Scripture Daily

Context No. 658 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 124:1-8: in context

1If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, let Israel now say, 2if it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us, 3then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us, 4then the waters would have overwhelmed us, the stream would have gone over our soul. 5Then the proud waters would have gone over our soul. 6Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as a prey to their teeth. 7Our soul has escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare. The snare is broken, and we have escaped. 8Our help is in the LORD’s name, who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 124 belongs to the Songs of Ascents, the short psalms 120 to 134 that pilgrims sang as they went up to Jerusalem. It is a thanksgiving, but it gives thanks in an unusual way, by describing at length the disaster that did not happen. If the LORD had not been on our side, it begins, and then it lets the sentence run: when others rose against us, they would have swallowed us alive, the flood would have closed over us, the raging waters would have carried us off.

Only after all that does the psalm say what it is grateful for. Blessed be the LORD, who did not hand us to their teeth. The image it settles on is a small one: our soul escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare; the snare is broken, and we are free. Gratitude here is not a warm feeling about a good day. It is the deliberate naming of a near miss, the trap sprung on nothing, the water that rose and did not reach. The last line is the one the Church kept for its prayer: our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

The psalm gives thanks by spelling out the ruin it was spared. What deliverance have I never once counted, because the disaster it stopped never arrived?

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