Catholic Commentary
God's Mighty Deeds in History
5Come, and see God’s deeds— awesome work on behalf of the children of men.6He turned the sea into dry land. They went through the river on foot. There, we rejoiced in him.7He rules by his might forever. His eyes watch the nations. Don’t let the rebellious rise up against him. Selah.
Psalms 66:5–7 calls the assembly to witness God's mighty deeds, exemplified by His transformation of the Red Sea into dry land during the Exodus, and declares that His sovereign power rules eternally over all nations. The passage invites believers to recognize God's authority through His historical acts of salvation and His ongoing cosmic dominion.
Faith begins not with feeling but with seeing—God proves His faithfulness through concrete acts that transform death into a path of liberation.
Psalms 66:5 — "Come, and see God's deeds" The Hebrew imperative lĕkû ûrĕ'û ("come and see") is not merely rhetorical flourish. It is a liturgical summons—the same kind of urgent, embodied invitation found in prophetic and wisdom literature (cf. Ps 46:8; Is 40:9). The "deeds" (Heb. niflāʾôt, "wonders" or "awesome works") are acts of divine power visible within human history. The psalmist does not invite speculation or philosophy; he invites witness. The God of Israel is known through what He has done. This verse opens the strophe like a master of ceremonies drawing an assembled crowd's attention to a spectacle too great to miss. Within the broader context of Psalm 66—which opens with a call for "all the earth" to shout joyfully to God (v. 1)—this invitation extends beyond Israel to the nations, anticipating the universalist horizon of the New Covenant.
Psalms 66:6 — "He turned the sea into dry land" The specific act cited is the crossing of the Red Sea (Yam Suph, Ex 14:21–22), and possibly the crossing of the Jordan under Joshua (Josh 3:16–17)—the plural "there we rejoiced in him" in the Hebrew (v. 6b, not quoted here but immediately following) hints at both events. The verb hāpak ("turned, converted") is theologically rich: God does not merely part or push back the water—He transforms the sea's nature, inverting the expected order of creation. Water, the primal symbol of chaos and death in the ancient Near East, becomes a road of liberation. This inversion is the signature of divine omnipotence: God rewrites the rules of the created order to save His people. Crucially, the psalmist shifts to the first person plural in the surrounding context ("there we rejoiced"), collapsing the distance between the original Exodus generation and the worshiping community centuries later. Every Israelite who sings this psalm crosses the sea again.
Psalms 66:7 — "He rules by his might forever" The Hebrew bĭgĕbûrātô ("by his might/power") echoes the language of the Song of the Sea (Ex 15:6, 13), deliberately recalling Moses' victory hymn. The word ʿôlām ("forever, to the ages") moves the declaration from historical particularity to ontological permanence. The God who acted at the Red Sea does not retire from history. His sovereignty is not a past episode but a present and enduring reality. The verse then pivots ominously in the text that follows (v. 7b): "his eyes watch the nations—let not the rebellious exalt themselves." Even in a psalm of praise, Israel's God is depicted as a watchful Judge, a reminder that the same power that liberated the faithful can humble the proud.
Typological and Spiritual Senses The Fathers unanimously read the crossing of the sea as a type (typos) of Baptism (cf. 1 Cor 10:1–2). Origen (Homilies on Exodus) and Tertullian (De Baptismo 9) both identify the water God transforms into a path of salvation with the baptismal font, where chaos and death are again reversed. The "coming and seeing" of v. 5 thus becomes an invitation to the catechumen: draw near, witness what God continues to do, and pass through the waters yourself. The eternal rule declared in v. 7 points forward, in the fuller sense (sensus plenior), to the Lordship of Christ, who "has been given all authority in heaven and on earth" (Mt 28:18) and whose kingdom shall have no end (Lk 1:33).
Catholic tradition identifies these three verses as a compressed theology of Heilsgeschichte—salvation history as the primary locus of divine revelation. The Catechism teaches that "God's works in the Old Testament are ciphers of his works in the New" (CCC §128), and Psalm 66:5–7 is a paradigmatic example: the Exodus is not merely recalled as past fact but celebrated as the living grammar through which God continues to speak.
St. Augustine (Enarrationes in Psalmos, Ps. 66) reads the invitation of verse 5 christologically: the one who says "come and see" is ultimately Christ Himself, who bids humanity to come and witness not only the parting of the Red Sea but His own death and resurrection—the definitive crossing from death to life. Augustine notes that the "dry land" the redeemed walk upon is the humanity of Christ, the stable ground that the waters of death could not swallow.
The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum §14 affirms that God "manifested himself to our first parents" and thereafter "kept watch over the human race," preparing it through the history of Israel. Psalm 66:5–7 is a lyric enactment of this principle: the worshiping community is invited to locate itself within a story of divine faithfulness.
St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 106) connects the transforming power of God over the sea with the power of grace to reorder the soul: just as God inverted the sea's nature to liberate Israel physically, grace inverts the soul's disordered inclinations to liberate it spiritually. The eternal rule of v. 7 grounds Christian hope—God's gebûrāh (might) does not wane, and thus neither does His mercy toward those who trust Him.
For the contemporary Catholic, Psalm 66:5–7 issues a countercultural challenge: ground your faith not in feeling but in events. The psalmist does not say "feel God's presence"—he says "come and see what God has done." In an age of therapeutic spirituality that prizes interior mood over historical memory, these verses call Catholics back to the liturgy as the place where God's mighty deeds are made present. Every Mass is a "coming and seeing": the Liturgy of the Word re-presents God's deeds in history, and the Eucharist re-presents the definitive crossing—Christ's Passover from death to life.
Practically, consider keeping a personal "memorial" of God's works in your life—moments of unexpected provision, healing, or rescue—and returning to that record in seasons of doubt, just as Israel returned to the Exodus in moments of despair. When God seems absent, the psalmist's move is not to manufacture emotion but to remember a deed. The eternal sovereignty of v. 7 also offers a specific comfort: in an era of political turbulence and institutional fragility, the Catholic can hold fast to the confession that God's rule is not contingent on any earthly power—it endures lĕʿôlām, forever.
Commentary