The formulaic structure of Psalm 136 invites speculation that here, perhaps, we have an example of congregational participation in Old Testament worship. All 26 verses of the psalm follow the same pattern of praising (“give thanks to” in the ESV) God for his character (vv. 1-3, 26), what he has done (vv. 4-24), or what he continues to do (v. 25), followed by the refrain, “for his steadfast love endures forever.” We know that the refrain—which also appears in Psalms 100, 106, 107, and 118—was sung at the consecration of Solomon’s temple (2 Chr. 5:13; 7:3,6), at King Jehoshaphat’s campaign against Judah’s enemies in the wilderness of Tekoa (2 Chr. 20:21), and at the laying of the foundation of the second temple (Ezra 3:10-11). These texts indicate that both professional singers and “all the people” were involved, and that they sang “responsively.” Presumably the refrain was the people’s joyful shout (rwʽ, see “Biblical Model”, section 1) in answer to the changing verses of the song.

Reformed Christians who would sing this psalm in a manner idiomatic to modern congregations have wrestled with how to avoid tedium in a song with 26 refrain statements. The Old English Psalter (Sternhold and Hopkins, 1562) included two versions: one with 26 refrain statements and another with 16. Thenceforth the trend has been ever to reduce the number of refrain statements, to alternate poetic variations on the refrain, or to set refrain statements to contrasting melodic phrases. Of all these efforts, Isaac Watts’s is supremely successful. He knew that, while even the most devout congregant may dread the thought of singing the same thing 26 times, there is another sense in which we cannot sing enough of the everlasting, never-failing nature of God’s covenant mercy (hesed). It is our sweetest song, the great theme of the whole Bible, and the source of all Christian courage. Watts’s solution was to refer overtly to repetition in his poem (“repeat his mercies in your song”). Even as he thereby remains more faithful to Psalm 136 than do modern “literal” renditions that suppress the repetition, he also recognizes therein a symbol for the ceaselessness of our worship (“Give to our God immortal praise”). Because God’s love endures forever, so will our praise.

Watts follows the basic outline of the psalm in recounting God’s character and names in stanzas 1-2, his works of creation in stanza 3, his ongoing works of providence in the present-tense verbs of stanza 4, and his redemption of Israel and the Gentiles in the next two stanzas, which are missing in the Trinity Hymnal. Finally, in the last two stanzas, we sing the gospel message implicit in the psalm’s refrain: his steadfast love extends even to our own justification (penultimate stanza) and sanctification (last stanza). Throughout, he contrasts the perpetuity of God’s covenant love (and that of our praise) with the transience of this world and its powers. The strong trochees that launch each of the first three lines:

    /    x   x
Give to our . . .

    /   x   x
mercy and . . .

    /     x    x
wonders of . . .

animate the iambic verse with a lilt, which befits the singer’s joy.

The tune WARRINGTON makes the most of these wonderful substitutions of trochaic feet for iambic feet at the beginning of lines. The first and third phrases of the tune begin on downbeats, while the second and fourth begin on upbeats, so that the timing of the juncture between phrases is constantly shifting. This denial of symmetry focuses the greatest musical energy at the beginnings and endings of phrases. The melody veritably swings from cadence to cadence in dance-like, even athletic, contours that, like the verbal lilt mentioned above, befit the singer’s joy. Sometimes initial musical trochees supplant feet that Watts wrote as iambs, but not arbitrarily. Six times the singer is forced to accent “his” or “he,” which subtly changes the meaning of the text, so that:

 x     /
his mercies ever shall endure

becomes

 /     x
his mercies ever shall endure

and

 x     /
He built the earth

becomes

 /     x
He built the earth

to emphasize whose mercies endure and who did the building. Indeed, in the first stanza, the word “God” assumes the most colorful elements of the melody: the ebullient reversal of melodic direction in the first line and, in the third line, the leap to the highest pitch of the song.