CHAPTER 136

AUTHOR UNKNOWN: PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING TO GOD

¹O give thanks unto the LORD; for He is good: for His Mercy endures forever. (We must never forget that God is good! Therefore, He is merciful.)

²O give thanks unto the God of gods: for His Mercy endures forever. (The Hebrew for God of gods is Elohim of the Elohim. He is speaking here of the Trinity of which all are equal. In the Trinity, His Mercy endures forever.)

³O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for His Mercy endures forever. (The Hebrew is Adonim of the Adonim, which means Sovereign of the sovereigns; Master of the masters; Ruler of the rulers.)

⁴To Him Who Alone does great wonders: for His Mercy endures forever. (God Alone can perform constructive miracles.)

⁵To Him Who by wisdom made the heavens: for His Mercy endures forever. (This ascribes to God all the planetary systems.)

⁶To Him Who stretched out the Earth above the waters: for His Mercy endures forever (who separated the land and the seas; the attention which the Holy Spirit gives to the Mercy of God in all of these Verses is beautifully amazing, and rightly so!).

⁷To Him Who made great lights: for His Mercy endures forever (God is Light, so the creation of Light is a natural result of His Divine Person):

⁸The sun to rule by day: for His Mercy endures forever:

⁹The moon and stars to rule by night: for His Mercy endures forever. (The Holy Spirit is telling us here that all of Creation, and its ordered existence, is a result of the Mercy of God.)

¹⁰To Him Who smote Egypt in their firstborn: for His Mercy endures forever (this tells us that all Judgments poured out on Egypt were a result of Mercy; the Lord could have smitten Egypt at the beginning; however, He sent Judgments, including the death of the firstborn, all in order to get them to repent, but to no avail):

¹¹And brought out Israel from among them: for His Mercy endures forever (to bring Israel out was not only an act of Mercy for Israel, but for Egypt as well):

¹²With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: for His Mercy endures forever. (The strong hand and the stretched out arm, which God used to deliver Israel, were all because of Mercy.)

¹³To Him Who divided the Red Sea into parts: for His Mercy endures forever (this Passage destroys the myth that the Red Sea, at the place of the crossing, was only a few inches deep):

¹⁴And made Israel to pass through the midst of it: for His Mercy endures forever (it took Faith for Israel to pass through; they had to believe that God, Who had made this path through the Sea, would, as well, continue to defy the laws of gravity by holding the water up like two walls on either side):

¹⁵But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea: for His Mercy endures forever. (The indication here is that Pharaoh drowned along with his army.)

¹⁶To Him Who led His people through the wilderness: for His Mercy endures forever. (God intended for the stay in the wilderness to be of short duration a few months to two years at the most. The forty years was because of Israels unbelief and rebellion.)

¹⁷To Him Who smote great kings: for His Mercy endures forever (this speaks of Pharaoh as well as the kings mentioned in the following Verses):

¹⁸And killed famous kings: for His Mercy endures forever:

¹⁹Sihon king of the Amorites: for His Mercy endures forever:

²⁰And Og the king of Bashan: for His Mercy endures forever (tradition says that Sihon was the brother of king Og; both were Amorites; they were giants of the race of the Rephaim at the time of the conquest of Palestine):

²¹And gave their land for an heritage: for His Mercy endures forever:

²²Even an heritage unto Israel His servant: for His Mercy endures forever. (Ogs territory was given to the half-Tribe of Manasseh [Deut. 3:13]. Sihons territory was given to the Tribes of Reuben and Gad [Num. 32:2338; Josh. 13:10].)

²³Who remembered us in our low estate: for His Mercy endures forever (God remembers His Mercy and Grace and forgets our sins; man forgets Gods Mercy and Grace and remembers our sins):

²⁴And has redeemed us from our enemies: for His Mercy endures forever. (The word redeemed means to rescue and to break the power of the one who has us bound, namely Satan. This Redemption is so powerful that it not only redeems us, but also destroys our enemies.)

²⁵Who gives food to all flesh: for His Mercy endures forever. (The food addressed here pertains not only to spiritual food, but also to natural food.)

²⁶O give thanks unto the God of Heaven: for His Mercy endures forever. (As His Mercy endures forever, likewise, our thanks unto Him should endure forever.)