Psalms 124
Butler3,4. The Psalm is remarkable for the entire absence of anything like impatience in its language. From the expression of trustful dependence it passes to the earnest, heartfelt Kyrie eleison in which it pours out in few words the trouble whence springs the prayer. P.
We hear the prayer he has come to court to urge. How much he is in earnest we learn from the repetition, “Be gracious unto us, be gracious unto us.” How much he has suffered we learn from that other repetition, “Long have we been filled with contempt, long has our soul been filled with the scorn of the insolent, the contempt of the proud.” We feel, we cannot but feel that he and those whom he represents have been deeply wronged, that they have suffered long and much. We are struck, we cannot but be struck with the meekness they have displayed and still display. No word of impatience or resentment breaks from their spokesman’s lips, no imprecation on his foes or theirs. He asks for justice, as a grace, to the wronged; he does not ask for vengeance on the wrong-doers. The people he represents know not what to do, but their eyes are up unto the Lord their King. They are His. Their future lies in His hand. At last He will take compassion on His own. And they will wait, wait patiently, for Him, knowing that, though He tarry, He will come, and come to give them the desire of their heart.
Whoever was the author of the Psalm, and whatever the period at which it was written, the Hebrew pilgrims often found it much to their mind. There were many dark years in their history, years of disaster, defeat, subjection. From the time of the captivity they knew little rest. Invasion succeeded to invasion, war to war. They never continued in one stay. And in all the clouded years of these five centuries—when the Syrians, the Greeks, the Romans were in the land—they must have known what it was to be loaded and bowed down with “the scorn of the insolent.” Again and again they must have taken refuge in the conviction that, though men might be against them, He who sat “enthroned in heaven,” ruling over all races, determining all events, was at once their Judge and their Friend. Again and again they must have felt that they stood waiting on the Lord, like the slave whose eyes are fixed on his master’s hand, like the suppliant who has appealed for redress. Again and again, therefore, no prayer would be more native to their lips than, “Be gracious unto us, O Lord, be gracious unto us, for long have we been filled with contempt.” Cox.
1. If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, Let Israel now say; 2 If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, When men rose up against us: 3 Then they had swallowed us up alive, When their wrath was kindled against us: 4 Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul:
5. Then the proud waters had gone over our soul. 6 Blessed be the LORD, Who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. 7 Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: The snare is broken, and we are escaped. 8 Our help is in the name of the LORD, Who made heaven and earth.
IN Psalms 123-125 we have three successive pictures, or rather three parts of one and the same picture; for they are not only linked together as representing successive scenes in one history, but they are also pervaded by one great master thought which lends its unity to the whole group. In each there is the same full recognition of Jehovah’s grace and power as working both for the deliverance and the security of His people. In the one hundred and twenty-third Psalm, “The eye waits upon Jehovah, till He be gracious.” In the one hundred and twenty-fourth, “If Jehovah had not been on our side, men had swallowed us up alive. . . . Our help is in the name of Jehovah.” In the one hundred and twenty-fifth, “The mountains are about Jerusalem, and Jehovah is round about His people.” There can be little doubt that this Psalm (the one hundred and twenty-fourth) records the feelings of the exiles when the proclamation of Cyrus at length permitted them to return to their native land. P.
The returned captives were few and poor and weak. They returned to a land wasted by fire and sword, choked with jungle, overrun with wild beasts, and to a city which had been reduced to a mere heap of ruins. The half-heathen inhabitants of Samaria plundered and derided them, and were only kept from flying at their throats by the Persian satraps. They had to watch against surprise while they built. The fields, which they had laboriously cleared and tilled, were often plundered by marauding bands as the harvest approached. Yet these men were the men who first sang this joyful and exultant Psalm! With what stout hearts must they have looked fortune and misfortune in the face! And if we ask the secret of their strength, the answer is plain and clear. It is simply this—trust in God. He had delivered them from the Babylonian snare; would He not sustain and guard them now that they had escaped? He had plucked them out of the dark, tempestuous sea in which they were sinking; would He not give them rest from their enemies round about, and establish the work of their hands upon them, now that they had returned to the city He loved, and were rebuilding the house in which He dwelt? Was it not reasonable to suppose that He had a purpose of mercy concerning them who had wrought so great a deliverance for them, and that He would carry it out? Cox.
I. If (it had) not (been) Jehovah who was for us—oh, let Israel say. This Psalm consists of two parts, an acknowledgment of God as the deliverer of Israel (vs. 1-5), and a consequent determination to trust in Him exclusively for future favors (vs. 6-9). The verse before us propounds the theme of the whole composition in a more striking form. A.
