Catholic Commentary
Opening Call to Thanksgiving
1Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever.2Let the redeemed by Yahweh say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary,3and gathered out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.
Psalms 107:1–3 opens with a liturgical command to give public thanks to God for his essential goodness and enduring covenantal love. The passage mandates that those redeemed by God as his kinfolk must testify to this redemption, speaking of how God has gathered his dispersed people from all lands—a return signaling both historical restoration and eschatological salvation.
Thanksgiving is not a feeling but a vocation — the redeemed are commanded to publicly declare what God has done.
Psalms 107:1 — "Give thanks to Yahweh, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever."
The psalm opens with a liturgical imperative — hōdû laYHWH — a summons to thanksgiving that echoes throughout the Psalter (cf. Pss 106:1; 118:1; 136:1). The verb yādāh (to give thanks, to acknowledge, to confess) implies a public, embodied act of acknowledgment, not merely an interior feeling. To give thanks in the Hebrew sense is to declare before the assembly what God has done. The reason given is twofold and of enormous theological weight: first, kî-ṭôb — "for he is good" — a declaration about God's essential nature, not merely His occasional actions. Goodness is not something God possesses intermittently; it is who He is. Second, kî leʿôlām ḥasdô — "for his steadfast love endures forever." The word hesed is one of the richest theological terms in the Hebrew Bible: it denotes covenant fidelity, merciful loyalty, the love that remains even when the beloved proves faithless. The phrase "endures forever" (leʿôlām) signals that this love is not contingent upon Israel's merit. The repetition of this refrain throughout Psalm 136 — where it appears in every verse — shows it was likely a congregational response, suggesting a liturgical antiphon well-known to the worshipping community.
Psalms 107:2 — "Let the redeemed of Yahweh say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble."
The psalmist narrows the general call to give thanks into a specific mandate upon a particular group: geʾûlê YHWH, "those redeemed by Yahweh." The word gāʾal (to redeem, to act as kinsman-redeemer) carries a rich legal and covenantal background in ancient Israel. The gōʾēl was the nearest male relative obligated to buy back a kinsman sold into slavery or to reclaim forfeited family property (cf. Lev 25:25; Ruth 4). By calling Himself Israel's gōʾēl, God assumes the role of Israel's closest kin — a deeply intimate image of divine solidarity. The redeemed are not merely to feel grateful but to "say so" — to speak, to testify, to proclaim. This is a vocation of witness. The one who has experienced redemption bears an obligation to tell the story. Catholic tradition will see in this verse the calling of every baptized person: having been redeemed by Christ's blood, they must give witness to the world.
Psalms 107:3 — "…and gathered out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south."
The four directions — east, west, north, and south — form a merism for the entirety of the inhabited world. In its original historical context, this verse almost certainly refers to the return of Jewish exiles from Babylonia and from the Diaspora scattered throughout the ancient Near East and beyond. Yet the very comprehensiveness of the geographic language — every point on the compass — signals something larger than any single historical return. The ingathering of the dispersed (nidḥê Yiśrāʾēl) was a central feature of prophetic eschatology (cf. Isa 43:5–6; 49:12; Jer 31:8). The verb qābaṣ (to gather, to assemble) is frequently used by the prophets for God's final act of gathering His people at the end of history. This eschatological resonance is crucial: even as verse 3 describes historical events, it opens a horizon toward ultimate salvation. The spiritual sense of this verse will find its fulfillment in the universal Church gathered from every nation, tribe, and tongue.
Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to these verses. First, the Church Fathers read Psalm 107 christologically and ecclesiologically. St. Augustine, in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, interprets the "redeemed" (geʾûlê YHWH) as the Body of Christ — those purchased not with silver but with the Blood of the Lamb. For Augustine, verse 2's command to "say so" is the Church's very identity: she exists to proclaim the redemption she has received. Cassiodorus similarly sees the four-directional gathering of verse 3 as a prophetic image of the Catholic (literally: universal) Church assembled from the ends of the earth.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§ 2637–2638) identifies thanksgiving (eucharistia) as an essential mode of prayer, inseparable from the Church's identity. CCC § 2637 notes that "thanksgiving characterizes the prayer of the Church which, in celebrating the Eucharist, reveals and becomes more fully what she is." The very word Eucharist — from the Greek eucharistia, "thanksgiving" — places Psalm 107:1 at the very heart of Catholic worship. Every Mass begins, structurally and theologically, with this impulse: gratitude grounded in God's goodness and enduring mercy.
The concept of hesed — translated "steadfast love" — finds its New Testament fulfillment in agapē and ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the definitive embodiment of divine covenant fidelity (cf. John 1:14, where charis kai alētheia, "grace and truth," renders the Hebrew hesed we-ʾemet). The Magisterium, in Deus Caritas Est (Benedict XVI, §§ 9–10), reflects on this continuity between God's Old Testament covenant love and its incarnate fullness in Christ — precisely the theological arc these three verses launch.
For a Catholic today, these three verses are a direct challenge to the privatization of faith. Verse 2's command — "let the redeemed say so" — cuts against the modern tendency to experience religion as a purely interior, personal matter. If you have been redeemed — sacramentally, concretely, in baptism and confession and the Eucharist — you are under an obligation to say so. This does not require street preaching; it may mean naming God's goodness at the dinner table, giving testimony in a small group, or simply refusing to be silent when faith becomes relevant in conversation.
The fourfold gathering of verse 3 also speaks to Catholic parishes as communities of the genuinely diverse. In a time of deep social and political polarization, the image of people gathered from east, west, north, and south — from every background and place — is a rebuke to any tribal or ethnic narrowing of the Church's welcome. The Eucharist gathers the redeemed from everywhere, and the pew is a place to practice that universal belonging. Finally, grounding thanksgiving in God's nature ("for he is good") rather than in favorable circumstances liberates gratitude from the tyranny of mood — it can be practiced even in suffering, because the character of God does not change.
Commentary