Psalm 129
129:1. In Israel’s present hour of trial she may remember her former afflictions and speak of them for her comfort, drawing from them the assurance that he who has been with her for so long will not desert her in the end. The song begins abruptly. The poet has been musing, and the fire burns, therefore speaks he with his tongue: he cannot help it, he feels that he must speak, and therefore may … now say what he has to say. The trials of the church have been repeated again and again, times beyond all count: the same afflictions are fulfilled in us as in our fathers. Jacob of old found his days full of trouble; each Israelite is often harassed; and Israel as a whole has proceeded from tribulation to tribulation.
Many a time, Israel says, because she could not say how many times. She speaks of her assailants as they, because it would be impossible to write or even to know all their names. They had straitened, harassed, and fought against her from the earliest days of her history—from her youth—and they had continued their assaults right on without ceasing. Persecution is the heir-loom of the church, and the ensign of the elect. Israel among the nations was special, and this brought against her many restless foes, who could never be easy unless they were warring against the people of God. When in Canaan, at the first, the chosen household was often severely tried; in Egypt it was heavily oppressed; in the wilderness it was fiercely assailed; and in the promised land it was often surrounded by deadly enemies. It was something for the afflicted nation that it survived to say, “Many a time have they afflicted me.” The affliction begins early—from my youth—and it continued late. The earliest years of Israel and of the church of God were spent in trial. Babes in grace are cradled in opposition. No sooner is the man-child born than the dragon is after it. “It is,” however, “good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth,” and he will see it to be so when in after days he tells the tale.
129:2. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth. Israel repeats her statement of her repeated afflictions. The fact was uppermost in her thoughts, and she could not help soliloquizing upon it again and again. These repetitions are after the manner of poetry: thus she makes a sonnet out of her sorrows, music out of her miseries.
Yet they have not prevailed against me. We seem to hear the beat of timbrels and the clash of cymbals here: the foe is derided; his malice has failed. That yet breaks in like the blast of trumpets, or the roll of kettle-drums. “Cast down, but not destroyed,” is the shout of a victor. Israel has wrestled, and has overcome in the struggle. Who wonders? If Israel overcame the angel of the covenant, what man or devil shall vanquish him? The fight was oft renewed and long protracted: the champion severely felt the conflict, and was at times fearful of the issue; but at length he takes breath, and cries, Yet they have not prevailed against me. The enemy has many a time had his opportunity and his advantage, but not so much as once has he gained the victory.
129:3. The plowers plowed upon my back. The scourgers tore the flesh as plow-men furrow a field. The people were maltreated like a criminal given over to cruel whips; the back of the nation was scored and furrowed by oppression. It is a grand piece of imagery condensed into few words. A writer says the metaphor is muddled, but he is mistaken: there are several figures, like wheel within wheel, but there is not confusion. The afflicted nation was, as it were, lashed by her adversaries so cruelly that each blow left a long red mark, or perhaps a bleeding wound, upon her back and shoulders, comparable to a furrow which tears up the ground from one end of the field to the other. Many a heart has been in like case, smitten and sore wounded by them that use the scourge of the tongue; so smitten that their whole character has been cut up and scored by calumny. The true church has in every age had fellowship with her Lord under his cruel flagellations: his sufferings were a prophecy of what she would be called hereafter to endure, and the foreshadowing has been fulfilled. Zion had in this sense been plowed as a field.
They made long their furrows. As if delighting in cruel labor. They missed not an inch, but went from end to end of the field, meaning to make thorough work of their congenial engagement. Those who laid on the scourge did it with a thoroughness which showed how hearty was their hate. Assuredly the enemies of Christ’s church never spare pains to inflict the utmost injury: they never do the work of the devil deceitfully, or hold back their hand from blood. They smite so as to plow into the man; they plow the quivering flesh as if it were clods of clay; they plow deep and long with countless furrows, until they leave no portion of the church unfurrowed or unassailed. Well did Latimer say that there was no busier plowman in all the world than the devil: whoever makes short furrows, he does not. Whoever balks and shirks, he is thorough in all that he does. He and his children plow like practiced plowmen, but they prefer to carry on their pernicious work upon the saints behind their backs, for they are as cowardly as they are cruel.
