Psalm 130:7

Psalm 130 is one of the fifteen Songs of Ascents, Psalms 120 to 134, which pilgrims sang as they went up to Jerusalem, likely for the feasts of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. It is also one of the seven Penitential Psalms, the psalms of confession and sorrow for sin. It begins, “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD” (Psalm 130:1). Those depths could be any deep trouble that came on Israel, such as illness, oppression, exile or the weight of the nation’s sin, and the psalmist knows that his own sin is part of what has brought him low. In verses 2 to 4 he asks God to hear him and pleads for forgiveness, and in verses 5 and 6 he waits: “My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning” (Psalm 130:6).

In verse 7 he turns from his own soul to the whole people. The grace he has learned in his own need he now gives to everyone, and the psalm reaches its height. In Israel sin touched the whole covenant community as well as the one who committed it, so the call to hope and the promise of redemption are spoken to the whole people. The pilgrims who sang these words climbed to Jerusalem together, and their road up the hills pictured the road the psalm itself travels, from despair to hope, from the burden of sin to the freedom of forgiveness, and from one person’s experience to the shared confidence of all God’s people.

The verb for hope, yâchal, means to wait or to hope, and in this psalm the two belong together. The psalmist has just been waiting for the LORD as a watchman waits for dawn, and he now calls Israel into the same waiting. This hope is a patient, confident expectation that God will act, held onto in the middle of trouble and through long delays. It is firm because it rests on God’s character and his promises. Isaiah speaks of the strength God gives to people who wait like this: “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).

“Let Israel hope” is a command and an encouragement at once. Its object is the LORD himself, the covenant God of Israel, and the psalm gives his people one place to put their hope, in him alone. Human strength and changing circumstances have no part in it.

The little word “for” gives the reason to hope, and the reason is God himself. “With the LORD there is mercy.” The Hebrew word is cheçed, God’s loyal love, his kindness and his faithfulness to his covenant, which holds firm when his people are unfaithful and rebellious. It is the ground Israel’s hope stands on. Scripture speaks of it again and again: “The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression” (Numbers 14:18), and a psalm of David praises the same mercy and says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:8–12).

“And with him is plenteous redemption.” Redemption, pᵉdûwth, is deliverance, often by the payment of a price or a ransom, setting people free from slavery, bondage or judgment. “Plenteous” comes from râbâh, to increase or to be abundant. God’s redemption overflows. There is enough of it for any depth of sin or distress, and it delivers completely and generously. “He sent redemption unto his people: he hath commanded his covenant for ever: holy and reverend is his name” (Psalm 111:9). Through Isaiah he told his people, “Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine” (Isaiah 43:1–3).

Verse 8 brings the psalm to its end with a promise. “He shall redeem” names God as the one who does the redeeming, and “shall” makes it certain. Israel’s part was to hope and to wait. The deliverance is God’s own work from first to last, and it flows from the mercy and plenteous redemption of verse 7.

The verb pâdâh is a root whose basic sense, as Strong’s gives it, is to sever, and from that come the meanings to ransom, to release and to preserve. It speaks of freeing someone from bondage, danger or obligation, often by a payment. Israel knew redemption from its own history. Before the Exodus God said, “I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments” (Exodus 6:6). After the crossing of the sea his people sang, “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed” (Exodus 15:13), joining mercy and redemption just as verse 7 does. Moses told them why God had done it: “because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen” (Deuteronomy 7:8). Redemption also covered the ransom of a life.

In Psalm 130 the bondage is Israel’s sin. The God who redeemed his people from Pharaoh promises to redeem them from their iniquities, setting them free from sin’s power and its consequences and bringing them back into a right relationship with himself.

The word for iniquity, ʻâvôn, means perversity, moral evil and fault, and it also carries the guilt and the punishment that sin brings. So when God redeems Israel “from all his iniquities”, he deals with the sin itself, the guilt it leaves behind and the penalty it deserves. The word “all” takes in every one of them, and the whole of sin’s corruption, down to its root, comes under his redeeming work. The psalm that began in the depths with a plea for forgiveness ends with every iniquity redeemed.

The prophets gave the same promise. God says through Isaiah, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins” (Isaiah 43:25). Through Jeremiah he promises a new covenant: “for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). Micah asks, “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy,” and he goes on, “thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18–19).

Yisrâʼêl is first of all the nation God chose, the descendants of Jacob. It is the name God gave Jacob, and Genesis 32:28 ties it to his having power with God. It comes from a verb meaning to prevail or have power and from El, God, and Strong’s renders it “he will rule as God”. To this people God made his promises and gave his law, and these two verses speak to them first. The covenant goes back to God’s call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), and the promise of verse 8 is God keeping faith with it. The redemption is promised to the nation as a whole, and each person within it knows that forgiveness and cleansing for himself.

People ask whether the promise belongs to Israel alone. The New Testament shows God’s plan of redemption reaching its fulfilment in Jesus Christ, through whom everyone who believes, Jew or Gentile, is redeemed from sin. Paul writes, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23–24). He tells believers, “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29), and he blesses “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16). Peter tells believers that they are “a chosen generation” who “in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God” (1 Peter 2:9–10). So the call to hope in the LORD, and the promise of mercy and plenteous redemption, come to all who are in Christ, who is the fulfilment of Israel’s hope.

Both verses are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The mercy of verse 7 is shown most fully at the cross: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The plenteous redemption is found in him: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). He became the ransom, paying the price for sin and setting his people free from sin and death. God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13–14).

John the Baptist pointed to him as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the perfect and final sacrifice. Paul writes of Christ in the very words of verse 8, “who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity” (Titus 2:14). And the new covenant Jeremiah promised is now in force through him, as Hebrews says: “their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12). The longing that rose out of the depths of Psalm 130 is answered in him.

Whatever depths we cry out of, the weight of our own sin, a season of despair, heavy trials or the brokenness of the world around us, this psalm points our hope to the LORD, because mercy is with him and his redemption is plenteous. Our forgiveness rests on his work and his merit, so we can confess our sins with confidence: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). We can wait for him as the watchman waits for morning, sure that he will act.

His full forgiveness frees us to repent out of love for his grace, to pray and worship with him gladly, and to walk in newness of life, free of condemnation. And as the psalmist turned his own deliverance into a word for all Israel, the hope we have received is ours to share with the people around us.