Offering Praise
Psalm 124
Tony’s Overview Video
How to Use
Preparing to teach
- Read the Bible Lesson by Tony Cartledge in this month’s issue of the Nurturing Faith Journal
- Watch Tony’s Video for this session
- Select either the Adult or Youth teaching guide and follow the directions
Click to read the Bible Lesson by Tony Cartledge
Key Verse: Psalm 124:8 –
“Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”
“I never would have made it without the Lord.” Perhaps you have heard someone speak like that while reflecting on a tragedy or difficult time in his or her life. Perhaps your own experience has led you to say something similar.
We find comfort and confidence in the belief that God not only cares about us, but is on our side. We shouldn’t carry this belief into prayers before sports events, as if God favors one team over another, and certainly not into prayers that we might win the lottery. Still, it’s a good feeling to know that, through all the vicissitudes of life, God is for us.
This is precisely the feeling expressed in Psalm 124, often labeled as a “community thanksgiving psalm” and one of 15 psalms denoted as a “Psalm of Ascent” (Psalms 120-134), possibly sung by pilgrims coming to worship at the temple in Jerusalem during the postexilic period. [DD]
A confession of deliverance (vv. 1-5)
An initial reading of vv. 1-5 seems to describe a time when Israel as a nation was attacked by enemies who could have swept over the people like a raging flood, drowning everyone in its path – if not for a miraculous deliverance wrought by God.
Such a description brings to mind Jerusalem’s survival in 701 BCE when the Assyrian king Sennacherib rampaged through the country of Judah and destroyed many cities, including Lachish, second only to Jerusalem in size. Both biblical and Assyrian accounts speak of this event [DD].
Most commentators believe the psalm dates from much later, during the postexilic period, possibly to celebrate the return from exile after Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon and allowed formerly disenfranchised peoples to return to their homelands.
While we might wish for a clearer picture of what happened, the psalm’s ambiguity serves a positive purpose by making it easier for us to find ourselves in the psalm – to relate it to our own life situations when we longed for divine aid or comfort.
“If it had not been the LORD who was on our side …,” the poet begins, then pauses to invite others to join in: “ – let Israel now say – if it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us . . .” (vv. 1-2). [DD]
Recall that “the LORD” translates the divine name Yahweh, first revealed to Moses in Exodus 3. The psalmist is confessing a belief that Yahweh came to the rescue in a time of dire need, “when our enemies attacked us.”
A closer look reveals that the word translated as “enemies” is actually ’adam, a Hebrew word that can mean “man,” “mankind,” or in a corporate sense, “people.” KJV and NET translate as “men,” and NIV 11 uses the word “people.”
The hostility demonstrated by these people is unclear. The Hebrew verb can carry the sense of an attack, but literally means “rose up.” Someone who must have been quite powerful rose up against the poet and his community, someone so strong that defeat was a foregone conclusion – “If it had not been the LORD who was on our side.”
The certainty of danger is expressed metaphorically through the imagery of a flash flood. The central part of Israel is dry for months at a time, and the landscape is scarred by large gullies that can be tens or hundreds of feet deep.
Most of the gullies, called “wadis,” are dry and dusty during the summer months, and may serve as common paths for travelers. When heavy rains come, however, flash floods can send raging cascades of water rushing through the wadis and overwhelm any unfortunate people or animals who aren’t smart enough or quick enough to get out of the way.
The psalmist speaks of how oppressors “would have swallowed us up alive when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood (literally, “waters”) would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters” (vv. 3-5).
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by some situation that was not of your own making? Pressures within families, work, or school can be so intense that we may have the feeling of wading upstream, fighting the current, trying to keep our heads above water. Others involved may not necessarily be “enemies” who wish us harm: their individual expectations may indeed be reasonable, but the combination of them can leave us struggling to stay afloat.
In those times we can’t expect God to do our work for us, or meet the demands of our families, or write our essays – but can we can trust that God will be present with us and rejoice that we belong to a believing community of other people who can support us?
This community aspect reminds us of another important truth: while many people think of religion or seek God’s help for selfish reasons alone, a more mature faith recognizes that God’s love is not just for me, but for us. Sometimes others can be the answer to our prayer. Sometimes we can be the answer to others’ prayers.
