Psalm 136 — “The Changing Same”
The poet Amiri Baraka called it “the Changing Same.” Musicians may repeat the same musical phrase over and over again in a song, but with each repetition, something is different, altered, changed. Every time, it’s the same; but each time, it’s changed—the Changing Same.
Psalm 136 is a psalm of “the Changing Same.” It repeats the same refrain twenty-six times: “His love endures forever.” His love endures in the realm of divine beings: they are above all, and He is above all who are above all, the God of gods, the Lord of lords. His enduring love is the same when the psalm changes into a tone poem in praise of the heavenly bodies and the created order.
When the music changes yet again from a hymn of creation to a hymn of liberation—a song of the Exodus, of the wilderness between slavery and freedom, and of the Promised Land—His love is the same. And when the music changes yet again to song of triumph over evil tyrants, then to a song of thanksgiving for saving us when we were down and out, for freeing us from our enemies, and for sustaining every living thing, His love is the same.
Again and again and again, the music changes. And again and again and again, His love is the same: “His love endures forever.”
This Psalm goes on and on and on because God’s love goes on and on and on; the psalm is repetitive, because God’s love is repetitive. There is a pulse, a groove, a rhythm in this psalm—a rhythm of Praise to God, the Lord, who is good, whose favor is our very food, whose love endures forever.