Psalms 126

1. WHEN the LORD brought back those that returned to Zion,

We were like unto them that dream.

2. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, And our tongue with singing :

Then said they among the nations,

The LORD hath done great things for them.

3. The LORD hath done great things for us ;

Whereof we are glad.

4. Turn again our captivity, O LORD, As the streams in the South.

5. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

6. Though he goeth on his way weeping, bearing forth the seed ;

He shall come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

THE first colony of exiles had returned to Palestine. The permission to return had been so unexpected, the circumstances which had led to it so wonderful and so unforeseen, that when it came it could hardly be believed. To those who found themselves actually restored to the land of their fathers it seemed like a dream. It was a joy beyond all words to utter. God, their father’s God, had indeed wrought for them, and even the heathen had recognized His hand. It is with these thoughts that this beautiful Psalm opens. But after all, what was that little band of settlers which formed the first caravan? It was but as the trickling of a tiny rill in some desert waste. Hence the prayer bursts from the lips of the Psalmist, Bring back our captives like mighty streams, which, swollen by the wintry rains, descend to fertilize the parched and desolate wilderness. Then comes the thought of the many discouragements and opposition which the first settlers had to encounter; it was a time of sowing in tears (Ezra 4 : 11-24). Still faith could expect a joyful harvest. He who had restored them to the land would assuredly crown His work with blessing. P.

1-3. Babylon was the great military empire of antiquity, “that fierce and impetuous nation which marched across the breadths of the earth to seize upon dwelling-places that were not its own.” Its victorious arms were in every land. It gathered to itself the strength and the riches of all nations. That it should be overthrown by the poor hill-tribes of Persia, led by Cyrus, had, indeed, been predicted by Isaiah, but was, nevertheless, wellnigh as great a marvel to the Jews as to other Eastern races. That the Lord should “stir up the spirit of the King of Persia” to proclaim Jehovah “the God of heaven,” to affirm, “the Lord God of heaven, who hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, hath charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem,” and to set free as many of “His people” as were willing to “go up to Jerusalem and build the house of the Lord God of Israel”—all this was so strange, so unexpected, so far beyond the reach of hope, that, when the Hebrew captives heard it, they were “like unto them that dream,” and could not believe for wonder and joy. “This was the Lord’s doing,” none but He could have done it, “and it was marvellous in their eyes.” Cox.

When the first band of exiles, forty-two thousand in number, found themselves once more in the city of their fathers, when they recalled the former glories of Jerusalem, and caught glimpses of a possible glorious future, a restored temple and worship, a flourishing national metropolis, a reinvigorated national life, it seemed too good to be true. In the language of our Psalm they were “like them that dream.” Their mouth was filled with laughter and their tongue with singing. They recognized their deliverance with all its marvels, as the work of Jehovah, and gave Him the glory, saying, “The Lord hath done great things for us whereof we are glad.” Even the heathen around them for once refrained from scoffing. The deliverance, the return, were so wonderful, so directly in the face of all probability, that they were forced to acknowledge the interposition of some higher power; and they, too, took up the current saying, “Jehovah hath done great things for them.” V.—And as the Hebrews heard such confessions of the power and goodness of Him whom they worshipped, how could they but again acknowledge (v. 3), “Jehovah hath done great things for us,” and affirm, “We are glad,” glad in Him? Cox.

1. We were like them that dream. In the lapse of seventy years the hope of restoration to their land, so long deferred, had mostly gone out in despair, save as it rested (in some minds) on their faith in God’s promise. The policy of those great powers in the East had long been settled—viz., to break up the old tribes and kingdoms of Western Asia; take the people into far eastern countries, and never let them return. No nation known to history except the Jews ever did return to rebuild their ancient cities and homes. Hence this joyous surprise. C.

