Psalm 136 begins in a familiar way: "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love [Hebrew chesed] endures forever." We also find these words in Ps 106:1; 107:1; 118:29; 1 Ch 16:34.
But Psalm 136 differs from these other psalms in that the refrain "for his steadfast love endures forever" is repeated in each of its 26 verses. The verses bring out how God's love of Israel is shown in great works of redemption, and his love for all mankind is shown in his works as Creator.
There is an interesting midrash on Psalm 136:4 ("to him who alone does great wonders"). This midrash says that it is only God who does great wonders, and it is only God who knows what all of these wonders are. Each day God is doing wonders of which we may be totally unaware.
We're not sure when this psalm was written. Commentators point out that the designation for God in verse 26 ("the God of heaven") appears most often in post-exilic books like Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel. Verse 23 ("It is he who remembered us in our low estate") could refer to the Exodus and also to exile.
On the other hand, nothing else in this psalm is necessarily post-exilic. There is another midrash that says it would have been fitting for this psalm to have been written right after the victories over Sihon and Og (vv 19-20), much as Exodus 15 celebrated the victory over Pharaoh at the Red Sea.
A third midrash reflects on the magnitude of the victory over Og the giant. According to this midrash Og picked up a mountain and threw it at the Israelites, but Moses thwarted that attack with a pebble over which he had pronounced the Divine Name.
The midrash on Psalm 136 also includes traditions about Israel's miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. One of these traditions says that "the depths crystallized on both sides of the children of Israel and became a kind of glass," based on Exodus 15:8. This tradition links Exodus 15 and Revelation 15, which pictures a "sea of glass" in heaven.
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