Many a time may Israel say to this day, had not the Lord been on their side, their enemies would have overcome them. But the Lord was on their side, He turned their captivity, He delivered them from their persecutors, He caused the wrath of men to praise Him, and restrained the remainder of their wrath. He sometimes diverted the attention of their enemies by secular distractions; the Divine Being so interfered as to create a second interest favorable to His Church, and made monarchs, for their own advantage, protect that Church which they would otherwise persecute and oppress. All hearts are in His hands; He can say to the proudest waves of human wrath, Hither shall ye go, and no farther. He makes the worm Jacob to thresh the mountains. He allows His Church to be the only society which subsists from age to age without any alteration; it exhibits the same form, is maintained by the same principles, and speaks the same voice that issued from the infantile Church at the first period of her history. R Hall.
Jehovah is on the side of His people in a spiritual sense. God the Father is on their side; His love and relation to them engage Him to be so; hence all those good things that are provided for them and bestowed on them. Christ is on their side; He is the surety for them, the Saviour of them; He is their King who protects and defends them here, their Advocate and interceding High-Priest who pleads their cause and obtains every blessing for them. The Spirit of Jehovah is on their side, to carry on His work in them; to assist them in their prayers and supplications; to secure them from temptations; and to comfort them in all their castings down. Were this not the case, what would become of them! Gill.
6,7. Now that the fact of the Divine succor has been expressed, there follow the thanksgiving for it and the exultation of the rescued ones. In v. 6 the enemies are thought of as beasts of prey because of their lust for blood, just as the world-powers are in the Book of Daniel; in v. 7 they are thought of as fowlers because of their craftiness. D.
6-8. Opening with a thanksgiving to heaven, this second strophe falls back on the image of the third verse. There the Psalmist had compared the Hebrews to a prey which the ravening beast swallows up alive; here he blesses Jehovah that they have not been “given as a prey to the teeth” of their enemies. Nay, he strikes out a new, yet closely related figure, over which he lingers, as, in the previous strophe, he had lingered on the image of the overwhelming waters—that of the bird and the broken snare. As he conceives of Israel escaping like a quarry from the fangs and claws of a beast of prey, a new similitude of unhoped-for deliverance occurs to him, and he exultingly sings, “Our soul hath escaped like a bird out of the snare of the fowlers; the snare was broken, and we—we escaped.”
Indeed, the whole Psalm is alive with joy, the joy of an escape, of a triumph, as wonderful as it was unexpected. And yet it is no exultation in his own wit or might which fills the poet’s heart. It is not in these that he glories, but in God; for it is not by these that he has been delivered from the toils in which he was caught, from the waters in which he was drowning. Throughout the Psalm gives the glory to God alone. The first strophe opens with the confession, “If Jehovah had not been for us, and had not shown Himself strong in our behalf, we must have been swallowed up and overwhelmed.” The second strophe opens with a thanksgiving to Jehovah, who has not given them as a prey to the teeth of their foes. And the whole Psalm closes and reaches its climax in the solemn ascription—
Our help is in the name of Jehovah, The Maker of heaven and earth.
Cox.
8. The principle of spiritual life with ourselves is precisely that laid down as the principle of national life for the Israelites. God gives us the land of promise for no righteousness of our own. Everything depends on God’s mercy, God’s will, God’s purpose; the certainty of victory depends not upon any feelings, or experiences, or conflicts of ours, but upon the ever-present help of the almighty God. Bishop Goodwin.
Blessed be His name, He that has fashioned us will watch over us; yea, He has done so, and rendered us help in the moment of jeopardy. He is our help and our shield, even He alone. He will to the end break every snare. He made heaven for us, and He will keep us for heaven; He made the earth, and He will succor us upon it until the hour cometh for our departure. Every work of His hand preaches to us the duty and the delight of reposing upon Him only. 8.
Is there any time in which the ruling sentiment of the Psalm—joyful trust in God founded on a memorable experience of His saving power—is inappropriate on the lips of any man? May not we, may not all, who have “tasted that the Lord is good,” sing as sincerely and heartily as the Jews themselves, “If the Lord had not been for us, we had been swallowed up, we had been carried away as by a torrent, we had been overwhelmed as in a raging sea?” May not we, at all times, “bless the Lord, who has not given us up as a prey, but has broken the snares in which we were caught, so that we too have escaped?” May we not, should we not thankfully and joyfully avow that the Maker of heaven and earth has been and is and will be our help? Amid the sorrowful and perplexing vicissitudes to which we are exposed, nothing is more essential than that we should know that He who made all things, and rules all things, is our Refuge and Friend. Living, as we do, amid the play of vast forces, natural and political, over which we have but the slenderest control; affected, and profoundly affected, by events which we can neither shape nor foresee; how can we carry a steadfast and composed heart to our daily toils unless we repose in the Divine and tender wisdom which orders all events and controls all forces to ends of righteousness and love? How can we know any mirth, save the mirth of fools, unless we can joy and rejoice in God our Saviour? Cox.