Psalms 136:1-12

a Review of God's Mercies

Psalms 136:1-12

An antiphonal psalm, intended to be sung by two choirs or by a soloist and the Temple choir. This avowal of the eternity of God's mercy, amid all the fluctuation and change of human affairs, is very striking. When we can look out on the history of our world from God's standpoint, we discover that the black-edged pages have been interleaved with golden pages of mercy. When we review our own lives from the vantage ground of heaven, we shall see that the mercy of God was the blue sky of background across which the dark clouds floated for but a limited space.

The divisions are as follows: Creation, Psalms 136:1-9; Redemption, Psalms 136:10-22; Providence, Psalms 136:23-26.

In the first division the psalmist views the framework of the world and the redemption of Israel from Egypt as equal monuments of the divine loving-kindness. It was love that made the theater on which the great revelation of redemption was manifested. The crimson lips of a tulip's petals are His work as well as the crimson blood that flowed at Calvary.