This psalm retells four hundred years of Israel’s history in miniature — Abraham’s wandering, Joseph’s slavery and sudden rise, the plagues, the exodus — and its purpose is stated plainly at the very end: all of it happened so that a people would actually keep God’s law once they had it.
A study in Psalm 105 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 14 min read
O Give Thanks Unto The LORD
“O give thanks unto the LORD; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works. Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the LORD.”
Psalm 105:1-3
“Make known his deeds among the people” frames this entire psalm before its history even begins — not private memory, but a story deliberately meant to be told outward, to anyone willing to listen.
“All who profess to be children of God I would invite to consider the history of the Israelites, as recorded in the one hundred and fifth, the one hundred and sixth, and the one hundred and seventh psalms. By carefully studying these scriptures, we may be able to appreciate more fully the goodness, mercy, and love of our God.”
Ellen G. White · Testimonies for the Church, vol. 8, p. 107
White treats these three consecutive psalms as a single unit worth deliberate, careful study — not simply history recited, but history meant to actually change how a reader understands God’s own character.
Touch Not Mine Anointed
“When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people; he suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes; saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.”
Psalm 105:13-15
This describes Abraham’s own vulnerable wandering through foreign lands, a stranger with no army and no standing, protected anyway from kings who could easily have harmed him — not because he defended himself, but because God directly intervened.
“The psalmist refers to this chapter in Abraham’s experience when he says, in speaking of the chosen people, that God ‘reproved kings for their sakes; saying, Touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets no harm.’”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 131
White identifies the exact incident behind this verse — Pharaoh warned directly by God after unknowingly taking Sarah into his household, an early and personal demonstration that wronging one of God’s own people was, in her words, “a dangerous thing.”
Joseph, Who Was Sold For A Servant
“He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant: whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried him.”
Psalm 105:17-19
“The word of the LORD tried him” is a compact summary of years of genuine suffering — slavery, false accusation, prison — described here as a testing process with a specific purpose, not simply misfortune that happened to precede his rise.
“The king sent and loosed him; even the ruler of the people, and let him go free. He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance.”
Psalm 105:20-21
The reversal here happens in a single verse — prisoner to ruler, with no gradual transition described, the same abruptness with which Joseph’s own actual circumstances genuinely changed.
Not One Feeble Person Among Their Tribes
“He brought them forth also with silver and gold: and there was not one feeble person among their tribes. Egypt was glad when they departed: for the fear of them fell upon them.”
Psalm 105:37-38
“Not one feeble person” is a remarkable claim for a population that had just endured generations of forced labor — a specific, almost medical detail confirming that whatever left Egypt that night was not a broken, exhausted crowd, but a people genuinely strengthened for the journey ahead.
“And He brought them forth with silver and gold; And there was not one feeble person among His tribes.”
Ellen G. White · Testimonies for the Church, vol. 8, p. 108
White’s quotation continues onto this second page without a break, the same continuous passage she urged her readers to study — plagues, darkness, blood, frogs, locusts, and finally this quiet, deliberate detail about the departing people’s actual strength.
That They Might Observe His Statutes
“He opened the rock, and the waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a river. For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant. And he brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness.”
Psalm 105:41-43
“He remembered” ties this whole rescue directly back to the covenant made with Abraham generations earlier — nothing in this deliverance is treated as a new or separate decision. It is the same promise, still being kept.
“And gave them the lands of the heathen: and they inherited the labour of the people; that they might observe his statutes, and keep his laws. Praise ye the LORD.”
Psalm 105:44-45
The whole sweeping narrative, patriarchs, slavery, plagues, exodus, land, finally arrives at a single stated purpose in the very last verse — every part of that long history existed, this psalm insists, to produce a people who would actually keep what they had been given.
