Bible Commentaries
Psalms 106

Verses 1-48

This also is a Psalm of David, and is cited in 1 Chronicles 16:0., although the first and the two last verses only are there given. The subject is similar to that of the preseding psalm; and it was probably one of those psalms which the Jews adapted and sung on their return from Babylon.

Psalms 106:4-5 . Remember me. Nearly all the Versions employ the plural pronoun in these verses. Remember us visit us that we may see, &c.

Psalms 106:20 . Thus they changed their glory. An apostle’s explanation is, they changed the glory of God into a lie. Romans 1:23.

Psalms 106:28 . They ate the sacrifices of the dead. מתים metim, dead men; for Baal, Bel, or Belus was once a man, and reigned in Babylon. Minutius Octavius, in his apology, says, “You banish us to distant islands, and there some of your gods were born, and others buried.”

REFLECTIONS.

The remarks in the preseding psalm are applicable here. The Israelites are taught wisdom from the errors of their fathers. They waited not for the Lord’s counsel. Most of our miseries arise from an impetuous indulgence of passion.

He punished their sin, by sending leanness upon them; he lifted up his hand against them, and sentenced them to die in the desert. Revolt is quickly followed with the rod.

We have the folly of sin: they changed the glory of God to the similitude of a calf that eateth grass. They ate the sacrifices of the dead. Prideaux thinks that idolatry began by worshipping the mediators of the covenant, as Adam, Noah, &c. But Le Clerc, in his critical remarks upon Prideaux, thinks it arose from worshipping the angels who appeared to those patriarchs or mediators; and that Tsabi, a son of Seth, introduced the worship of images. Epiphanius however says as the text, that they worshipped dead men. All these opinions seem to come near the truth. Happy are we in adoring the one Mediator, Jesus Christ, Maker and Lord of all. We see also on a broad scale, that every new generation of the Hebrews discovered its sin by new outbreakings of crime, folly, and revolt. We should therefore train up our children in the faith and fear of the Lord, who relents and saves the contrite.