Commentary - Psalm 105:23-25

Bird's-eye view

This brief section of Psalm 105 serves as the crucial hinge between the patriarchal era and the epic of the Exodus. The psalmist, recounting God's covenant faithfulness, shows how the Lord sovereignly orchestrated the circumstances that would transform Jacob's family into the nation of Israel. This was a three-step process, all under the direct hand of God. First, He brought them into Egypt. Second, He blessed them with astonishing growth, fulfilling His promise to Abraham. Third, and most challengingly, He turned the hearts of their hosts against them. This was not a divine miscalculation. God's purpose was to set the stage for the central redemptive event of the Old Testament. For God to display His mighty power in salvation, His people first had to be in a position from which they needed to be saved. The entire affair, from the initial welcome to the eventual bitter hatred, was governed by the secret counsel of God for the glory of His name.

The central lesson here is the absolute and meticulous sovereignty of God over all human affairs, including the sinful intentions of the human heart. God does not merely react to history; He writes it. The blessing of fruitfulness and the subsequent curse of hatred were not disconnected events. The first provoked the second, and God was the author of the entire sequence, weaving it all together to prepare for the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 105 is a historical psalm, a national hymn celebrating God's covenant faithfulness to Israel from Abraham to the conquest of Canaan. It is a call to "give thanks to the Lord" (v. 1) by remembering His mighty deeds. The psalm moves chronologically through the story of Israel, highlighting God's miraculous works and His unwavering commitment to His covenant promises. Our passage, verses 23-25, forms the transition from the story of Joseph and the patriarchs to the story of Moses and the Exodus. It explains how the family of Jacob, which entered Egypt as honored guests, became a nation of slaves. This sets the necessary backdrop for the plagues and the deliverance that the psalmist is about to recount in the subsequent verses (vv. 26-38). The psalm is a didactic history lesson, intended to foster faith and gratitude in the congregation of Israel by showing them that their entire existence is a testimony to God's sovereign grace.

Key Issues

Sovereign Hospitality and Hostility

One of the most difficult things for the modern Christian mind to embrace is the unvarnished biblical doctrine of God's sovereignty. We are comfortable with a God who is sovereign over blessings, healings, and successes. We are far less comfortable with a God who is sovereign over hatred, slavery, and suffering. But the Bible does not give us the option of a limited-liability God who only presides over the nice parts of history. This passage in Psalm 105 is a potent corrective to any such sentimentalism. The psalmist lays out a sequence of events and affixes God's name to every single part of it. God brought them in. God made them fruitful. And God turned the Egyptians' hearts to hate them. If we want to understand the Exodus, or the cross, or our own lives, we must begin here: God is the one who is in charge of the entire story, from beginning to end, and He does not outsource the difficult chapters to anyone else.

Verse by Verse Commentary

23 Then Israel came to Egypt; And Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham.

The psalmist begins with a simple statement of historical fact, but one that is dripping with theological significance. The names "Israel" and "Jacob" are used in parallel, reminding us of the covenant man who wrestled with God and from whom the nation descended. He came to Egypt not as an invader, but as a sojourner, a resident alien. This was a direct result of the intricate providence of God in the life of Joseph. God sent the famine, God sent Joseph ahead, and God brought the family down to be preserved. The "land of Ham" is a poetic and ancient name for Egypt, tracing its lineage to Noah's son Ham (Gen 10:6). This relocation was a divine appointment. God was moving His covenant chess pieces into position for the next great phase of His redemptive plan.

24 And He caused His people to be very fruitful, And He caused them to be stronger than their adversaries.

Here we see the direct action of God. The verb is explicit: He caused them to be fruitful. This is the fulfillment of the foundational promise given to Abraham, "I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth" (Gen 13:16). In the fertile Nile delta, under the initial protection of Joseph's administration, the small clan of 70 persons exploded into a mighty nation. The psalmist notes that God also caused them to be "stronger than their adversaries." This strength was not in military might, for they were slaves, but in their sheer numbers and resilience. God's blessing made them formidable. And it is this very blessing that becomes the pivot point of the story. The world is often tolerant of a weak and anemic church, but a church that is fruitful, multiplying, and strong will inevitably be seen as a threat. God's blessing on His people was the very thing that provoked the fear and hatred of the Egyptians (Ex. 1:9-10).

25 He turned their heart to hate His people, To deal craftily with His slaves.

This is the starkest and most challenging statement in the passage. The psalmist does not say that the Egyptians' hearts "happened to turn," or that Satan turned them, or that they turned on their own. The text says, He turned their heart. God is the active agent. This is the same theological truth we see in the book of Exodus, where the Lord repeatedly says, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart" (Ex. 4:21). This does not mean God is the author of sin or that He infuses wickedness into a previously righteous heart. The Egyptians' hearts were already sinful and inclined toward pride, fear, and xenophobia. God, in His sovereignty, simply removed any restraint and judicially gave them over to the wickedness that was already there, directing their sinful inclinations to serve His own righteous purposes. He aimed their sin. They began to "deal craftily," scheming to oppress and enslave God's people. They were fully responsible for their wicked hatred and their cunning schemes. And yet, behind it all, God was the master strategist, setting the stage for a deliverance so mighty that His people would sing about it for millennia.

Application

This passage forces us to grapple with the comprehensive nature of God's sovereignty. It is a rock and a refuge for the believer. It means that when we face opposition, hostility, or persecution from the world, it is never outside of our Father's control. The hatred of the world does not catch God by surprise. In fact, He often uses that very hostility to accomplish His purposes in us and through us. He used the hatred of the Egyptians to get Israel out of Egypt. He used the hatred of the Pharisees and the Romans to put His Son on the cross, the ultimate act of crafty dealing that led to the ultimate salvation. And He uses the pressures and hatreds of our own day to wean us off our love for the world, to purify our faith, and to make us long for our true home.

We should therefore not be alarmed when God's blessing on us, whether it be fruitfulness in our families or success in our callings, provokes the envy and animosity of the world. This is part of the pattern. Our response should not be fear or compromise, but rather a robust faith in the God who turns the hearts of all men as He pleases. He who sovereignly orchestrated the problem of Egypt is the same one who sovereignly provided the solution in the Passover Lamb. And He who sovereignly allowed the crucifixion of His Son is the same one who sovereignly raised Him from the dead. Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases (Ps 115:3), and what pleases Him is always the redemption of His people and the glory of His own name.