Psalm 106:10 means that God saved Israel from people who hated them and bought them back from the power of their enemy. The verse is a memory of the Exodus, where Israel was rescued from Egypt, and it reminds readers that deliverance came from God alone. The psalm is anonymous, but it is written as a prayer of confession that recounts the nation’s history, looking back on how God acted even when his people failed.
He saved them from the hand of him who hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.
Psalm 106:10 (WEB)
What Psalm 106:10 Means
The verse begins with “He saved them,” which names the basic action: God acted to rescue. The phrase “from the hand of him who hated them” points to an enemy with real power and real hostility, and the rescue was not a small or partial one. The second half, “redeemed them from the hand of the enemy,” uses the language of redemption, the idea of paying a price to get someone back out of captivity. The verse presents the rescue as God’s doing, not Israel’s.
What the verse does not promise is that God will always remove hardship from our lives or that every enemy will be defeated on our timetable. It is a statement about what God has done in the past and about his character as one who intervenes for his people. The psalm goes on to show that Israel repeatedly forgot these deeds, so the verse is as much a call to remember as a declaration of rescue.
The Context of Psalm 106:10
Psalm 106 is one of the historical psalms, a long review of Israel’s story from Egypt through the wilderness and into the land. Its tone is confessional: the writer is not praising Israel but admitting how often the people rebelled while God kept showing mercy. The psalm appears in the final section of the Psalter, alongside other psalms that celebrate God’s faithfulness to a people who did not deserve it.
Verses 7 through 13 set the stage. Verse 7 says the fathers did not understand God’s wonders in Egypt, and verse 8 explains that God saved them anyway “for his name’s sake.” Verse 9 describes the parting of the Red Sea, and verse 10 then summarizes the rescue in general terms. Read this way, the verse is not a freestanding promise but the center of a story about grace that holds even when the people forget. Verses 11 and 12 show the outcome of the rescue, and verse 13 begins the account of how quickly they forgot.
Key Phrases in Psalm 106:10
Exodus 14:30
Thus the LORD saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.
(WEB)
This verse describes the same Exodus event that Psalm 106:10 recalls, the moment Israel saw Egypt’s army defeated at the sea. Reading it alongside the psalm shows the historical moment behind the poet’s summary of rescue.
Psalm 107:2
Let the redeemed by the LORD say so, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the adversary…
(WEB)
This verse calls the redeemed of the Lord to say so, which is exactly what Psalm 106 models when it looks back at God’s rescue. It encourages the people who have been rescued to speak about their deliverance rather than keep it private.
A Short Prayer From Psalm 106:10
Lord, you have rescued your people before, and you have shown that you are not held back by the power of those who oppose them. I bring you the places where I feel trapped or outmatched today. Help me to remember your past faithfulness, even when my memory is short and my fear is loud. Redeem what I cannot repair, and rescue me from the hands that want to harm me or hold me down. Teach me to trust that you are still the one who saves. Amen.
