Psalms 126

Psalms 126. The congregation of the Lord acknowledges with thanksgiving the great things which he has already done to her, how he has, by her deliverance, filled her with triumphant joy, ver. 1-3. She entreats him that he would not allow his work so gloriously begun to be interrupted, and also further that he would have pity upon her misery, and expresses the firm hope that her pain shall be turned into joy, ver. 4-6. The Psalm exactly suits the situation which lies at the bottom of all the Pilgrim Songs which have no name:-comp. the intro-duction to Psalms 125. in regard to its relation to that Psalm. The great deliverance which the church has recently experienced, ac-cording to ver. 1-3, can scarcely be sought in any thing else than in the restoration from captivity, even although the definite re-ference to it, which many expositors find in ver. 1, rests upon a manifestly false exposition, and although it is only by a similar exposition that ver. 4 contains a prayer for the completion of the restoration. Ver. 4-6 refer to the mournful circumstances which existed in the new colony before the completion of the building of the temple. The special references are, as is usual, only slightly indicated.

The sacred Psalmists were deeply impressed with the conviction that they sang for the church of all ages. The Psalm always finds a new application, in those circumstances of the church in which joyful hopes, awakened by a previous deliverance, are in danger of being frustrated; it was also composed for the sake of expressing the feelings of the individual believer, in whom sin threatens, after his first love, to become again powerful. It guides us to prepare, out of the lively realization of the grace already received, a sure foundation for prayer and hope in refer-ence to grace yet to be bestowed.

Psalms 126:1-3

A Song of the Pilgrimages.Ver. 1-3.-Ver. 1. When the Lord turned himself to the turning of Sion we were like men in a dream. Ver. 2. Then was our mouth full of laughter, and our tongue full of joy; then they said among the heathen: the Lord has done great things for them. Ver. 3. The Lord has done great things for us; we were glad.-After the example of Abenesra and Kimchi, Luther refers the whole stropheto the future deliverance: “if the Lord . . . shall deliver, we shall be.” But as the futures in ver. 2 are surrounded by pre-terites at the beginning and end, we must translate them also of the present. On שוב with the accus., to turn back, comp. at Psalms 14:7; Psalms 85:4, Isaiah 52:8, “They see eye to eye, as the Lord turneth back to Sion.” The שיבה which only occurs in the pas-sage before us (comp. in reference to the form Ew. 146 c.) is the same in point of import with הבAוש, Isaiah 30:15, “By re-turning and rest ye shall be established,” returning in a spiritual sense, conversion. Allusion is made in a marked manner to the phrase, which frequently occurs, and which is used immediately after in ver. 4, שבות שב, which, as was shewn at Psalms 14:7, never means anything else than to turn back to the captivity or to the misery of his people. The expression is intended to intimate that the Lord returns to his people then, when they return to him.

He returns as it were to the return of his people, as we read in the fundamental passage, Deut. 30:2, 3, “When thou returnest to the Lord thy God, . . . the Lord thy God returns to thy captivity, and turns thee back, and assembles thee out of all the nations whither the Lord thy God has scattered thee,” and in ver. 9 and 10, “For the Lord shall return to thee to rejoice over thee, . . . when thou shalt return to the Lord thy God with thy whole soul.” Prominence is also given frequently in other passages to the intimate connection between the return to the Lord and his favour, comp. Deuteronomy 4:30, Isaiah 10:21; Isaiah 10:22; Isaiah 59:20, Nehemiah 1:8.

There is, therefore, no reason to maintain with seve-ral expositors that שיבה is of the same import as שבות (the circumstance that the two roots, שבה and שוב are never inter-changed is decisive against this) still less to change the שיבה into שבות. In the שיבת there was contained, at the same time, the theological view as to the former suffering. “We were like men in a dream” is commonly explained: the happiness expe-rienced by us was so great that we, not trusting our own eyes, regarded the reality as a dream. But the expression is not we “believed that we dreamed,” but “we were like men in a dream,” and thus the words can only refer to the excess of joy in which the delivered captives were out of themselves, out of their senses, and like men intoxicated or dreaming. This view also suits the connection better. The whole of the first strophe is occupiedwith the representation of the former joy. The pain at pre-sent endured forms the counterpart to this joy in the second strophe, the removal of which is entreated from God and hoped for.a-The use of the future in ver. 2 cannot lead us to refer what is there said to a future time, as a special reason for that use occurs in the reference to the passage, Job 8:21, “He shall yet fill thy mouth with laughter and thy lips with joy,"-a reference which is all the more obvious, as Job is manifestly not only the representative of individual suffering righteous men, but at the same also the type of the church, so that the promise im-parted to him was very appropriately fulfilled in her.

