. This psalm is not correcting them. It is choosing what to say in a song of thanks, and what it chooses is the record of what God did. Then the last line names the point of the rescue: that they might keep his statutes. When I tell the story of how I got here, whose actions does my usual version leave out?

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