Commentary - Psalm 106:24-27

Bird's-eye view

Psalm 106 is a national confession, a corporate history lesson in Israel's persistent rebellion against a persistently merciful God. The psalmist is not just reciting historical data; he is leading the people in a deep acknowledgment of their covenant-breaking nature, which they have inherited from their fathers. This particular section, verses 24 through 27, zooms in on the pivotal sin of the wilderness generation at Kadesh Barnea. This was the moment of truth, the final exam after their deliverance from Egypt, and they failed spectacularly. The sin here is not a momentary lapse but a deep-seated contempt for God's promises, rooted in unbelief. This unbelief then manifests itself in grumbling, which is the audible expression of a thankless heart. The consequence is severe and multi-generational: a sworn oath from God Himself, barring that generation from the promised land and sentencing their descendants to exile and scattering. This passage is a stark reminder that faith is not a feeling but a robust trust in God's word, and that unbelief is not a small thing; it is a damnable sin with far-reaching, historical consequences.

The structure of this brief section is a straightforward progression from inward sin to outward expression to divine judgment. It begins with the heart attitude: they "despised" the good gift God was offering. This contempt was fueled by unbelief in His specific, sworn promise. This internal rot then festered into audible grumbling in their private spaces, their tents. Finally, God responds not with a slap on the wrist, but with a lifted hand, a solemn oath of judgment. The punishment perfectly fits the crime. They refused to enter the land, so they will die outside the land. They broke covenant, so their seed will be scattered from the covenant land. It is a grim, but just, outworking of the covenant's curses.

Outline

Context In Psalms

Psalm 106 is paired with Psalm 105. Together, they form a diptych of Israel's history. Psalm 105 is a celebration of God's covenant faithfulness to His people, recounting His mighty acts from Abraham to the conquest of Canaan. It is a story of God's unwavering grace. Psalm 106, in stark contrast, is the other side of the coin: a long, sorrowful recital of Israel's covenant unfaithfulness. It begins and ends with praise ("Praise the Lord!"), but the body of the psalm is a litany of rebellion. This structure teaches us a profound theological truth: even our sin, when confessed, becomes a backdrop for the glory of God's mercy. Our passage fits squarely within this litany of failure. It follows the sin of the golden calf and precedes the idolatry at Baal Peor. The sin at Kadesh Barnea was a defining moment of rebellion, a point of no return for the generation that came out of Egypt, and its inclusion here is central to the psalm's argument about the depth of Israel's ingrained sinfulness.

Key Issues

The Audible Stench of Unbelief

We often treat unbelief as a merely intellectual problem, a lack of sufficient evidence. But the Bible treats it as a moral problem, a matter of the will. And it is never silent. Unbelief has a voice, and its native language is grumbling. Grumbling is not the same as a legitimate complaint or a lament brought before God. Lament is honest about the pain but still directed toward God in faith. Grumbling is directed away from God, sideways at others, or inward in self-pity. It is the sound of a heart that believes it knows better than God. It is the noise of discontent, the static of a soul that has forgotten grace.

The Israelites had seen the plagues, walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, eaten the manna, and drunk water from the rock. They had every reason to trust God's word about the "pleasant land." But the report of the ten faithless spies was more real to them than the promises of Yahweh. So they sat in their tents and murmured. This was not just letting off steam; it was sedition. It was a vote of no confidence in the King. And God takes it with the utmost seriousness. As Paul warns the Corinthians, citing this very incident, we are not to grumble as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer (1 Cor. 10:10). The temptation to grumble is a constant one for the people of God, and this passage serves as a permanent warning against this seemingly small sin that reveals a massive, God-despising unbelief in the heart.

Verse by Verse Commentary

24 Then they despised the pleasant land; They did not believe in His word,

The sin begins with a twisted affection. God offered them a "pleasant land," a land flowing with milk and honey, a gift of sheer grace. Their response was contempt. To despise a gift is to despise the giver. Why would they do this? The second clause gives the reason: "They did not believe in His word." Unbelief is the root of all such distorted desires. God's word had described the land and promised it to them. But they weighed His word against the word of the ten spies who spoke of giants and fortified cities, and they found God's word wanting. They valued their own fearful assessment of the circumstances more than the sworn promise of the Almighty. This is the very essence of unbelief. It is not a lack of information, but a refusal to trust the character and power of the God who speaks. They saw the gift through the lens of their fear, and so what was objectively pleasant became, in their minds, something to be despised because of the perceived cost of obtaining it.

