Psalm 125

Psalms 125:1-2

The Hebrew title, not carried on this page's text, reads A Song of degrees, one of the fifteen ascent psalms sung on the pilgrim climb to Jerusalem, so most of the bench reads it, though the Mishnah ties the ascents to the temple's fifteen steps and others to the return from exile. The mountain that cannot be removed is the image the psalm turns on: trust as unshakable as the ground Jerusalem itself sits upon. Verse 2 widens the picture outward, the mountains ringing the city standing for the Lord ringing his people, a wall drawn from what pilgrims saw with their own eyes climbing in.

Psalms 125:3

The rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous carries a promise about duration rather than outcome: oppression is limited, not denied outright, because an unbroken season of wicked rule is the real danger to a righteous people's faith. Lest the righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity names the risk plainly, that prolonged hardship under wicked power tempts the oppressed to adopt the oppressor's own methods rather than wait on the Lord. Henry and Gill both read the verse as a boundary God sets on how long testing runs, set for the sake of the righteous rather than a promise that no rod will ever fall.

Psalms 125:4-5

Do good, O Lord: The prayer turns direct, Do good, O Lord, unto those that be good, and to them that are upright in their hearts, asking God to answer character with blessing. Those who turn aside unto their crooked ways are set against that uprightness, and the psalm names their end without naming any person: the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity, joined to the company their own choice already belonged to. The last line refuses to close on that warning, but peace shall be upon Israel, so the psalm ends in blessing rather than in the threat just stated, a shape the bench reads as deliberate.