2. Then was our mouth filled with laughter. They that were laughed at now laugh, and a new song is put into their mouths. It was a laughter of joy in God, not scorn of their enemies. H.—They who feel their captivity shall have their mouths filled with laughter and joy; that is, redemption and deliverance from sin and death shall be preached unto them. This is the sense and meaning of the Holy Ghost, that their mouth shall show forth nothing else but great gladness through the inestimable consolations of the Gospel, with voices of triumph and victory by Christ, overcoming Satan, destroying death, and taking away sins. This was first spoken unto the Jews; for this laughter was first offered to that people, then having the promises. Now He turneth to the Gentiles, whom He calleth to the partaking of this laughter. Luther.

2. “The voice of rejoicing and salvation is heard in the tabernacles of the righteous;” and men cannot but mark it and ask the meaning. It is a proclamation to them that we have in the midst of us a great heart-gladdening truth, of which they too may partake. Our tongue is filled with singing that they may be led to say: “The Lord hath done great things for them.” Ker.

3. The Lord hath done great things for us. This verse is the marrow of the whole Psalm, occasioned by the return of God’s people out of Babel’s captivity into their own country. Their deliverance was so great and incredible that when God brought it to pass they were as men in a dream, it seemed too good to be true. The manner was so admirable (without the counsel, help, or strength of man; nay, it was beyond and against all human means); that they doubt whether these things be not the dreams of men that are awake. Thomas Taylor.

He in whom believers trust is a great God, and loves to do all things like Himself. Look, therefore, for great things from Him: great assistances, enlargements, deliverances; yea, the forgiving of great sins and the gift of a great salvation. Arrowsmith.—The Christian has had great things done for him of which his life is to be the witness. He is called by God’s message, he is redeemed by the blood of the Son of God, he is renewed by the power of the Holy Ghost. Infinite grace has called him out from darkness into God’s marvellous light. He has seen God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. He has felt the evil of sin in his own nature, and has read its odiousness in the tragedy of the cross. Eternity has been unfolded to him. The unsearchable riches of Christ have been exhibited to him. Heaven has opened its gates to invite him thither. To him the apostle turns when he says, “Ye are redeemed not by corruptible things as silver and gold, but by the precious blood of the Lamb of God.” Is such an one to be content with a low and worldly standard of living? Gillett.

4. This seems to be a prayer for the return of yet other captives. Let their restoration be as when from the northern hills of Palestine and Syria the waters flow southward, and fill the long empty river channels of the south. The Hebrew word for “streams” means strictly a river’s bed, the channel which holds water when water is there, but is often dry. Naturally there is joy for the husbandmen when those valley-beds are filled again with flowing waters. So, the prayer is, Let Thy people return joyfully to their fatherland. C.

The returned exiles feel that their land and city, without their due inhabitants, lay bare and sterile, without life and fruit, like the southern plane under the drought of summer. They themselves are so few and helpless, they are but like a tiny rill trickling through a fervent waste in which it is lost. And hence they implore the Lord of hosts to flood the land with men, to bring back their captive brethren like the mighty torrents which, swollen by melting snows and copious rains, rush down the watercourses and clothe the barren earth with living green. Cox.

The beginnings of mercy are encouragements to us to pray for the completing of it. And while we are here in this world, there will still be matter for prayer, even then when we are most furnished with matter for praise. And when we are free and in prosperity ourselves, we must not be unmindful of our brethren that are in trouble and under restraint. The bringing of those that were yet in captivity to join with their brethren that were returned would be as welcome to both sides as streams of water in those countries, which, lying far south, were parched and dry. As cold water to a thirsty soul, so would this good news be from that far country (Prov. 25 : 25). H.

5,6. But with the prayer is joined, as there ought to be with all prayer, an expression of faith. They do not know that Jehovah will answer this particular request. He may make them wait long for the needed re-enforcements, but they are sure that this painful waiting and working will have a joyful issue at last. And this thought, too, is conveyed under a beautiful figure. V.