129:4. The LORD is righteous. Whatever men may be, Jehovah remains just, and will therefore keep covenant with his people and deal out justice to their oppressors. Here is the hinge of the condition: this makes the turning point of Israel’s distress. The Lord bears with the long furrows of the wicked, but he will surely make them cease from their plowing before he has done with them.
He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked. The rope which binds the oxen to the plow is cut; the cord which bound the victim is broken; the bond which held the enemies in cruel unity has snapped. As in Psalm 114:7 we read, “the snare is broken; we are escaped,” so here the breaking of the enemies’ instrument of oppression is Israel’s release. Sooner or later a righteous God will interpose, and when he does so, his action will be most effectual; he does not unfasten, but cuts asunder, the harness which the ungodly use in their labor of hate. Never has God used a nation to chastise his Israel without destroying that nation when the chastisement has come to a close: he hates those who hurt his people even though he permits that hate to triumph for a while for his own purpose.
129:5. If this be an imprecation, let it stand, for our heart says “Amen” to it. It is but justice that those who hate, harass, and hurt the good should be brought to naught. Those who confound right and wrong ought to be confounded, and those who turn back from God ought to be turned back. Loyal subjects wish ill to those who plot against their king. We desire their welfare as people, their downfall as traitors. Let their conspiracies be confounded, their policies turned back. How can we wish prosperity to those who would destroy that which is dearest to our hearts? This present age is so flippant that if a man loves the Saviour he is styled a fanatic, and if he hates the powers of evil he is named a bigot. The church of God is so useful, so beautiful, so innocent of harm, so fraught with good, that those who do her wrong are wronging all mankind and deserve to be treated as the enemies of the human race.
129:6. Grass on the housetop is soon up and soon down. It sprouts in the heat, finds enough nutriment to send up a green blade, and then it dies away before it reaches maturity, because it has neither earth nor moisture sufficient for its proper development. Before it grows up it dies; it needs not to be plucked up, for it hastens to decay of itself. Such is and such ought to be the lot of the enemies of God’s people. The height of their position, as it hastens their progress, also hurries their doom. Had they been lower in station they had perhaps been longer in being. Persecutors are all sound and fury, flash and flame; but they speedily vanish—more speedily than is common to mankind. Grass in the field withers, but not so speedily as grass on the housetops. Grass on the housetop is a nonentity in the world: the house is not impoverished when the last blade is dried up; just so, the opposers of Christ pass away, and none lament them. Evil carries the seeds of dissolution within itself. So let it be.
129:7. When with his sickle the farmer would cut down the tufts, he found nothing to lay hold upon: the grass promised fairly enough, but there was no fulfillment, there was nothing to cut or to carry, nothing for the hand to grasp, nothing for the lap to gather. Eastern people carry their corn in their bosoms, but in this case there was nothing to bear home. Thus do the wicked come to nothing. By God’s just appointment they prove a disappointment. Their fire ends in smoke; their verdure turns to vanity; their flourishing is but a form of withering. No one profits by them; least of all are they profitable to themselves. Their aim is bad, their work is worse, their end is worst of all.
129:8. In harvest times men bless each other in the name of the Lord; but there is nothing in the course and conduct of the ungodly man to suggest the giving or receiving of a benediction. Upon a survey of the sinner’s life from beginning to end, we feel more inclined to weep than to rejoice, and we feel bound rather to wish him failure than success. We dare not use pious expressions as mere compliments, and hence we dare not wish Godspeed to evil men lest we be partakers of their evil deeds. It would be infamous to compromise the name of the righteous Jehovah by pronouncing his blessing upon unrighteous deeds.
See how the ungodly are roughly plowed by their adversaries, and yet a harvest comes of it which endures and produces blessing; the ungodly, though they flourish for a while and enjoy a complete immunity, dwelling as they think quite above the reach of harm, are found in a short time to have gone their way and to have left no trace behind. Lord, number me with thy saints. Let me share their grief if I may also partake of their glory. Thus would I make this psalm my own, and magnify thy name, because thine afflicted ones are not destroyed, and thy persecuted ones are not forsaken.
The Treasury of David by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
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