Psalm 124
8 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 22×2Romans 8×1Psalms 56×1Psalms 54×1Psalms 37×1Matthew 2×1
Summary
Chapter summary
'If it had not been Jehovah who was on our side, let Israel now say'. Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul. 'Blessed be Jehovah, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.' The pilgrim company's confession under one banner: 'Our help is in the name of Jehovah, who made heaven and earth.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 124The history
The psalm names no enemy and no date, which is deliberate. It is a template, made so that any generation could sing it about its own escape, with the leader calling out the first line and Israel answering.
Its first picture is water. In that country the danger is not a slow-rising river but a flash flood: a dry stony valley that has held no water for months fills in minutes after a storm on distant hills, and a torrent comes down the wadi with no warning. People and flocks caught in the channel are gone.
The second picture is trapping. Birds were caught with a net staked flat on the ground and sprung by a cord, and the fowler's trade was a familiar one; bird catchers supplied the markets and the sacrifices. A snapped cord meant the bird was out and away before the net closed.
Between the two comes a set of teeth. Being handed over as prey to be torn was the plain fear of a small nation surrounded by larger ones with standing armies.
What it meant to them
The first hearers had lived through invasions that other nations did not survive. Assyria and Babylon erased peoples permanently, and everyone knew it.
So the song refuses to credit the escape to its own cleverness. If the LORD had not been on our side — and then it lets the sentence hang, because everyone singing could finish it from memory.
Sources cited
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament , Psalms
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 124. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.