My Notes
What Does Psalms 106:13 Mean?
"They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel." The marginal note sharpens it: "They made haste, they forgat." The forgetting wasn't gradual. It was fast. Israel watched God part the Red Sea, rain bread from heaven, bring water from rock — and then immediately forgot. The speed of the amnesia is the point.
"His works" (ma'aseh) — the visible, undeniable, miraculous acts of God. Things they saw with their own eyes. And they forgot them. Not over centuries. Soon. The Hebrew (mahar) means to hurry, to be hasty. They rushed past the memory of God's faithfulness as if it hadn't happened.
"They waited not for his counsel" — this is the consequence of forgetting. When you forget what God has done, you stop waiting for what God will say. Israel didn't just lose their memory. They lost their patience. They stopped consulting God and started making decisions on their own. The golden calf, the demand for meat, the refusal to enter the promised land — all of it flows from this: they forgot, and because they forgot, they stopped listening.
Reflection Questions
- 1.What's something God did for you recently that you've already started to forget or take for granted?
- 2.How does forgetting God's past faithfulness affect your patience with Him in the present? Can you see the connection in your own life?
- 3.The Israelites 'made haste' — rushed past God's counsel. When have you made a decision too quickly because you forgot to wait on God?
- 4.What practice could help you remember more deliberately — journaling, telling someone, revisiting past prayers? What would it take to actually do it?
Devotional
The terrifying thing about this verse isn't that Israel forgot God. It's how fast they forgot. These weren't people who heard about miracles secondhand. They walked through the sea. They ate the manna. They watched the pillar of fire. And they forgot. Soon.
You do this too. Maybe not with seas and manna, but with answered prayers, unexpected provision, moments of clarity you know came from God. How quickly does the miracle become background noise? How fast does the breakthrough get filed away as normal? The human capacity to forget God's faithfulness is staggering — and it doesn't require malice. It just requires haste.
"They waited not for his counsel" — that's where the forgetting leads. When you lose touch with what God has already done, you stop trusting what He's about to say. You get impatient. You make decisions without Him. You rush ahead because the memory of His faithfulness has faded and waiting feels pointless.
The antidote is deliberately slow remembering. Write it down. Say it out loud. Tell someone what God did. Not because God needs the publicity, but because your memory is leaky and your patience depends on it. The person who remembers what God did yesterday can wait for what God says today. The person who forgets will make haste — and regret it.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
They soon forgat his works,.... The miracles he wrought in Egypt, the deliverance of them from thence with a mighty hand…
They soon forgat his works - On Psa 106:13-15, see the notes at Psa 78:17-22. Literally, here, as in the margin, “They…
This is an abridgment of the history of Israel's provocations in the wilderness, and of the wrath of God against them…
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture