It is best to begin with the individual psalms of thanksgiving, since the individual experience of affliction and deliverance recurs with little change from age to age, and the individual psalm of thanksgiving accordingly approximates more nearly than the national the original type. The individual psalms of thanksgiving in the Psalter are 116, 30, 32, 138, 66, 21, 18, 118, and 103.
Psalm 116 is the testimony of a man who has been sick unto death. In anguish and despair he prayed: “O Yahwe save my life.” Yahwe heard his prayer, restored him to health, and accordingly he is in the temple to pay his vows, to offer up his sacrifices of thanksgiving and to give his testimony in the presence of all Yahwe’s people.
Again Psalm 30 is the testimony of a man who had once been very prosperous, but who by the loss of Yahwe’s favor had been brought low. Near unto death, he cried unto Yahwe, pleading that his death could not profit the Deity since the dead in Sheol praise not God. Yahwe saved his life to the end that he might praise and give thanks to his God continually.
Psalm 32 is in form and content quite similar to the teaching or wisdom psalms. Here, however, the teaching is based on a personal experience of deliverance from sickness, and the teaching is itself a testimony of gratitude for recovery. In his distress this psalmist made confession of his sin. Yahwe forgave and healed him. Jonah 2:3-10 is likewise a psalm of thanksgiving. The afflicted one at the point of death made his prayer and his vow. That prayer came to Yahwe in his sanctuary and he was saved. Accordingly he offered to Yahwe the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Psalms 138 and 66 do not state the nature of the deliverance for which they give thanks, but the author of 66 follows time honored custom by offering an actual animal sacrifice at the sanctuary in fulfillment of his vow. Psalms 18 and 118 express the gratitude of two national leaders for deliverance from great peril.
The difficulty of deciding with certainty to which group a number of psalms belong is illustrated by Psalm 21. Verses 2 and 8 are addressed to Yahwe and express the king’s devotion to his God, while verses 3-7 describe the goodness of Yahwe to the king. Yahwe had bestowed upon him the crown, had given him length of days, and had maintained him in security and honor upon his throne. Verses 9-13 are addressed to the king, probably by the priest, and promise the king complete victory over his enemies. The concluding verse 14 addressed to Yahwe:
Be exalted, O Yahwe in thy strength
We will sing and praise thy Power.
This verse has the form of a petition, but its formal language amounts to an ascription of praise. The psalm then does not in the main utter a petition, nor express faith in Deity, but is rather an expression of thanksgiving and may well have been originally used in the celebration of an anniversary of the king’s ascension to the throne.
The classic individual psalm of thanksgiving in the Psalter is 103. Though it is here an individual who calls upon his soul to bless Yahwe, yet there is little that is personal about the psalm, for the psalmist identifies himself with his fellow Israelites and for that matter with universal humanity. Also there is little to distinguish this psalm of thanksgiving from the hymn of praise. The psalmist does not refer in verses 3-5, nor anywhere else, to any single individual personal concrete experience of Jehovah’s salvation, and the psalm is not in that sense a psalm of testimony. Yet exhortation to “forget not all His benefits,” the mention at the very outset of the psalm of the healing of diseases; linking of this healing with the forgiveness of sin as in the psalms of lamentation; the enumeration of Yahwe’s gracious favors to man; all these are calculated to call forth gratitude, and it is actually as a psalm of thanksgiving that the readers of the Bible have always regarded it. Notable in the psalm is the conception of the all but limitless mercy of God; the comparison of God’s compassion to that of an earthly father’s, the emphasis upon the eternity of God in contrast to the frail mortality of man and the fact that God’s mercy is extended to successive generations of men.