And they despised the pleasant land; they believed not his word,
Psalm 106 confesses Israel's history, and verse 24 marks one of its darkest turns: Israel stood at the border of the land God had promised, and refused it. How could a people look at a gift already surveyed and proved, and want none of it?
The verse sits inside a confession: Israel owning the whole story of its failure.
Psalm 106 speaks in words of confession. It shows their failure all the way — sinning, forgetting, lusting, unbelieving and disobedient. Only infinite mercy and grace could save such a people. Prophetically these Psalms express the repentance and national confession of Israel, when the Lord has saved them. Then, with a new heart and a new spirit, the nation reads its history rightly and learns to know the God of Jacob as never before.
The verse looks back to the twelve men sent to survey Canaan, and to what Israel did with their report.
First of all the report is very good, and the bunch of grapes — taking two men to carry it — proved the goodness of the land. Then they said, "The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height" (Num. 13:32). That is, the land did not give plenty of provision. Caleb and Joshua stood up for the truth, and were nearly stoned. "They despised the pleasant land" is the next step. They did not want to go on. It is like a heart now that does not want to go to heaven.
The refusal was not caused by bad information. It came from what the people left out of the calculation.
They only "saw" the frowning walls and towering giants. They did not see the Lord because they looked with the eye of sense and not with the eye of faith. God was shut out. He never gets a place in the calculations of unbelief. It can see walls and giants, but it cannot see God... The spies could report what they were in their own sight and in the sight of the giants, but not a word about what they were in God's sight. The land was all that could be desired, but the difficulties were too great for them. They had not faith to trust God... Israel despised the pleasant land and in their hearts turned back to Egypt.
Despising and disbelieving run together in this verse, and one slides into the other. The men who had seen the land's goodness ended up contradicting their own eyes.
Their own unbelief swept them into the current of the people's unbelief, and their hearts departed completely from the Lord. So they contradict the convictions they had formed when they enjoyed the sight of the goodness of the Lord. They come to declare that the land itself is bad. In the end they justify themselves by complaining about God.
The psalm does not leave the refusal standing alone. Verses 24 to 27 trace a chain that runs from a careless heart all the way to a scattered nation.
Indifference to the honour of God leads them to despise the land of God. This unbelief led to their overthrow in the wilderness. That in turn left their descendants lost among the nations and scattered in other lands.
Yet this was not the end of God's dealings with them.
The result was that nearly all of those who had come out of Egypt were overthrown in the wilderness. They were not allowed to enter the land (vv. 26-27). This was another dreadfully serious disciplinary action of God. It lasted for many years. Yet it did not change His great love for Israel or His purposes for their eventual blessing.
One writer turns the verse on the reader, and asks what it uncovers in the heart.
Does anything humble you more in His presence than the conviction we have of how little the heart values His promised glory? I ask you — and my own soul has already given its answer. It is a terrible discovery to make about oneself. We have so little delight in the provisions of His goodness. That is more terrible than having no answer to the demands of His righteousness... The pleasant land is despised still. Canaan is not worth scaling a single wall, or fighting one Amalekite.
- Confession — The verse admits guilt. The psalm traces Israel's failure and rests everything on mercy.
- Despised — The land was good, surveyed and proved. Israel rejected no rumour, but a tested promise.
- Blindness — Unbelief got the walls and the giants right, and left God out of the sum.
- Descent — Indifference to God's honour became contempt for His land. Contempt ended in death in the wilderness, and in descendants scattered among the nations.
- Mirror — Any heart that does not want to go on holds God's promised glory just as cheaply.
But murmured in their tents they hearkened not unto the voice of Jehovah.
Psalm 106 is a long confession, and verse 25 fixes on the moment Israel turned back from the land God had promised them. Their sin was not open defiance. It was grumbling inside their tents, and the psalm counts that private complaint as refusing to listen to God.
The complaint happened in private, inside the tents. One writer treats that hidden place as the natural home of unbelief:
"And you murmured in your tents." Unbelief is not only a blind and senseless reasoner, but a dark and gloomy murmurer. It neither gets to the right side of things, nor the bright side of things. It is always in the dark, always in the wrong, simply because it shuts out God, and looks only at circumstances.
What they said inside those tents was worse than vague discontent. They claimed God rescued them because He hated them. The same writer answers with what God had already done for them:
"And you murmured in your tents, and said, Because the LORD hated us" — a terrible lie, on the very face of it! — "he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us." What a strange proof of hatred! If He really hated them, nothing was easier than to leave them to die at the brick kilns of Egypt, under the cruel whip of Pharaoh's slave drivers. Why take so much trouble about them? Why those ten plagues sent on the land of their oppressors? Why, if He hated them, did He not allow the waters of the Red Sea to overwhelm them as they had overwhelmed their enemies?
The verse ties the grumbling to not listening. One writer traces both back to the same root:
The main point to notice is that the people had no spirit of obedience. They lacked it because they had no faith in God.
That makes grumbling far more serious than a bad mood. It is a verdict passed on God's character:
Don't murmur, Christian, for it is a most unchristian, a most ungodly thing to do. Nothing dishonours God more, nothing does greater damage to the soul. Of all Israel's sins in the wilderness this was the chief one, because it meant they did not believe their God could be trusted. It did not change His merciful care for them, but it aroused His just anger against them.
The psalm does not stop at the grumbling. One writer follows the steps that came after it:
Indifference to the honour of God leads them to despise the land of God. This unbelief led to their overthrow in the wilderness. This again leads to their seed being lost among the nations and scattered in other lands.
The tents are also where God's people were blessed without knowing it. Balak wanted Israel cursed. Instead God used the prophet's own tongue to declare Israel perfect, perhaps at the very hour the people were complaining:
Perhaps they were murmuring in their tents at the very moment when God was declaring them perfect through the tongue of the greedy prophet. Balak would gladly have Israel cursed; but, blessed be God, He will not allow anyone to curse His people. He may have to deal with them Himself, in secret, about many things; but He will not let anyone else say a word against them.
Murmuring in the tent is not only Israel's story. One writer applies it to Christians who are disappointed with how little God seems to use them:
Are we disappointed that God does not use us more? May it not be that we are thinking more of our own faithfulness than of our own guilt in the evils we have separated from? If we look at our present low condition and murmur in our tents, shall we not be likely soon to question our position? If Satan can unsettle, he will.
- Tent. The sin begins in private. Unbelief shuts out God, looks only at circumstances, and talks in the dark.
- Lie. They said God rescued them because He hated them. The ten plagues and the Red Sea prove the opposite.
- Root. They did not listen to God because they did not trust Him. Where faith is missing, obedience is missing too.
- Chain. Ignoring God's honour led them to despise His land. That unbelief brought them down in the wilderness and left their children scattered among the nations.
- Grace. While they grumbled in their tents, God was declaring them perfect. He may correct His people Himself, but He lets no one else curse them.