5. Those sowing with weeping with singing shall reap. 6. He may go forth, he may go forth, and weep, bearing (his) load of seed. He shall come, he shall come with singing, bearing sheaves. The emphatic combination of the finite tense with the infinitive is altogether foreign from our idiom, and very imperfectly represented, in the ancient and some modern versions, by the active participle, which conveys neither the peculiar form nor the precise sense of the Hebrew phrase. The best approximation to the force of the original is Luther’s repetition of the finite tense, he shall come, he shall come. Load of seed; literally, drawing or draught of seed. The only analogous expression is in Amos 9 : 13, where the sower is called a drawer (forth) of seed. The common version (precious seed) has no foundation either in etymology or usage. A.

The return of the rainy season suggests seed-sowing. But seed-sowing has in it more or less of anxiety, solicitude; for who at that stage knows certainly that his seed will return to him at all, much less with manifold increase? The sowing time, therefore, is not the hour for the song of “harvest home.” But God’s ways in providence are shaped to minister faith and hope to the seed-sower, justifying the proverb, “They that sow in tears shall reap with songs of joy.” The Psalmist beautifully expands this proverb: “He that goes forth with his burden of seed, weeping as he goes, will surely come back with shouts of joy, bearing the sheaves of his harvest.” The seed that is sown, wet with the tears of solicitude, care, and prayer, brings a sure and glorious harvest at length. This is even more universally true in spiritual labor than in material, more true of labors for truth and for the souls of men than in labors for “the bread that perisheth.” Christian labor that takes hold of the heart’s deepest sensibilities, that means earnestness and real work, that is sustained by faith in the mighty God and has the witness of tears, cannot fail of fruitage in its due season. The shouts of the “harvest home” will be as the tears of sowing time. C.

5. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.** Is it not the sacred law of home life? As with the years come these mystical burdens of care and grief and pain and sickness and separation; as the life of one is imperilled for another, and the toil of one is poured out for all; as the loves and solicitudes of all are twined and intertwined, and perchance as the ivies of memory are clustering over some grave that has been many times sown with tears, is there not each year a richer reaping in joy, that could not have been the joy it is but for the hallowed soil of immortal experiences out of which it springs? “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” Is not this the law of all higher spiritual effort? They shall have the joy who have loved their work well enough to be willing to suffer in the doing of it. How many can bear witness that all the greater spiritual efforts of our lives for others must be a sowing in tears. There are reasons which, applicable to one case and to another, make it true of all that when the joy does come after spiritual effort, it is a joy purchased by sorrow. . . . The sorrow of the spiritual effort springs from the travail of the soul. If we ourselves were not in Christ and of Christ, this would not be. We might still love with a human love, and work with a human interest for the objects nearest to us, but we would not have the travail of the soul. But this is the very signature of Jesus upon our work, showing us that, after all, it is not ours, but His. It is not we alone who are sorrowing over this wayward soul, going so fast away from God; it is not we alone who are working in an almost anguish of desire to help this mind captured by doubts, and so helpless, to make that great self-surrender to Christ. It is He, it is He who is sorrowing with us, who is working with us. When one thinks of this, one is ready to accept the sorrow of the higher spiritual effort, and to go on sowing in tears. C. C. Hall.

All human life as related to the larger life of eternity is a sowing-time; and largely a sowing-time of tears. Life is a season of preparatory discipline for immortality; and the experience through which this discipline is perfected is often severe. V.

6. On this figure of the sower he lingers, expanding and retouching it. He gives us a tiny but finished sketch of an Oriental husbandman, who goes out into his fields carrying the seed, Eastern-wise, in the fold of his robe, and taking it out by handfuls to scatter it on the earth. As he goes, he weeps every step that he goes, for the times are hard, the season unpropitious; there has been a great drought, the heavens being stayed from dew and the earth from fruit. But as we look with sympathy on the weeping sower, the scene suddenly changes, and, lo, we see the smiling reaper treading stoutly and cheerily toward the homestead, buried in the rustling sheaves he bears on his shoulders, and singing a mirthful harvest song! Cox.

