Psalms 129

There is one mark of a household in which God is known and loved, which is too often wanting in our day—I mean the practice of family prayer. Depend upon it, the worth of a practice of that kind can only be measured by its effects during a long period of time; and family prayers, though occupying only a few minutes, do make a great difference to any household at the end of a year. How, indeed, can it be otherwise, when each morning, and, perhaps, each evening, too, all the members of the family, the old and the young, the parents and the children, the master and the servants, meet on a footing of perfect equality before the Eternal, in whose presence each is as nothing, or less than nothing; yet to whom each is so infinitely dear that He has redeemed by His blood each and all of them? How must not the bad spirits that are the enemies of pure and bright family life flee away—the spirits of envy and pride, and untruthfulness and sloth, and the whole tribe of evil thoughts, and make way for His gracious presence in the hearts of old and young alike, who, as He brings us one by one nearer to the true end of our existence so does He, and He alone, make us to be “of one mind in a house,” here within the narrow presence of each home circle, and hereafter in that countless family of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, which shall dwell with Him, the universal Parent of all eternity. H. P. L.

The only condition on which the pilgrim life is possible, and the temptations of the world cease to draw our hearts, is that all life shall be filled with the consciousness of the Divine presence, our homes altars, and ourselves joyful thank-offerings. Then every abode is blessed. The undefended tent is a safe fortress, in which we need not envy those who dwell in palaces. Common tasks will then be fresh, full of interest, because we see God in them, and offer them up to Him. Life will be a life of walking with God, and progressive knowledge of Him; and over all the roughnesses and the sorrows and the trivialities of it will be spread “the light that never was on sea or land, the consecration” of God’s presence, and the peacefulness of communion with Him. A. M.

1. MANY a time have they afflicted me from my youth up,

Let Israel now say;

2. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth up:

Yet they have not prevailed against me.

3. The plowers plowed upon my back;

They made long their furrows.

4. The LORD is righteous:

He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.

5. Let them be ashamed and turned backward, All they that hate Zion.

6. Let them be as the grass upon the house-tops,

Which withereth afore it groweth up:

7. Wherewith the reaper filleth not his hand, Nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.

8. Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the LORD be upon you; We bless you in the name of the LORD.

THIS song sweeps its eye over the historic past of Israel, bringing back this one great moral lesson, that though their enemies had afflicted them sorely, yet their God had always interposed in their time of need. This view of the past calls forth the trustful prayer that God would frustrate their schemes in all future time. C.—The nation, delivered from the Babylonish captivity, may well look back to all her past history, and trace in it the same great law of suffering, and the same ever-repeated tokens of God’s mercy. The record is a record of conflict, but it is also a record of victory (v. 2). The great principle on which Israel’s final deliverance rests is the righteousness of Jehovah (v. 4). That has been manifested, as often before, so now in cutting asunder the cords by which the people had been bound in Babylon. Full of thankfulness at this deliverance, the poet draws thence an augury and a hope for the overthrow, complete and final, of their oppressors. The Psalm consists, accordingly, of two stanzas, each of four verses: the first containing the record of the past, the second the prayer (which is also a hope, and almost a promise) for the future P.

1-3. The youth of Israel as a nation was spent in Egypt, much of it in political bondage. Then and all along at intervals onward their enemies had oppressed them greatly—much, the Hebrew word primarily means; but in this historic review it may include frequency as well as severity. “Oh, let Israel say,” the word for “now” having no reference to time, but being only a word of entreaty. Yet gratefully to God let me say, “They have not been able;” i.e., to destroy me. They have scourged me sorely, “ridging my back with their furrows,” where the wounds of the savage scourge are compared to the ridges of a ploughed field. C.

2. Have not prevailed.** This is the point of the Psalm. The New Testament parallel is 2 Cor. 4: 8-10, and the whole history of the Christian Church is an echo of the words P.—As he reviews a thousand years of conflict with adversaries on every side, the writer can say, “Nevertheless, they have not prevailed against us. Even when we were driven captive into Babylon, we were not abandoned; even there Jehovah opened to us a door of life and hope; and here we stand to day, in our own city, our own capital, once more—alive, though we have suffered so many strange indignities, free, though long bound!” Cox.

The Christian Church may adopt the language of the Hebrew Church: “Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth; yet they have not prevailed against me.” What afflictions were endured by the Christian Church from her youth up! Despite, however, of every opposition, our holy religion took root and grew upward. Not all the fury of ten persecutions could exterminate it from the earth. The fire could not burn it; the waters could not drown it; the dungeon could not confine it. Truth is eternal like the great God from whose bosom it springs, and therefore it cannot be destroyed. And because Christianity is the truth, and no lie, her enemies have never prevailed against her. M’Michael.—Israel prevailed with God in wrestling with Him, and therefore it is that He prevails with men also. If so be that we will wrestle with God for a blessing and prevail with Him, then we need not to fear but we shall wrestle the enemies out of it also. If we be the people of God, and persist in wrestling against His enemies, we need not fear but that we shall be victorious. A. Henderson.

