Psalm 105 told Israel’s story as a record of God’s faithfulness. This one, its direct companion, tells the very same history from the opposite angle — the same exodus, the same wilderness, the same land, but now narrated as one long list of the people’s own repeated failures.
A study in Psalm 106 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 14 min read
We Have Sinned With Our Fathers
“Praise ye the LORD. O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever… We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly.”
Psalm 106:1, 6
“We have sinned with our fathers” is a striking confession — the writer does not distance himself from earlier generations’ failures as ancient history no longer relevant to him. He claims the same guilt as his own.
“Nevertheless He saved them for His name’s sake, That He might make His mighty power to be known. He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up: So He led them through the depths, as through a wilderness… Then believed they His words; They sang His praise.”
Ellen G. White · Testimonies for the Church, vol. 8, p. 110
White’s quotation flows directly from Psalm 105 into this psalm without a break, part of the same continuous passage begun on the previous pages — deliverance immediately followed, only a few verses later, by exactly the forgetfulness this psalm goes on to confess.
They Made A Calf In Horeb
“They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image. Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass. They forgat God their saviour, which had done great things in Egypt.”
Psalm 106:19-21
“Changed their glory into the similitude of an ox” captures the sheer strangeness of the trade — the living God who had just parted the sea for them, exchanged for an animal shape their own hands had melted and cast.
“Only a few days had passed since the Hebrews had made a solemn covenant with God to obey His voice. They had stood trembling with terror before the mount, listening to the words of the Lord, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.’ The glory of God still hovered above Sinai in the sight of the congregation; but they turned away, and asked for other gods.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 317
White emphasizes the timing, not merely the act — the rebellion happened within days of the covenant itself, the mountain’s glory still visible, making the failure not one of ignorance but of deliberate, almost immediate turning away from what they had only just promised.
Moses Stood Before Him In The Breach
“Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them.”
Psalm 106:23
“Stood before him in the breach” pictures intercession as a physical act, someone standing bodily in the opening a judgment would otherwise pass straight through — Moses positioned deliberately between the people and the consequence they had actually earned.
Then Stood Up Phinehas
“They joined themselves also unto Baalpeor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions: and the plague brake in upon them. Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the plague was stayed.”
Psalm 106:28-30
“And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore” follows immediately after — a rare and striking phrase, echoing Abraham’s own faith counted as righteousness generations earlier, now applied to Phinehas’s decisive intervention here.
Many Times Did He Deliver Them
“Many times did he deliver them; but they provoked him with their counsel, and were brought low for their iniquity. Nevertheless he regarded their affliction, when he heard their cry: and he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the multitude of his mercies.”
Psalm 106:43-45
“Many times” is the honest summary this entire psalm has been building toward — not one failure and one rescue, but a repeated cycle, rebellion and mercy trading places again and again across an entire national history.
“Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the heathen, to give thanks unto thy holy name, and to triumph in thy praise. Blessed be the LORD God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting: and let all the people say, Amen. Praise ye the LORD.”
Psalm 106:47-48
This closing prayer, likely written during the Babylonian exile, asks for exactly the same kind of rescue the psalm has just spent forty-six verses recounting — not a new request, but the writer’s own generation stepping directly into the same repeated pattern, hoping mercy will do again what it has already done many times before.