The two pictures of the weeping sower and of the joyful reaper are here placed side by side; but in fact, as we all know, a large and thickly crowded interval lies between them; and it is in this interval that we shall find the great practical lesson for our immediate use. And the lesson is this; simple steadfastness, patience and hopefulness all through the tearful sowing-time. That joyful harvest scene means that the sower did not let his tears blind his eyes to the duty that lay before him. It was a bitter day when he went out with the seed folded in his robe; but the furrows lay before him, and the seed must be sown, and he went faithfully over every foot of the ground, promising or unpromising, and gave and did his best. And that is the lesson, very easy to state, but very, very hard to practise, which you and I must carry out in our sowing-fields if we ever reap a harvest. If we can only get it rooted in our minds that the tears, and the barrenness, and the lack of promise, and the hard toil and drudgery, and the present disappointment, mean joyful reaping by and by, that these are really God’s ways to a harvest, we shall have gained very much. For that is the simple truth; but then it is a truth which becomes realized in fact only as we accept God’s meaning in it, and work through the barrenness and the drudgery with God toward the fulfilment of God’s intent; only as we accept the corrective hints which our discipline gives, enter and follow out to the end each line of duty on which it puts us, not despairing of ourselves, nor of our work, nor of God and Heaven, not wasting time in tears over the hardness of the soil or the scantiness of the seed, not trying to get round our allotted experience by some by-path, but going straight through it from end to end. V.

The husbandman can obtain no excellent thing without labor and persevering patience! The seed must be hidden in the furrows, decayed and corrupted before it can spring forth with any increase; our hopes are hidden, and light is sown for the righteous; all our comforts are buried under the clods, and after all this there must be long waiting; we cannot sow and reap in a day; effects cannot follow until all necessary causes have first wrought; it is not in the power of the husbandman to ripen fruits at pleasure; our times are in the hands of God; therefore it is good to wait; a long-suffering patience will reap the desired fruits. “Let us not faint, or be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” Manton.

Growth, natural, steady, progressive growth, should be our aim; the growth which is the natural expression of the inward strength we have gained by a wise use of the truths and gifts and ordinances of God; growth never hastening, yet never resting; the growth which springs from the vivifying beams of the Lord our Sun, and the continual dews of the Holy Spirit, and a frank susceptibility to all pure and nourishing influences whether from earth or heaven. Let us be patient, then, with the patience of faith. Break up the soil; sow the good seed; water it with your tears and prayers; and then leave it calmly and hopefully with God. Don’t be impatient for results, but have patience, and, if need be, “long patience.” Don’t be like foolish children, forever digging up the seed to see whether it grows or how it grows. But rest in the assurance that whosoever goeth forth weeping and sowing precious seed shall return again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him. Cox.

The Christian sower sows himself, his character, his spirit, his power of influence. He is himself a seed quick with Divine life; planted anywhere, God can make that seed grow into blessing. Robert Tuck.—Life is not mere living. It is worship, the surrender of the Soul to God and the vision of the face of God. And it is service, it is to feel that when we die we have done something to make the world better and happier, we have tried to cast upon the waters some seeds which, long after we are dead, may still bring forth their flowers of Paradise. The seed dies, but the harvest lives. Sacrifice is always fruitful, and there is nothing fruitful else. Farrar.—We do real good to others only at cost of self. Christ blessed the world not by an easy, pleasant, prosperous life in it, but by suffering and dying in it, and for it; and we can never bless the world merely by having a good time in it. Work for others that costs us nothing is scarcely worth doing. At least, it takes heart’s blood to heal hearts. Too many of us are ready to work for Christ and do good to our fellow-men only so long as it is very easy, and requires no sacrifice or self-denial. But if we stop there, we stop just where our service is likely to become of use. This saving of life proves, in the end, the losing of it. It is they who sow in tears that shall reap in joy. We may take easy work if we will, work that costs us nothing, that involves no pain or self-denial; but we must not, then, be surprised if our hands are empty in the great harvest-time. A. M.

