But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works.
The history recorded in Psalm 106 belongs together with Psalms 105 and 107, and the three are to be studied together to appreciate God's goodness, mercy, and love. After settling in Canaan, Israel mingled among the heathen nations there and learned their works and practices. This mingling came through disobedience to God's command to drive out those nations and through disregard of His directions, word, and counsel. In Canaan this joining included intermarriage and serving idols and adopting idolatrous practices, which became a snare that brought defilement and destructive idolatry.
Later, Solomon's alliances brought the same danger into Israel, spreading heathen principles so that polygamy and idolatry displaced God's worship and human sacrifice and licentious rites were accepted. Contact with surrounding peoples led Israel away from faithfulness to God and from the education and way of life God had planned, while association encouraged appetite and passion and weakened the people physically, mentally, and morally. Joining with idolaters led to the loss of God's special presence and protection and brought oppression by enemies. Rejecting God's ways for human ways began Israel's downfall, which continued until the people became subject to the nations whose practices they had chosen to follow.
As part of Israel's experience of sin, unbelief, and rebellion, the verse serves as a warning to God's people in the last days against repeating that course and is to be studied carefully. It warns that contact with worldly, idolatrous influences leads away from faithfulness. Unfaithfulness in the home left many Hebrew youth learning the ways of the heathen.
The history recorded in Psalm 106 belongs together with Psalms 105 and 107, and the three are to be studied together to appreciate God's goodness, mercy, and love. After settling in Canaan, Israel mingled among the heathen nations there and learned their works and practices. This mingling came through disobedience to God's command to drive out those nations and through disregard of His directions, word, and counsel. In Canaan this joining included intermarriage and serving idols and adopting idolatrous practices, which became a snare that brought defilement and destructive idolatry.
Later, Solomon's alliances brought the same danger into Israel, spreading heathen principles so that polygamy and idolatry displaced God's worship and human sacrifice and licentious rites were accepted. Contact with surrounding peoples led Israel away from faithfulness to God and from the education and way of life God had planned, while association encouraged appetite and passion and weakened the people physically, mentally, and morally. Joining with idolaters led to the loss of God's special presence and protection and brought oppression by enemies. Rejecting God's ways for human ways began Israel's downfall, which continued until the people became subject to the nations whose practices they had chosen to follow.
As part of Israel's experience of sin, unbelief, and rebellion, the verse serves as a warning to God's people in the last days against repeating that course and is to be studied carefully. It warns that contact with worldly, idolatrous influences leads away from faithfulness. Unfaithfulness in the home left many Hebrew youth learning the ways of the heathen.