Charles Ellicott Commentary Psalms 106

This formula of praise in the Jewish Church occupied, as a choral refrain, a similar position to the Gloria Patri in Christian worship. The precise date of its first appearance cannot be determined. The chronicler includes it in the compilation from different psalms, which he introduces as sung when the Ark was brought to Zion (1 Chronicles 16:34). He also represents it not only as chanted by the procession of priests and Levites, but as bursting spontaneously from the lips of the assembled multitudes at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple (2 Chronicles 7:3). He mentions it also in connection with Jehoshaphat’s revival of choral music.

And it is probable that he was not guilty of any great anachronism in giving it this early existence, for Jeremiah speaks of it as a refrain as familiar as those customary at weddings (Jeremiah 33:11), and, indeed, foretells its revival as a practice once common but long fallen out of use. But the fact that it is found in four liturgical hymns, besides Psalms 136:0, where it becomes a refrain after every verse, as well as its express mention in Ezra 3:11 as used at the dedication of the second Temple, shows that its use became more general after the Captivity; and it was in use in the Maccabean period .

These verses form an introduction to the psalm, and make it evident that while the writer spoke as one of a community, and for the community, he still felt his personal relation to Jehovah.

Praise. — Tehillah, a term that has become technical for a liturgic hymn. (Tehillîm is the general Hebrew word for the psalter. See General Introduction.) The psalmist asks in this verse who is worthy or privileged to sing a tehillah, and he himself answers that loyalty to the covenant confers this privilege.

The tone of this verse indicates a prospect of the swift arrival of good; and it serves, in itself, to provide a probable date for the psalm.

We. — We must recognize that the confession includes the speaker and his generation, as well as the ancestors of the nation. The psalm originates from the period of the Captivity, when the national conscience, or at least that of the more devout part of the nation, was fully aware of the sinfulness of idolatry.