A hymn of praise (vv. 6-7)
In v. 6, the poet turns from confession to praise combined with a further testimony of God’s delivering power. Here the oppressors are no longer portrayed as an overwhelming flood, but as hungry hunters. The oppressed are no longer in danger of drowning, but of being caught in a trap and eaten.
“Blessed be the LORD,” the poet sings, “who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped” (vv. 6-7).
Modern hunters use shotguns to bring down birds of prey: the ancients could go after large birds with a bow or spear but had to rely on snares or nets for smaller birds like quail or wild pigeons. The psalmist feels like a bird that had been caught in a snare or net that broke, allowing its prey to escape. [DD]
The imagery of escaping from a fowler’s snare is what leads many readers think of the poet as someone who had returned from the Babylonian exile. The metaphor is not precise: though many Hebrews were forcefully deported from their homes and required to live in Babylon, few of them were either imprisoned or impoverished. They were given land on which to settle and allowed to have businesses. Cuneiform documents from that period speak of people with Hebrew names who lived in “Jehud-town” and carried on business like other residents of Babylonia.
By the end of the exile, few if any of the original captives survived. Virtually all of the Hebrews in Babylon had been born there. They had heard stories about Jerusalem, however, a once-splendid city that no doubt had grown more resplendent with the telling. As Palestinian refugees today long to return to land in Israel taken from them in 1948, so many of the exiles yearned for Jerusalem. When they were finally allowed to return, some may have imagined themselves as birds who had flown free from Babylon’s captive net.
Have you ever experienced narrow escapes? You may have walked away from an automobile accident that could easily have killed you, or both survived and surprisingly thrived after a divorce that you once thought would have done you in. We can often move on from treacherous situations, not because of a miraculous deliverance, but because of our steady confidence that God and God’s people are with us, and for us.
An affirmation of confidence (v. 8)
The poet concludes his psalm with an affirmation of faith: “Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (v. 8).
One aspect of this verse is clear: the psalmist stands before the congregation to affirm his own faith as an inspiration for others to believe that the same God “who made heaven and earth” is capable and caring enough to be “our help” in times of trouble. He believes that he and others have escaped grave danger for just one reason: because God has helped them.
But why doesn’t he give credit directly to Yahweh (the LORD)? He says, “Our help is in the name of the LORD” (emphasis added).
The psalmist would probably be puzzled by the question. For the Hebrews, God and God’s name were so closely intertwined that to invoke one was to invoke the other. To say our help is in the name of the LORD is to say that the LORD is our help, period. [DD]
What, then, are we to take away from this psalm? On the one hand, we are assured that no matter what calamity threatens, we can hope in God, trusting that God is on our side. God does not have to deliver us from every peril in order to be present with us.
A second reminder from this psalm is the importance of giving thanks and public praise to God for seeing us through our trials. Like the psalmist, we can testify that “If it had not been the LORD who was on our side,” we wouldn’t have come through our troubles as well as we have.
We live in a scary world, with threats of serious harm to the environment, economic uncertainties, and concerns about ideological terrorists or random shooters bearing grudges or mental illness along with their guns.
But despite it all, we can trust that God is for us. We need not lie awake at night or sweat through each day, but can live in confidence that the LORD is on our side.
Adult Teaching Resources
Download the PDF of teaching resources for this lesson.
This PDF contains the Teaching Guide, Digging Deeper, and Hardest Question pages.
Read Scripture online: Psalm 124
Youth Teaching Resources
Parent Prep
How do you encourage your students? Do you still leave them notes in their lunch box? Do you write a note on their mirror? Do you send them a text message? Or, have you forgotten recently because life has happened and there is so much going on. You have to encourage your students and who they are. The worst thing you can do is let life happen and you forget.
Additional Links/Resources
Read Scripture online: Psalm 126
Download the PDF for youth teaching resources using the button below. This PDF contains the Teaching Guide for this lesson:
Video
Encourage youth to check out this video ahead of the lesson.
“A Pep Talk” from Kid President
Via www.youtube.com
Need Help?
Learn how to better use Nurturing Faith teaching resources.