Psalm 106B - Remember Wonders (Part 2B)
(Psalm 105 is part 1, and Psalm 106 is part 2 and is in two parts, 106A and 106B)
Psalm 106 continues the historical narrative of Israel's sins past the Golden Calf to the sending out of the twelve spies into Canaan.
E The Twelve Spies (v. 24-27)
Then they despised the pleasant land;
They did not believe in His word,
But grumbled in their tents;
They did not listen to the voice of the Lord.
Therefore He swore to them
That He would cast them down in the wilderness,
And that He would cast their seed among the nations
And scatter them in the lands. (Psalm 106: 24-27, NASB)
There is no mention of a specific incident in these verses, other than that “they despised the pleasant land." The probable reference is the sending of the twelve spies in Numbers 13. The Lord told Moses to send twelve, one from each tribe. They were given specific instructions on what to do and then to return after 40 days. They reported the abundance available in the land, but also the enemies who lived there. Only two men, Joshua and Caleb, recommended that the people go into Canaan, while the other ten recommended that the people not go into the land. In chapter 14, the people believed the ten and rebelled, and once again, Moses called upon the Lord to forgive them and not destroy them.
The Lord resolved that none of those living should enter the land except Joshua and Caleb and that only the children of those living would enter. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years. The generation coming out of Egypt died, except for Moses, Joshua, and Caleb.
F The Plague at Baal-peor (v. 28-31)
They joined themselves also to Baal-peor,
And ate sacrifices offered to the dead.
Thus they provoked Him to anger with their deeds,
And the plague broke out among them.
Then Phinehas stood up and interposed,
And so the plague was stayed.
And it was reckoned to him for righteousness,
To all generations forever. (Psalm 106: 28-31, NASB)
Toward the end of the wandering, as God prepared His people to enter the promised land, they migrated to the land east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River. The account in Numbers 25 of the plague mentioned here in Psalm 106 immediately followed the prophecies of Balaam, who was contracted by Barak of Moab. At that time, while the sons of Israel camped across the Jordan from Jericho, Balaam was supposed to prophesy curses against Israel. (Numbers 22). Balaam was unable to do so and left.
At the beginning of chapter 25, the Israelites began to “play the harlot with the daughters of Moab.”
For they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry against Israel. The Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you slay his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor.” (Numbers 25: 2-5, NASB)
A plague ensued and was not stopped until Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, skewered an Israelite man and Midianite woman through the body. “Those who died in the plague were 24,000”. (Numbers 25: 9)
As an aside, it was none other than Balaam who devised bringing the foreign women into the camp
Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the Lord. (Numbers 31:16, NASB)
When the Apostle John addresses the church at Pergamum, he mentions the sin of those holding Balaam's teachings.
But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. So you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. (Rev. 2:14, 15, NASB)
As a result, the sons of Reuban killed Balaam during the invasion into their designated territory.
The sons of Israel also killed Balaam the son of Beor, the diviner, with the sword among the rest of their slain. (Joshua 13: 22, NASB)
Or, Balaam died in the purge of the Midianites.
They killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. (Numbers 31: 8, NASB)
G The Waters of Meribah (2nd time) and Sin of Moses (v. 32-33)
They also provoked Him to wrath at the waters of Meribah,
So that it went hard with Moses on their account;
Because they were rebellious against His Spirit,
He spoke rashly with his lips. (Psalm 106: 32-33, NASB)
Numbers 20 begins with the people in the wilderness of Zin and staying at Kadesh. Miriam died there. There was no water, and the people contended with Moses. The Lord commanded Moses to use the same rod used to strike the Nile during the plagues (Exodus 17: 5-7), and also used to strike the rock at Horeb.
This time, however, the Lord told Moses to speak to the rock, rather than strike it. In anger with the grumbling of the people, Moses disobeyed.
So Moses took the rod from before the Lord, just as He had commanded him; and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. And he said to them, “Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” Those were the waters of Meribah, because the sons of Israel contended with the Lord, and He proved Himself holy among them. (Numbers 20: 9-13, NASB)
Water did issue forth from the rock, but God confronted Moses about his disobedience. As punishment, Moses would not be allowed to enter the land, but would only be permitted to view it. Moses challenged the command of God in full view of the people of God. Thus God had to judge because of the challenge to His authority. Moses was already 120 years old at this point, so even if he had crossed the Jordan, his life was nearly over regardless, so in one sense, this was not as insensitive a judgment as it might sound to the casual reader. God was gracious in allowing Moses to view the land even though Moses would not step foot in it.
