The Lord of Reversals: Thanksgiving of Desert Wanderers, Prisoners, the Sick, and Sailors 

Psalm 107 is unique in the Psalter. It opens with an imperative call to praise, familiar to the corporate hymnic praise psalms (note esp. the two preceding psalms), but it does not celebrate Israel’s corporate experience as a people or refer to any particular historical events or traditions. Rather, it rehearses the deliverances of various unspecified groups of individuals. In this respect, it shares similarities to the thanksgiving psalms, but these generally celebrate an individual’s recent deliverance. The repeated summons for these groups to give thanks (vv. 1, 8, 15, 21, 31) and the attendant call to sacrifice thank offerings, while telling “of his works with songs of joy” (v. 22) probably indica…