Psalm 124:1

The psalm starts with a condition and holds back its ending. The Hebrew opens with lûwlêʼ, “if not” or “were it not that”, which the KJV fills out as “If it had not been”. The condition looks at the past. Israel has come through, and now it pictures what would have happened without the LORD, so that it can see how close the danger came and who stood between them and it. The opening line is said twice, in verses 1 and 2, before the sentence reaches its “Then” in verse 3, and that delay lets every singer feel the weight of the “if”.

“Now may Israel say” turns the line into the people’s own words. Yisrâʼêl is the name given to Jacob when he had power with God (Genesis 32:28), and Strong’s gives its sense as “he will rule as God”. Here it means the whole nation descended from him. The verb ʼâmar, “say”, is the everyday word for speaking, and the whole people is called to speak this confession together. “Our” and “us” run through all five verses, because the danger and the rescue belonged to everyone.

Israel did this kind of remembering on purpose. Joshua retold God’s acts, from Abraham to the land they now lived in, before the people renewed the covenant (Joshua 24:1–13). Fathers were to answer their children’s questions about the law by telling how the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt (Deuteronomy 6:20–25). Psalm 124 puts that same memory into a song, so that each generation confesses God’s faithfulness as the reason it still exists.

The heading calls the psalm a shîyr, a song meant to be sung. “Of degrees” translates maʻălâh, a word for a step or stair, a degree, or an ascent, a going up. Most modern versions call this group the Songs of Ascents. There are fifteen of them, Psalms 120–134, and they have long been tied to the pilgrims who went up to Jerusalem for the three great feasts of Passover, Weeks and Tabernacles. Since the word can mean a step of a staircase, the title has also been connected with the steps leading up to the temple. On either view these were songs for God’s people together, on the way to the place where he was worshipped, and Psalm 124 belongs among them with its “our” and “us”.

The psalm is “of David”, Dâvid, Israel’s king and poet, who knew deliverance from enemies many times over. It follows Psalm 123, a plea for mercy from people who are “exceedingly filled with contempt”, and comes before Psalm 125, which speaks of the safety of those who trust in the LORD. Read in that order, the songs move from asking for help, to thanking God for help given, to quiet confidence in him.

Verse 2 names the danger. “Men” is ʼâdâm, the ordinary word for a human being or for mankind, so the enemies here were people. “Rose up” is qûwm, the common verb for rising or standing up, and with “against us” it means rising in hostility, the way an army rises to attack. The line sets the two sides against each other: the LORD on our side, and men risen against us.

Each of verses 3, 4 and 5 opens with “Then”, ʼăzay, “at that time”. Here the sentence begun in verse 1 reaches its end: if the LORD had been absent, this is what would have happened.

bâlaʻ means to swallow, swallow up or destroy. The same verb is used where the earth opened and swallowed Korah’s company (Numbers 16:32) and where the LORD prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah (Jonah 1:17). “Quick” is the old English word for alive, and it translates chay, “alive” or “living”. The enemies are pictured as a pit or a beast that would have taken the whole nation down whole and alive, all at once.

“When their wrath was kindled against us” gives the reason. Wrath is ʼaph, properly the nose or nostril, and from there anger, from the hard breathing of someone in a rage. Kindled is chârâh, to glow or grow warm and so to blaze up, and the anger is pictured as a fire catching. The same verb is used of God’s anger and of man’s, and here it is the burning rage of people bent on destroying Israel.

The pictures are strong because the danger was real. In those days whole peoples could be killed, carried off or absorbed into another nation and vanish from history. Without the LORD, Israel would have gone the same way. The same God kept Noah through the flood (Genesis 7) and delivers his people from the snare of the fowler (Psalm 91:3).

In verses 4 and 5 the picture changes from a devouring mouth to a flood. “Waters” is mayim in both verses. Scripture often speaks of waters as a power that can drown: the deep of Genesis 1:2 before God ordered the world, and the flood whose waters increased over the earth in Noah’s day (Genesis 7:17). “Overwhelmed” is shâṭaph, to gush, overflow or wash away, the action of water rising over everything in its path.

“The stream” is nachal, a stream, torrent or wadi. In Israel’s dry country many such valleys carry water for only part of the year, and heavy rain can turn one into a rushing torrent with little warning. That gives the picture its force: the danger came on Israel fast and hard, like a flash flood down a valley.

“Gone over” is ʻâbar, the verb for crossing over, and the soul is nephesh. That word comes from a root meaning to breathe, and it covers a breathing creature, life, soul, self or person. Here it means the people’s very life. For the stream to go over their nephesh is for the water to close over their heads and take their breath, and that would have been the end of them as a living people.

The New Testament makes this confession in Christ. Isaiah foretold a son called Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14), and Matthew tells us the name means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). In Jesus the LORD came to our side in person. Our wrestling is against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world (Ephesians 6:12), and sin and death would have swallowed us up without him.

God showed his love in that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8). On the cross he spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:13–15), and through death he destroyed the devil, who had the power of death, and set free those who lived in fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15). The picture of verse 3 is turned round at the resurrection, when “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54–57).

The flood of verses 4 and 5 meets its master in him as well. He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39). At the cross the waters of God’s judgment on sin went over him, so that his people are spared. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), he has overcome the world (John 16:33), and of his church he said, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). In him we are “more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37).

These verses give God’s people words for looking back. They name the danger honestly, the blazing anger and the rising flood, and they put the LORD at the centre of the story as the reason the story goes on. Every generation of Israel could say them, and the church says them now, because the LORD who was on Israel’s side has come to our side in Christ.

The psalm shows who God is. He is the LORD, faithful to his covenant, present with his people in trouble, master of the proud waters, and the one who stands between them and all who rise against them. The letter to the Hebrews gathers it into one assurance: he has said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” so that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” (Hebrews 13:5–6). The psalm itself ends on the same ground: “Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8).