H The Failure to Complete the Mission of Taking the Land (v. 34-39) [Joshua]
They did not destroy the peoples,
As the Lord commanded them,
But they mingled with the nations
And learned their practices,
And served their idols,
Which became a snare to them.
They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons,
And shed innocent blood,
The blood of their sons and their daughters,
Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;
And the land was polluted with the blood.
Thus they became unclean in their practices,
And played the harlot in their deeds. (Psalm 106: 34-39, NASB)
God commanded the Israelites to move into the land which he had promised them by covenant. The instructions were clear as to what they were to do and how they were to do it. Each of the twelve tribes of Israel was given an inheritance with specific borders. Since the Levites were the priests, theirs was not an inheritance of land, but instead were given cities in each tribal territory. The tribe of Joseph received two portions because of the abuse which Joseph suffered at the hands of his brothers and also for how instrumental he was in bringing the entire family safely into the best land of Egypt during the time of famine. Because Levites did not receive a portion, the Joseph tribe became two tribes, according to Joseph's sons: the half-tribe of Ephraim and the half-tribe of Manasseh. So the ten tribes of Israel and the two half-tribes prepared to take possession of the land. They were to conquer all those living in the promised land and replace the Canaanite inhabitants completely.
There were to do this through war. There are many today who would find a conflict in this command, arguing that God is love and would never demand such a barbarous thing. Some would call this genocide and occupation and would bring judgment against God if they even acknowledged that He exists. All of us have probably had these thoughts on occasion. There is danger in thinking this way, and in fact, it was precisely this danger that God sought to avoid.
Could God have accomplished killing people if He wanted to? Of course, He could. We have already seen that God used plagues to execute His justice. (See Letter “F”, above.)
But sometimes God, for His purposes, will demand a war to make the changes that are needed. Life for us is of ultimate value. It is also valuable to God, but He knows that all lives are time-limited. Every person alive today on the earth, all 7.8 billion of us, will generally not be living in 100 years. All 7.8 billion people will die. All 7.8 billion people will also be made alive again and stand before the judgment seat of God. All will live for eternity, either with God in heaven or without Him. So from the perspective of God, knowing that every person is going to die, does it matter whether a person lives 20 years or 80 years, relative to eternity? It matters a great deal to us, but from God’s perspective - maybe not so much.
Many of us today were born within one generation of world war. World War 2 ended in 1945. Those born before 1985 were born in the next generation following that war. Was that war necessary? It was. Had the war not happened, the Nazi regime in Germany would have been unchecked. The atrocities of the Holocaust would not have stopped, nor would the world have given it judgment and made the commitment never to allow it to happen again. And yet, such horrible atrocities of genocide have happened in other places. One only has to think of Cambodia, of Rwanda, of Myanmar in the next generation from 1985. These atrocities require action, and unfortunately, war must, at times, be the vehicle to end such national sins.
So why would God command the tribes to wipe out all of those living in the land? The answer is that the tribes were to be the instruments of His judgment. The people living in Canaan had committed horrible atrocities judged by God as requiring judgment. They were guilty as an entire population. They were like a virus in the sense that if they did not completely eradicate all the virus, it would infect the next host. As the holy people of God were to enter into their promised inheritance, the land had to be cleaned out and sanitized.
In a court of law, once a judge has rendered a judgment, the sentence must be carried out by others who have that responsibility. The guilty one goes to those who run the prisons to apply the penalty. In the extreme cases of a death sentence, some have the responsibility of execution.
Similarly, in war, soldiers are required to fight. Soldiers of the 94th Infantry in World War 2 had to break through the Siegfried Line, called the German west wall, as the Allied troops moved into Germany. Those soldiers fought horrendous battles, with thousands of deaths. The fighting in Russia and Japan resulted in much larger numbers of casualties. The action in Stalingrad alone resulted in 850,000 Axis deaths, and more than a million Soviet soldiers died.
The virus nature of infection did happen in the promised land. As the tribes were unwilling to defeat all of the enemies, those enemies, in turn, brought the epidemic of false religion into the life of the twelve tribes. Because of the disobedience of the tribes to not perform the judgment God required, their worship became polluted. The tribes became as guilty of the same charges levied against those living in Canaan before the twelve tribes entered.
During the time of Covid-19 in 2020, the world saw first-hand how quickly a pandemic can spread and how difficult it is to stop. Only radical responses can keep the infection from running amok.
