12 With a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm; For his loving kindness endures forever:
Therefore tell the children of Israel, 'I am Yahweh, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments:
Or has God tried to go and take him a nation from the midst of [another] nation, by trials, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
It shall be, when your son asks you in time to come, saying, 'What is this?' that you shall tell him, 'By strength of hand Yahweh brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage;
Your right hand, Yahweh, is glorious in power, Your right hand, Yahweh, dashes the enemy in pieces.
Know you this day: for I don't speak with your children who have not known, and who have not seen the chastisement of Yahweh your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his outstretched arm, and his signs, and his works, which he did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and to all his land; and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses, and to their chariots; how he made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how Yahweh has destroyed them to this day;
For they didn't get the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your face, Because you were favorable to them.
Awake, awake, put on strength, arm of Yahweh; awake, as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Isn't it you who did cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the monster? Isn't it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 136
Commentary on Psalms 136 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 136
The scope of this psalm is the same with that of the foregoing psalm, but there is something very singular in the composition of it; for the latter half of each verse is the same, repeated throughout the psalm, "for his mercy endureth for ever,' and yet no vain repetition. It is allowed that such burdens, or "keepings,' as we call them, add very much to the beauty of a song, and help to make it moving and affecting; nor can any verse contain more weighty matter, or more worthy to be thus repeated, than this, that God's mercy endureth for ever; and the repetition of it here twenty-six times intimates,
Psa 136:1-9
The duty we are here again and again called to is to give thanks, to offer the sacrifice of praise continually, not the fruits of our ground or cattle, but the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name, Heb. 13:15. We are never so earnestly called upon to pray and repent as to give thanks; for it is the will of God that we should abound most in the most pleasant exercises of religion, in that which is the work of heaven. Now here observe,
Psa 136:10-22
The great things God for Israel, when he first formed them into a people, and set up his kingdom among them, are here mentioned, as often elsewhere in the psalms, as instances both of the power of God and of the particular kindness he had for Israel. See Ps. 135:8, etc.
Psa 136:23-26
God's everlasting mercy is here celebrated,