3. As if he had said, My back was furrowed by their whips or scourges. We have here, then, an image of an image. The ploughing is a figure for scourging, and the scourging a figure for the manifold sufferings inflicted upon Israel by his cruel enemies. A.—Well did Latimer say that there was no busier ploughman in all the world than the devil; whoever makes short furrows, he does not. Whoever balks and shirks, he is thorough in all that he does. Whoever stops work at sundown, he never does. He and his children plough like practised ploughmen; but they prefer to carry on their pernicious work upon the saints behind their backs, for they are as cowardly as they are cruel. S.

4. Jehovah (is) righteous; He cut the cord of the wicked. He is righteous, and therefore faithful to His promise and to His covenant engagements to His people. The cord (not cords) is that which fastened the ox to the plough. This continuation of the figure in v. 3 is much more natural than the assumption of a new one, that of confinement by the tying of the limbs. According to the first translation above given, the meaning of the clause is, that Jehovah put an end to their inflictions by a violent separation from their victim. A.—God has cut asunder the cords of the wicked, has cut their traces and so spoiled their ploughing; has cut their scourges and so spoiled their lashing; has cut the bands of union by which they were combined together; He has cut the bands of captivity in which they held God’s people. God has many ways of disabling wicked men to do the mischief they design against His Church, and shaming their counsels. H.

5. Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion. If this be an imprecation, let it stand; for our heart says “Amen” to it. It is but justice that those who hate, harass, and hurt the good should be brought to nought. Those who confound right and wrong ought to be confounded, and those who turn back from God ought to be turned back. Loyal subjects wish ill to those who plot against their king, and that with no trace of personal ill-will. We desire their welfare as men, their downfall as traitors. S.

6-8. Grass on the housetops;** easily springing up, but having no root. The flat roofs of the Eastern houses “are plastered with a composition of mortar, tar, ashes, and sand,” in the crevices of which grass often springs. P. —Grass on Oriental housetops is of necessity short-lived, the soil for roots being the least amount which would admit any growth at all. With the first abatement of the rain and the first warm rays of the sun it must wither. Not “afore it growth,” for this construction would preclude grass altogether; but before one plucks it; i.e., it withers of itself, under the agencies of nature, and without human hands to pluck it up. Still carrying forward the supposed case—with such grass no mower fills his hands; no binder of sheaves his arm; the passers-by could have no heart to say to men harvesting such grass, “The Lord’s blessing be on you.” C.

The enemies of Israel are as grass upon the roofs, which is not garnered in; their life closes with sure destruction, the germ of which they (without there being any need of an uprooting) bear within themselves. D.—The enemies of God’s Church wither of themselves; nor are they anything but the unprofitable burdens of the earth; nor will their attempts against Zion ever ripen or come to any head; nor, whatever they promise themselves, will they get any more by them than the husbandman does by the grass on his housetop. Their harvest will be a heap in the day of grief (Is. 17 : 11). H.

8. This is taken from real life. We find it in the Hebrew Chronicles as well as in the pilgrim’s Psalm-book. As Ruth went gleaning amid “the alien corn,” we are told, “Behold,

Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said unto the reapers, Jehovah be with you! and they answered him, Jehovah bless thee!” Cox.—These expressions are most refreshingly Arabic. Nothing is more natural than for them, when passing by a fruit-tree or cornfield loaded with a rich crop to exclaim, “Barak Allah!” God bless you! We bless you in the name of the Lord! W. M. Thomson.

To these ancient pilgrims, as to us, life was often hard and sorrowful, full of mystery and contradiction. Their feet, like ours, often well-nigh slipped when they saw the wicked prosper and the good decay. They needed, as we need, to assure and to reassure themselves that God is righteous in all His ways, and that, because He is righteous, it must be good to be good, and bad to be bad. And it was well for them, as it is well for us, to be taught not to be over-hasty and extravagant in their thoughts, not to expect that the world was all at once to be shaped to their mind because they threw in their lot with the righteous and the good. It would save them from many a disappointment and heart-sickness to learn that the righteous have to contend with many adversaries, and must often be content with being not overcome, instead of gaining a brilliant victory; that the ploughers may be suffered to plough many furrows, deep and long, even on the back of the elect, before God sees it right to cut the traces; but that, in the end, while the righteous should be singing over their sheaves, the wicked would wither like grass on the housetops. Strangely as the conditions of human life have changed since the Hebrew pilgrims went up to make holiday before the Lord, these sacred lessons of trust, of patience, of an assured belief in the final and complete victory of good over evil, are not obsolete, nor will they fall out of need or out of use so long as the world lasts. Cox.