Joshua begins with the resounding victory at Jericho, but by the beginning of Judges, there is frustration and defeat because the tribes did not complete the job which the Lord required them to do. (Judges 1:27ff)
I The Oppression of the Surrounding Nations (v. 40-43) [Judges]
Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against His people
And He abhorred His inheritance.
Then He gave them into the hand of the nations,
And those who hated them ruled over them.
Their enemies also oppressed them,
And they were subdued under their power.
Many times He would deliver them;
They, however, were rebellious in their counsel,
And so sank down in their iniquity. (Psalm 106: 40-43, NASB)
Judges describes seven cycles where the people were subjected to an oppressor, enslaved, cried out to the Lord for help, received a deliverer, had victory, and then succumbed to sin once again.
By the end of the book, there was no law,
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25, NASB)
5 The Lord Remembered His Covenant (v. 44-46)
Nevertheless He looked upon their distress
When He heard their cry;
And He remembered His covenant for their sake,
And relented according to the greatness of His lovingkindness.
He also made them objects of compassion
In the presence of all their captors. (Psalm 106: 44-46, NASB)
Each time that the Israelites cried out to God in the book of Judges, God would provide a leader who would be used of God to overcome those who were oppressing. If the Exodus was in about 1444 BC, and there were 40 years in the desert, the occupation began in about 1400 BC. The book of Joshua concludes with the death of Joshua, so if Joshua were a young man at the Exodus and selected as one of the 12 spies, then one would guess his age to be around 25 at the beginning of the wandering, perhaps older. Forty years in the wilderness wanderings make him 65 at the beginning of the book of Joshua. The text says he lived to be 110 years old (Joshua 24: 29). Thus the events of the book of Joshua took about 45 years, so Judges begins about 1350 BC. The Judges period continues until Samuel, who anoints the first king, Saul, whose reign began in approximately 1050 BC, give or take a few years. So, the time of oppression of the people of God during the period of Judges would have been about 300 years.
During those years, God would periodically deliver His people from their oppressors and give them times of peace as they followed Him. But then the cycle would repeat. Finally, God allowed a king, and the period of the United Monarchy began with Saul, David, and Solomon.
6 Prayer for National Salvation (v. 47)
Save us, O Lord our God,
And gather us from among the nations,
To give thanks to Your holy name
And glory in Your praise. (Psalm 106: 47, NASB)
If the composition of this psalm occurred during the time of David’s ascension to Israel's leadership, this prayer would be a sincere desire for unity. Before the time of the United Monarchy, the tribes lived as distinct entities. Each tribe was an independent entity in that there was no centralized government for the tribes. During the three hundred years of oppression, many of the tribes were taken over by occupiers such that the tribe no longer held its promised borders of inheritance. Yet each tribe still had an identity, even if they no longer held their allotted land. So the prayer for unification in this psalm was sincere. There was a desire to have one unified nation. That it was not unified is seen in the amount of opposition to David's ascension to the throne by many of the tribes.
Now there was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David; and David grew steadily stronger, but the house of Saul grew weaker continually. (2 Samuel 3:1, NASB)
7 Benediction (v. 48)
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
From everlasting even to everlasting.
And let all the people say, “Amen.”
Praise the Lord! (Psalm 106: 47, NASB)
And so the psalm concludes with a blessing of the Lord, the God of Israel. The promise to Abraham, the covenant, was unconditional, meaning that humankind could never annul it. However, God did bring national judgments against Israel and later Judah when they violated the conditions of the conditional covenant with Moses. The Lord brought Assyria in 722 BC to judge the ten tribes of the north, Israel. God used Babylon to judge Judah in 586 BC. Yet, even so, the Lord returned a remnant to the land until the time of Jesus.
But the everlasting covenant with Abraham can never be broken. The descendants of Abraham will always have the land. The people of God from Abraham will always be His people, and those people will always bless the nations.
The plan of God continues through this time into the eschaton, the last days when God will establish His throne on the earth. Many Biblical scholars speculate upon the timelines and events of the Second Coming of Jesus. But even so, His earthly Kingdom is superseded by a new Jerusalem, a new heavens, and a new earth.
Everyone living now will pass through death into eternity and either live with God or live without Him. By faith, those receiving His offer of forgiveness and eternal life will bless the Lord with, “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” to never-ending days.
We bow before the Lord, as did the writer of the psalm, to be amazed. To see the plan of God worked out, to see the rebellion of people like us, and to see God’s love poured out in His continual desire to have us walk with Him - is overwhelming. We also give Him our praise and shout, “Hallelujah!”