25 But grumbled in their tents; They did not listen to the voice of Yahweh.

The internal sin of unbelief now finds its external voice. They "grumbled in their tents." This is significant. It was not an open, public protest at first, but a whispering campaign, a muttering of discontent in the privacy of their own families. This is where rebellion is so often incubated. It is the sour conversation over the dinner table, the cynical comment to a friend. Grumbling is the opposite of praise. Praise declares God's goodness; grumbling questions it. The second clause here is parallel to the second clause of the previous verse. There, they did not "believe in His word"; here, they did not "listen to the voice of Yahweh." These are two sides of the same coin. To refuse to believe God's promise is to refuse to listen to His voice. They were so full of the noise of their own complaints that there was no room for the voice of God. They filled the air with their own faithless static, and it drowned out the clear command and promise of their covenant Lord.

26 So He swore to them To make them fall in the wilderness,

Here is the divine response. The word "So" connects their sin directly to God's judgment. This was not an arbitrary or petulant reaction from God. It was the just and necessary consequence of their rebellion. Notice the solemnity of it: "He swore to them." The Hebrew is literally "He lifted up His hand," the ancient posture for taking a solemn oath. God meets their faithless murmuring with a faithful oath. They would not believe His sworn promise of blessing, so now they will be the recipients of His sworn curse. The punishment is a perfect, ironic justice. They feared they would die in the wilderness at the hands of the Canaanites. God says, "Your fear is misplaced. You will indeed die in the wilderness, but at My hand." They refused to go into the land, so God swears they will never enter it. He gave them exactly what their unbelief chose: a life that ends in the wilderness instead of the pleasant land.

27 And to make their seed fall among the nations And to scatter them in the lands.

The oath of judgment extends beyond that one generation. This is a crucial principle of covenant theology. The sins of the fathers have consequences for the children. God swore not only to make that generation fall, but also to make their "seed fall among the nations." The word "fall" here connects back to the previous verse, but now the result is not just death in the desert but exile and scattering. This is a direct reference to the covenant curses laid out in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. If Israel breaks the covenant, God will scatter them among the heathen. While the next generation, under Joshua and Caleb, did enter the land, this verse looks further down the corridor of history. The psalmist, writing after the exile, sees the unbelief at Kadesh Barnea as the genetic source code for the later rebellions that ultimately led to the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. The seed of unbelief planted in the wilderness bore the bitter fruit of exile centuries later. Sin is never a private matter, and it is never a merely contemporary one. It sends its poisonous roots down through the generations.

Application

This passage is a powerful diagnostic tool for our own hearts. The sin of the Israelites is our sin in miniature. God has given us the promise of a "pleasant land", an inheritance in Christ, eternal life, the joy of His presence. He has given us His infallible Word, testifying to the glory of this gift. And yet, how often do we despise it? We despise it every time we choose the fleeting security of some sin over the robust promises of God. We despise it when we look at the "giants" in our path, the difficulty of obedience, the scorn of the world, the demand for self-denial, and conclude that the promised land is not worth the fight.

And when that unbelief takes root, what is the first, foul fruit? Grumbling. We grumble in our tents. We complain about our jobs, our spouses, our church, our circumstances. Every grumble is a statement of unbelief. It is a declaration that God is not good, that His plan is flawed, and that we have been short-changed. It is to sit in the tent of our own small world and accuse the God of the universe of mismanagement.

The remedy is not to simply try harder to be cheerful. The remedy is repentance for our unbelief. We must turn from listening to the faithless spies of our age, the voices of fear, cynicism, and materialism, and listen again to the voice of Yahweh. We must believe His Word. The gospel is the ultimate "pleasant land." It is a land we could never win for ourselves, but which has been won for us by our Joshua, Jesus. He faced the wilderness and the giants of sin and death and defeated them all. He did not grumble or fail but trusted His Father perfectly. Because of Him, the oath of God over us is not a curse but a blessing. He has sworn to bring us into our inheritance. Therefore, let us put away all grumbling and, believing His Word, give Him thanks.