Every act done in Christ receives its exact and appropriate reward. They that are meek shall inherit the earth. They that are pure shall see God. They that suffer shall reign with Him. They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever. They that receive a righteous man in the name of a righteous man; that is, because he is a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man’s reward. We reap what we sow; not something else, but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundredfold. F. W. R.

Our text speaks not only of sheaves for the sowing, but of rejoicing for the tears. The very tears are a seed that shall have a joyful springing; the sorrow shall return again in joy. A. Mackennal.—All abiding and spiritual knowledge, infused into a grateful and affectionate fellow-Christian, is as the child of the mind that infuses it. The delight which he gives he receives; and in that bright and liberal hour, the gladdened preacher can scarce gather the ripe produce of to-day, without discovering and looking forward to the green fruits and embryons, the heritage and reversionary wealth of the days to come, till he bursts forth in prayer and thanksgiving. Coleridge.

Here is the nature of the Christian’s work. He is one that “goeth forth.” Religion is an active and operative principle. And he best illustrates the nature of Christianity who goes forth in the footsteps of his Divine Master, to instruct the ignorant and cheer the desponding and comfort the afflicted, and tell to lost and dying men, by the lettered page or with a brother’s voice, of the blessed Saviour and the great salvation. The spirit, too, of the Christian’s work is a spirit of which tears are the appropriate emblem—a spirit of piety, a spirit of sympathy, a spirit of love. He goes forth with tears—tears of sorrow over the lost, tears of joy over the reclaimed. This is the spirit which sends him forth and makes him successful. There is no agency so resistless as that of love. And what is the seed which the Christian laborer sows—what but the truth of God? It is the truth which, received into his own soul, has there quickened that soul into a new and earnest and undying life. This has changed the whole current of his being, and sent him forth to move and win the souls of men. It is always so. No man ever did anything great or glorious whose own soul was not filled and absorbed by some truth which worked within him, and urged him onward to do or die. Anon.

Bearing forth. The Church must not only keep this seed in the store-house for such as come to inquire for it; but must send her sowers forth to cast it among those who are ignorant of its value or too indifferent to ask it at her hands. She must not sit weeping because men will not apply to her, but must go forth and bear the precious seed to the unwilling, the careless, the prejudiced, and the profligate. Edwin Sidney.—There must be constant, world-wide work and transmission. Human progress consists in this, that men have labored with body, with mind, and each next age has entered into their labors. “He that goeth forth weeping, bearing precious seed,” is the fit motto for all who have employed their minds for the benefit of mankind. The path of the reformers, civilizers, purifiers has been up-hill against reigning corruptions, against the hankering of man for a slothful, unthinking life; in short, against that lapse of souls from God for which Christ furnishes the only all-sufficient remedy. No philosopher ever so toiled to find out or to spread truth as reformers and preachers of righteousness to make the world and the soul better. They have begun their work in a sense of loneliness and insufficiency; they have held out against fear, scorn, and uncertainty. But these religious laborers have changed the face of the world. They have brought into literature and art new ideas of purity and spirituality, into life another standard of character by which all truthfulness, honor, justice, and benevolence are duly valued. And if the world has made great advances in these latter days, and is making them, is there not something inspiring to the laborer in the hope of greater and more rapid success, in the hope of success in the highest of all causes—that cause of Christ which includes all temporal, as well as spiritual welfare? Woolsey.

Mind we the undoubted certainty of our harvest verified by divers absolute, positive asseverations in the text: “He shall reap;” “he shall come again;” “he shall bring his sheaves with him.” Here’s no item of contingency or possibility, but all absolute affirmations; and you know heaven and earth shall pass away, but a jot of God’s Word shall not fail. Nothing shall prevent the harvest of a laborer in Zion’s vineyard. H. Hardwick.

