Commentary - Psalm 106:13-15

Bird's-eye view

This brief, potent section of Psalm 106 serves as a microcosm of Israel's entire tragic pattern of sin, and by extension, our own. The psalmist is not just cataloging historical failures; he is dissecting the anatomy of rebellion. The pattern is stark: God acts in mighty deliverance, the people respond with fleeting gratitude, and then almost immediately, they suffer from a catastrophic spiritual amnesia. This forgetting of God's works is not a passive slip of the mind but an active, willful dismissal. It leads directly to an impatience with God's plan and a substitution of their own ravenous desires for His wise counsel. They put God to the test, demanding that He conform to their belly-driven agenda. The climax is a terrifying picture of judgment: God grants their sinful request, but the fulfillment of their lust becomes the very instrument of their chastisement, a "wasting disease" that starves their souls even as it stuffs their gullets. It is a permanent warning against the suicidal nature of demanding our own way.

The core issue here is the conflict between divine revelation and human appetite. God had just split the Red Sea and drowned their enemies, a work of staggering power and grace. But the memory of that miracle had a shelf life of about three days. As soon as their stomachs started to rumble, the great works of God were forgotten, and the counsel of God was deemed too slow. They wanted what they wanted, and they wanted it now. This is the essence of all temptation. And God's response is a profound lesson for all time. Sometimes the most severe judgment God can visit upon a man is to give him exactly what his sinful heart desires.

Outline

Context In Psalm 106

Psalm 106 is a national lament and confession, a historical retrospective of Israel's persistent covenant unfaithfulness. It begins and ends with a call to praise the Lord ("Hallelujah!"), framing the sordid history of rebellion within the grand reality of God's enduring mercy. The psalmist recounts the story of Israel from Egypt to the promised land and into the exile, not to glorify the nation, but to highlight their sin and God's longsuffering. The section immediately preceding our text describes the miraculous salvation at the Red Sea. The waters covered their enemies, and in response, the people "believed his words; they sang his praise" (v. 12). Our passage begins with the sharp, tragic pivot: "They quickly forgot..." This contrast is intentional and jarring. The highest moment of deliverance is immediately followed by the basest ingratitude, setting the pattern for the rest of the psalm and for Israel's history.

Key Issues

Leanness of Soul

The phrase "wasting disease" or "leanness in their soul" is one of the most chilling in all of Scripture. It describes a condition where the outer man gets what he wants, while the inner man shrivels and starves. It is a judgment of spiritual malnutrition. They craved meat, and God gave them meat until it was coming out of their nostrils (Num 11:20). They got their bellies full, but their souls became emaciated. This is the fundamental lie of all sin. It promises satisfaction, fulfillment, and life, but it delivers the opposite. It is the bait that hides the hook.

This principle is woven throughout the Bible. The prodigal son demanded his inheritance and got it, which led him directly to the pigsty. He got what he wanted, and it nearly destroyed him. Achan saw the wedge of gold and the Babylonian garment, he craved them, he took them, and it led to his death. This is why the Puritan prayer, "Lord, I give you my permissions to refuse my petitions," is so wise. A mature believer understands that his own heart is a fountain of foolish and destructive desires. Our prayer should not be, "Give me what I want," but rather, "Conform my wants to what You know is good." When God gives a man over to his lusts, it is a fearful thing. The satisfaction of the craving is the beginning of the curse.

Verse by Verse Commentary

13 They quickly forgot His works; They did not wait for His counsel,

The verse opens with the root of the whole problem: spiritual amnesia. And notice the adverb: quickly. The praise for the Red Sea deliverance was still echoing in the canyons, and they had already forgotten. This is not a simple failure of memory. In Hebrew, to "forget" God's works is to treat them as though they have no bearing on the present moment. It is a moral failure, not a mental one. They saw the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Forgetting was an act of sheer, bull-headed will. And what is the immediate consequence of forgetting God's past faithfulness? It is the inability to trust Him for the future. They "did not wait for His counsel." Because they had erased the memory of His power, they could not trust His timing. Impatience is the natural child of unbelief. They had a problem, hunger, and they wanted an immediate, carnal solution. They were unwilling to wait for God's plan to unfold, a plan that He had already proven was entirely trustworthy. This is the crossroads every believer stands at daily: will I remember God's works and wait for His counsel, or will I forget and rush ahead with my own?

14 But craved intensely in the wilderness, And put God to the test in the wasteland.

Nature abhors a vacuum. When the counsel of God is rejected, the cravings of the flesh rush in to fill the void. The language here is potent. They "craved intensely." The Hebrew speaks of a deep, lustful, insatiable desire. This was not simple hunger; this was gluttony of the heart. And notice where this happened: "in the wilderness." This was the very place where they were supposed to be learning dependence on God, where He fed them with angel's food day by day. But instead of learning contentment with God's provision, they cultivated a lust for what they did not have. This craving then blossomed into insolence. They "put God to the test." This is the sin of demanding that God prove Himself on our terms. It is standing before the Almighty and saying, "If you are really God, you will give me what I want right now." It is an attempt to reverse the roles, to make God audition for the part of being our servant. This is precisely the sin Satan tempted Jesus with in the wilderness, and which Jesus rebuked with Scripture: "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test" (Matt 4:7).

15 So He gave them their request, But sent a wasting disease against their lives.

Here we have one of the most terrifying verses in the Bible. God answered their prayer. He gave them exactly what they were screaming for. The sky rained quail. They gathered it, gorged themselves, and as the meat was still in their mouths, the plague broke out (Num 11:33). He gave them their request, but it came with a curse. He satisfied their bellies and sent leanness to their souls. This is divine judgment in its most ironic and instructive form. God taught them the foolishness of their desires by granting them. He let them have their own way, and their own way led to death. This is a permanent monument to the danger of demanding things from God that are born out of our lusts rather than His will. It is a mercy when God says no to our foolish prayers. It is a judgment when He says, "All right, have it your way," and lets us choke on the consequences.

Application

This passage is a mirror. We look into it and we see, not just a rebellious nation in the desert thousands of years ago, but our own hearts. How quickly do we forget God's last great deliverance in our lives the moment a new trouble arises? How often does the memory of answered prayer and manifest grace evaporate in the heat of a present craving? We are all prone to this same spiritual amnesia.

And this leads us to the same impatience. We don't want to wait for God's counsel. We want a quick fix. We want the promotion now, the relationship now, the relief from the trial now. And when God's timing doesn't match our frantic schedule, we are tempted to take matters into our own hands, to force a solution, which is just a modern form of putting God to the test. We devise our own schemes, and in so doing, we are essentially praying, "My will be done."

The warning here is to be terrified of getting what we want when what we want is contrary to the revealed will of God. We must learn to distrust our own appetites. Our hearts are idol factories, constantly churning out new things to crave. The application is to repent of this pattern. We must repent of our forgetfulness by deliberately cultivating remembrance. We build memorials. We rehearse God's faithfulness. We sing the psalms. We tell our children the stories. We fight spiritual amnesia with intentional gratitude. And we repent of our cravings by submitting them all to the lordship of Christ. The only way to cure a soul sick with the wasting disease of fulfilled lust is to come to the Great Physician. Jesus is the true bread from heaven, the only provision that satisfies the belly and fattens the soul. He is the one who was tested in the wilderness and did not fail. He waited for His Father's counsel, even to the point of death on a cross. And because He did, we who have craved and tested and forgotten can be forgiven. He takes our leanness upon Himself, and gives us His fatness in return.