John Calvin Commentary Psalms 135:13

"Thy name, O Jehovah, [endureth] for ever; Thy memorial [name], O Jehovah, throughout all generations." — Psalms 135:13 (ASV)

O Jehovah! thy name is for ever. There are many reasons why the name of God ought always to be maintained in the world. However, here the Psalmist speaks particularly of that everlasting praise due to him for preserving his Church and people, as the cause is immediately added—that God will judge his people.

The whole world is a theater for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were—the most conspicuous part of it. The nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, and the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively we are called to consider them.

The term judging in Hebrew expresses whatever belongs to just and legitimate government. The future tense, as it often does, apparently denotes continued action. Therefore, what the Psalmist says is tantamount to this: God would always watch over and preserve his people, and, being thus under God’s guardian care, they would be placed in safety.

Alternatively, we might suppose that the Psalmist employs the future tense to teach us that, under affliction, we must have a sustained hope and not give way to despondency, even if God seems to have overlooked and deserted us. This is because, whatever temporary delays there may be in his help, he will appear as our judge and defender at the proper season, when he sees that we have been sufficiently humbled.

This view may be further commended as the true meaning because the Psalmist seems to allude to the expression of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:36), whose very words, indeed, he quotes. As some alleviation during the divine chastisements the people would suffer, Moses foretold that God would come forth as their judge to help and deliver them in their extremity.

The writer of the present Psalm, whoever he may have been, applies this generally to the Church, declaring that God would never allow it to be altogether destroyed, since if it were destroyed, he would cease to be a King. To propose changing the verb tense to the past—understanding it as God having shown himself to be the judge of his people against the Egyptians—weakens the meaning of the passage and does not suit the context of either this Psalm or the address of Moses.

The Hebrew verb נחם, nacham, means either to repent or to receive comfort, and both meanings are quite suitable. On the one hand, when God returns in mercy to his people, although this implies no change in him, a change is nevertheless apparent in the event itself. Thus, he is said to repent when he begins to show mercy to his people, instead of manifesting his displeasure through just judgments against them.

Again, he is said to receive consolation, or to be appeased and reconciled towards his people, when, in remembrance of his covenant which endures forever, he visits them with everlasting mercies, though he had corrected them for a moment (Isaiah 54:8). The meaning, in short, is that God’s displeasure towards his people is only temporary, and that when taking vengeance on their sins, he remembers mercy in the midst of wrath, as Habakkuk says (Habakkuk 3:2).

Thus, God is spoken of as a man, manifesting a father’s affection and restoring his children who deserved to have been cast off, because he cannot bear that the fruit of his own body should be torn from him. Such is the sense of the passage: that God has compassion for his people because they are his children; that he would not willingly be bereaved of them and left childless; that he is placable towards them, as they are dear to him; and that having recognized them as his offspring, he cherishes them with a tender love.