The second half of the verse, as well as the first, has an old basis to reston. The peculiar expression, לעשות יהוה הגדיל, is literallyfrom Joe 2:21.

It points to the promise of deliverance from trouble which had been given long before to the people when the trouble approached. This reference to an important fundamental passage, explains the repetition of the words. The enemies ap-pear in this under the image of swarms of grasshoppers. The Psalmist sees through this transparent covering. a Lampe: “The pious have assuredly great cause for joy when they are delivered from a captivity which oppressed not their bodies only, but also their souls.”

Psalms 126:4

In the second strophe, ver. 4-6, we have first the prayer in ver. 4, and after that the hope in ver. 5 and 6.-Ver. 4. Turn back, O Lord, to our captivity, as the streams in the south. Ver. 5. Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. Ver. 6. They go and go in weeping, bearing the seed-draught, they come and come in joy, bearing their sheaves.-The explanation of the phrase שבות שב, ver. 4, which alone is the correct one, not “to turn back the captives or the captivity,” but “to return to the captivity, the miserable condition” (comp. at ver. 1), procures immediately for the second clause the proper explanation: asstreams (return) in the south. נגב is the dry south division of Canaan, without any fountains, Joshua 15:19, and thus all the more dependant upon the rain-streams, the disappearance of which filled every place with sadness; comp., in reference to these rain-streams, Job 6:15 ss. The point of comparison, according to ver. 1-3, and according to ver. 6, is the joy over the reappear-ance of what had been so painfully amissing. A similar figure occurs in Psalms 68:9. The Masorites, instead of שבות, readשבית, which is only another form. In other passages they re-verse the matter. The sowing and the reaping, in ver. 5, is a figurative expression for undertakings and their results.

This expression was occasioned by the comparison in the second half of the preceding verse. What not unfrequently happens in the dry south, that those who, in a season of drought, in consequence of the disappearance of the rain-streams, sow in grief and anxiety, reap in joy, inasmuch as the rain-streams return, cause the crop to spring up and to grow, always happens in the kingdom of God: undertakings begun in a time of grief are brought by the return of the Lord to a joyful issue.

Although the natural cir-cumstances lie at the bottom, we cannot maintain that the words, in the first instance, were used in reference to these, and only admit of being applied to something higher: for the unlimited generality of the affirmation here made does not suit the natural circumstances. The language used is from the first used of spi-ritual sowing. Besides, we cannot overlook the fact that the expression, “those who sow,” is limited, from the context, in which only the people of the Lord had been spoken of: those who sow among the people of God, or we who sow. In the world there is much sowing in tears without any reaping in joy; and the verse before us; falsely applied, instead of the call “Repent,” assumes, in the case of the world, the character of false comfort. Paul Gerhardt’s hymn shews that he understood the sense cor-rectly: “God’s children sow very mournfully and in tears, but at last the year brings that for which they longed for; harvest comes when they make sheaves, then all their bitter sorrow be-comes loud joy and laughter.” Ezra 6:16 shews how the words were fulfilled in those to whom they were in the first instance addressed, how the general truth, so consolatory for the church of God, was in their case realized: “And the children of Israel. . . kept the dedication of the house with joy, ver. 22; and they kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy; for the Lord had made them joyful, and turned the heart of the King of Assyria to them, so that they were strengthened in the work on the house of the Lord.” Compare, in reference to the dedi-cation of the wall of the city, Nehemiah 12., especially ver. 43: “and great sacrifices were offered that day, and they were joyful, for God had made to them great joy, so that both women and chil-dren rejoiced, and the joy of Jerusalem was heard afar of."-The subject in ver. 6 is the sower. The infin. absol. in both verbs denotes the continued existence of the pain and also of the joy, comp.

Ew. § 280. b.a הזרע משך is properly the draught of seed which the sower takes with his hand out of the seed box. In Amos 9:13, הזרע משך is the sower, properly he who draws the seed, draws it out of the seed box.

The משך occurs in the sense of drawing also, in Job 28:18, “wisdom draws stronger (in the scales) than pearls,” is heavier than they.