Psalm 124

Psalms 124:1-2

The psalm opens on a condition twice stated, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, first as Israel's own confession and then applied to a specific danger, when men rose up against us. Attributed by the title to David, the verse puts the nation's survival on a single premise, stated so plainly that the rest of the psalm only works out what would have followed had that premise been false. The bench notes the repetition is deliberate, the second line supplying the occasion the first left general.

Psalms 124:3-5

The unstated danger is pictured in three rising images, swallowed alive, waters overwhelming the soul, and proud waters going over the soul, water standing for an enemy's wrath the way it stands for chaos and death across the Psalter. Quick in verse 3 carries its older sense of alive, not fast, swallowed up living rather than after death. The repeated waters image across two verses is the psalm's own way of dwelling on a danger that in fact never closed over them.

Psalms 124:6-7

The psalm turns from the danger that did not happen to the God who kept it from happening, blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth, the enemy pictured now as a beast rather than a flood. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers changes the picture again, a small and fragile deliverance, the snare is broken, and we are escaped stated as plain fact rather than request. Henry notes the psalm never asks for anything here; it is thanksgiving for danger already past, not a prayer for danger still ahead.

Psalms 124:8

Our help is in the name of the Lord: The closing line, our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth, repeats Psalm 121:2 almost word for word, one of the ascent collection's own internal echoes binding the fifteen songs together. The name carries the whole argument of the psalm back to its ground, not Israel's own strength against the flood or the fowler but the Lord who made the heavens the flood came from and the earth the snare was laid on. The bench reads the near-repetition as intentional, the pilgrim company answering one danger after another with the same confession.