Saturday of the Third Week of Easter

PSALM 116

How shall I make a return to the Lord for all the good he has done for me!
How shall I make a return to the Lord
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the Lord. R/

My vows to the Lord I will pay
in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the eyes of the Lord
is the death of his faithful ones. R/

O Lord, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,

and I will call upon the name of the Lord. R/

The Story of Psalm 116

We do not know who wrote Psalm 116. We call him "the psalmist". But we do know that God saved him from death. Maybe he was very ill, and in much pain, (verse 10). Maybe his enemies were trying to kill him, and this gave him pain in his mind. We call this "worry" or "grief". Perhaps he was in prison, waiting for execution. Execution is when the prison authorities kill people. They kill them because they have done something very bad. But the psalmist prayed to God and the LORD saved him.

Some Bibles make Psalm 116 into 2 psalms: verses 1-9 is the first, verses 10-18 the second. The old Greek Bible does this. But most Bible students think that Psalm 116 is just one psalm, all by the same psalmist. We do not know when the psalmist wrote Psalm 116. It is the fourth of the 6 Egyptian Hallels. The Hallels are Psalms 113-118. They are called "Egyptian" because they remember the story of God saving his people from Egypt. The story is in the Book of Exodus. But this psalm is about one man’s trouble, not the whole country. It is a "hallel" because the word "hallelujah" is in verse 19.