No true word is spoken, no holy deed done that is not done forever. Every seed tells in the harvest. Every beginning is at its stage a completion; and everything completed is at its stage a beginning. The harvest is the end of one sowing, but it is the beginning of a new sowing. And so as other men have labored, and we are entered into their labors, let it not be so much our ambition to be able to count the sheaves as to multiply the stalks into which in due time, by us or by those after us, the sickle shall be thrust. C. H. P.—A servant of God is to undertake his work with the clear understanding that he may not, personally, during his own life, reap the fruits of it. He must sow the seed in view of the possibility that the reapers may go to and fro over his grave to gather the harvest. And he must farther learn to rejoice in their reaping as his own; to feel that if he do not gather an ear with his own hand, he shall reap just the same in the harvest which other hands gather. The best work which is being done for the world is the work which makes the least noise. The forces which are at work to move society most profoundly and to revolutionize it most thoroughly are those of which the general public is not conscious. And the man who joins forces with that kind of sowing need not be surprised if it be forbidden his feet to tread among the standing corn. Nevertheless, he shall reap. But one thing we have to do, and that is to take up our seed, and in God’s strength and with God’s good cheer in our hearts go forth to the sowing, be the ground good or stony, be the prospect of harvest never so remote. V.

The true success of life stands out from a background of self-denying toil, of struggle, and hardship, and manly endurance. The rich harvest-field, waving in its beauty to the breath of the winds, speaks of labor and culture, and the hard-won victory over a stubborn soil. Final success, the joy of life’s ripe harvest, is the goal of our hopes. No wise or thoughtful man will live merely for to-day. Wisdom has regard to the grand issue. The true success of life is that which does not fail the evening of our days, and leave them to blight or barrenness. We want that shout of “harvest home” that will not die into silence with the failing breath, but makes the passage of the grave a whispering-gallery where heaven and earth talk together. That man who comes back from the field of probation’s toil, rejoicing and bringing his sheaves with him, he who is heir to God’s “well done,” is not the world-applauded hero, not the man who has piled up the largest heap of wealth, not the man that has drawn most notice, but he who in proportion to his talents can show the most permanent good done; he who, though he has but few sheaves, has those of wheat and not tares, whose life-work has built not “hay, wood, and stubble,” but “silver, gold, precious stones.” Such seed as time sifts out of the lives of good men in faithful duties done, and holy examples set, and kindly words uttered; such as the faithful parent drops into the soil of the young heart springing up to all generous, and humane, and heavenward strivings; such as falls lightly as the snowflake about the hearthstone where the home-group kneel to pray; such as the Sabbath teacher drops into young and tender hearts, that it may grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength; such is the seed precious beyond all price, the harvest of which shall be rich in more than golden sheaves. Gillett.

Nor, as we study this Psalm, should we forget that among the pilgrims who went up year by year to Jerusalem, there was One who took up the parable of the Psalm and carried it to new heights of meaning, both in His teaching and in His life. The man Christ Jesus was keeping the feast in Jerusalem—and as He went up to the city, He may have sung this very Psalm—when He addressed to His disciples the memorable words: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” And in prospect of the decease (“the exodus”) that He was to accomplish at Jerusalem, was it no comfort to Him to remember that He was the Sower as well as the Seed; that if, as the Seed, He died, that He might live and bring forth much fruit unto God, so also, as the Sower, if He went forth, weeping as He went, bearing His handful of seed, He would surely come again, with songs of joy, bearing the sheaves that seed had produced? It was His one comfort, and stay, and hope; for it was for this joy, set steadfastly before Him, that He endured the cross, despising its shame. If, therefore, we have but a single poor handful of seed, let us sow it faithfully, even though we must sow it with tears; for then we, too, shall “joyous sing the harvest home.” Cox.