Psalms 107:43 Commentary: Wisdom That Sees God's Lovingkindness

Psalm 107 is a liturgical thanksgiving psalm, likely composed for use in temple worship after the return from exile (though some scholars, such as Lange, suggest a later Maccabean period). The psalm unfolds in a distinctive structure: an opening call to thanksgiving (verses 1, 3), followed by four strophes each ending with a double refrain, one describing the cry to God and the other a call to thank Him for His steadfast love. These strophes depict four archetypal crises: wandering in the desert, imprisonment, illness, and peril at sea. Then, from verse 33 onward, the refrain disappears and the psalm broadens into a meditation on God's control over nations and their fortunes, drawing heavily on language from Job and Isaiah.

Verse 43 stands as a concluding wisdom saying, reminiscent of Hosea 14:9 and Jeremiah 9:12. This was a common rhetorical move in the wisdom tradition: after presenting a body of evidence, here, the testimonies of God's deliverance, the poet issues a summons to the reader to discern the pattern. The verb shamar (‘observe’) carries the weight of guarding and treasuring in memory; it is the same word used for keeping the commandments. The verb bin (‘consider’) implies penetrating insight, not mere surface awareness. The word chesed (plural: chasdei) is the theological anchor: God's covenant loyalty, His stubborn, faithful love that holds even when circumstances seem to deny it. The psalm as a whole provides the data; verse 43 invites the congregation to become sages who read the story rightly and let it shape their trust.

The supplied sources note no significant textual variants for Psalm 107:43. The Masoretic Text is consistent across manuscripts, with only minor orthographic differences (such as the spelling of Yahweh with full vowels). One grammatical curiosity: the verb yitbonenu (they will consider) is a Hithpael imperfect, indicating intensive or reflexive action, ‘they will carefully ponder for themselves.’ No ancient versions (Septuagint, Peshitta, Targum) show substantial divergence in this verse.

Psalm 107:43 has been read across church history as a summons to practical wisdom rooted in reflection on God's providence. Early church fathers, such as Athanasius, saw in it an invitation to meditate on Scripture's stories as guides to God's character. The Reformation-era commentators (Calvin, Geneva Bible) stressed the verse as a rebuke to those who ignore God's hand in daily events, a theme that carried into Puritan devotional writing, where ‘observing the lovingkindness of the Lord’ became a discipline of journaling God's mercies. In Jewish tradition, the verse is often linked to the recitation of the Hallel (Psalms 113, 118) and the Passover seder, where retelling deliverance leads to deeper understanding of God's chesed. Modern hymnody has drawn on this verse in songs that invite believers to ‘count your blessings’ and trace God's faithfulness through life's changes.

Three-point outline

1. The kind of wisdom that sees: Not human cleverness, but a heart trained to notice what God is doing (vv. 1, 42 as evidence). This wisdom is a gift, but also a discipline, it requires pausing, paying attention, and resisting the rush to explain away providence as chance.
2. The things worth observing: The specific acts of deliverance catalogued in the psalm, from deserts, prisons, sickness, storms, and social collapse. These are not ancient history only; every congregation has stories of God meeting them in analogous crises.
3. The goal of observation: Understanding the lovingkindness of Yahweh, not abstract knowledge of His attributes, but a lived, trust-filled recognition that His chesed is the thread running through every event, even the painful ones.

Five-point outline

1. Who is wise? The one who fears God and wants to learn (Proverbs 1:7).
2. What does the wise do? He observes, literally ‘keeps’ or ‘guards’, the data of God's works (the psalm's vignettes and our own experience).
3. What does he see? Not random suffering, but God's hand in lifting the needy and humbling the proud.
4. What does he understand? The many-splendored chesed of the Lord, His covenant faithfulness shown in both judgment and mercy.
5. What is the result? A congregation that rejoices with the upright and is silenced in its accusation (cf. v. 42).

Illustration hooks

• The congregation that keeps a ‘provision journal’, listing prayers answered and surprising turns, and returns to it in seasons of doubt.
• A farmer who reads the weather and the soil year after year; he sees patterns the visitor misses. The wise reader of life does the same with God's faithfulness.
• The way a child watching a parent handle a crisis learns trust (or fear), observation shapes the heart long before words do.

Questions your congregation is asking

• “How do I know God is good when my life feels like one crisis after another?”
• “Is there a way to see God's hand without pretending pain isn't real?”
• “What does it actually look like to ‘consider’ God's lovingkindness as a daily habit?”

This verse offers a closing invitation to make sense of everything that has come before. The psalm has walked through four kinds of desperate situations, desert, prison, illness, and storm, and shown that in each case, when people cried out, God answered. Now the songwriter turns to the congregation and says, in effect: the person who is wise will sit with these stories, pay attention, and let them teach what God is like.

Discussion questions

1. What do you think the psalmist means by ‘these things’? Look back at verses 4, 32 and list the kinds of trouble described.
2. The Hebrew word shamar is translated ‘observe’ or ‘pay attention.’ It can also mean ‘to guard’ or ‘to treasure up.’ Why does that nuance matter for how we read the verse?
3. What difference does it make to call God's kindnesses ‘covenant loyalties’ (chesed) rather than just general kindness?
4. Barnes says the wise person will ‘draw just conclusions’ from what he observes. What conclusions does the psalm draw about God? (See verses 1, 8, 9, 15, 16, 21, 22, 31, 32.)
5. Why does the mention of the wicked being silenced (v. 42) come right before this invitation to wisdom? What connection do you see?
6. In your life, what ‘these things’, events or patterns, have taught you most about God's character?
7. How can a small group help each other practice the kind of attentive observation this verse calls for?