Much of Psalm 105 appears in 1 Chronicles 16: 7-36 as part of the praise offered when the ark is brought to Jerusalem. Alter calls this a "historical psalm", as it recounts episodes from Israel's history. Another historical psalm is Asaph's Psalm 78 which, like this one, is quite long.
Psalm 105:1-5, Tell of His wonders
Give thanks to the LORD,
call on his name;
make known among the nations what he has done.
Sing to him,
sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.
Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.
Look to the LORD and his strength;
seek his face always.
Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles,
and the judgments he pronounced,
The psalm opens with instructions to sing to God, praising his wonderful acts and remembering His miracles and His declarations. The song will now move on to describe many of these wonderful acts.
In Isaiah 12:4, the prophet Isaiah speaks of a future time when the people of Israel praise God for restoring their land. That praise song naturally begins just like this psalm.
Psalm 105:6-11, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob
O descendants of Abraham his servant,
O sons of Jacob, his chosen ones.
He is the LORD our God;
his judgments are in all the earth.
He remembers his covenant forever,
the word he commanded, for a thousand generations,
the covenant he made with Abraham,
the oath he swore to Isaac.
He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree,
to Israel as an everlasting covenant:
"To you I will give the land of Canaan as the portion you will inherit."
Foremost in God's divine acts, in the mind of the psalmist, is God's choice of Abram, Isaac and Jacob. The psalmist declares that YHWH will remember His covenant forever and reaffirms the declaration of the First Commandment, Exodus 20:1, that YHWH is their God, ruler of all the earth.
In the second line of parallelism, he replaces "forever" with "a thousand generations", emphasizing the length of God's covenant. (From the viewpoint of the scroll of Chronicles or of Matthew 1:1-17, two lists of genealogies which probably skip some generations, the number of generations from Abraham to the readers was less than fifty.)
Psalm 105:12-15, Wandering Arameans
When they were but few in number,
few indeed, and strangers in it,
they wandered from nation to nation,
from one kingdom to another.
He allowed no one to oppress them;
for their sake he rebuked kings:
"Do not touch my anointed ones;
do my prophets no harm."
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and descendants were protected when they wandered across Palestine, even to Egypt. Warning about "touching God's anointed ones" echo events in Genesis 12:10-20, Genesis 20, Genesis 26:1-11, in which a foolish Abraham or Isaac is protected from a king who desires their wife.
Psalm 105:16-22, Joseph in Egypt
He called down famine on the land
and destroyed all their supplies of food;
and he sent a man before them--
Joseph, sold as a slave.
They bruised his feet with shackles,
his neck was put in irons,
till what he foretold came to pass,
till the word of the LORD proved him true.
The king sent and released him,
the ruler of peoples set him free.
He made him master of his household,
ruler over all he possessed,
to instruct his princes as he pleased
and teach his elders wisdom.
God's work through Joseph is retold. Joseph's story was one of suffering and slavery, yet part of a divine plan to save the family of Jacob. (See Genesis 39-41.) This divine plan was "foretold" (verse 19) in Joseph's dreams (Genesis 37:1-10.)
Psalm 105:23-25, Jacob's tribe grows
Then Israel entered Egypt;
Jacob lived as an alien in the land of Ham.
The LORD made his people very fruitful;
he made them too numerous for their foes,
whose hearts he turned to hate his people,
to conspire against his servants.
In Egypt the descendants of Jacob grow, until a pharaoh is threatened by them. (Exodus 1:1-10.) This passage includes a statement about God turning the people (especially Pharaoh) against the Israelites. (Exodus recounts that eventually "God hardened Pharaoh's heart", eg. Exodus 9:12.)
Psalm 105:26-27, Moses and Aaron sent
He sent Moses his servant, and Aaron, whom he had chosen.
They performed his miraculous signs among them,
his wonders in the land of Ham.
In order to save the Israelites from Pharoah, God picks Moses and Aaron of the desert and sends them to Egypt.
Psalm 105:28-36, The plagues
He sent darkness and made the land dark-
for had they not rebelled against his words?
He turned their waters into blood,
causing their fish to die.
Their land teemed with frogs,
which went up into the bedrooms of their rulers.
He spoke, and there came swarms of flies,
and gnats throughout their country.
He turned their rain into hail,
with lightning throughout their land;
he struck down their vines and fig trees
and shattered the trees of their country.
He spoke, and the locusts came,
grasshoppers without number;
they ate up every green thing in their land,
ate up the produce of their soil.
Then he struck down all the firstborn in their land,
the firstfruits of all their manhood.
Eight of the ten plagues (from Exodus 7-11) are recounted. The order of the plagues is interesting -- the ninth plague, the last one in which Moses stood before Pharoah comes first and the final plague, the death of the firstborn male ends the list. It is these two events that were most dramatic and led to Pharoah's reluctant release of Israel. The other plagues, listed between these, are the first (blood), second (frogs), fourth (flies), third (gnats), seventh (hail) and eighth (locusts.) Left out are the plague on livestock and the skin disease (boils) in Exodus 9:1-12.
Our three year calendar has a few days of leeway and since this is a rather long psalm, we will break it into two days and continue looking at it tomorrow.
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