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Psalm 126

When the Lord delivered Sion from bondage,
it seemed like a dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
on our lips there were songs.

The heathens themselves said: “What marvels
the Lord worked for them!”
What marvels the Lord worked for us!
Indeed we were glad.

Deliver us, O Lord, from our bondage
as streams in dry land.
Those who are sowing in tears
will sing when they reap.

They go out, they go out, full of tears,
carrying seed for the sowing:
they come back, they come back, full of song,
carrying their sheaves.

Commentary

This song of deliverance, which captures the delirious joy and profound relief of the Israelites returning home from captivity, found equal expression among the early Christians celebrating the joy of Easter, with its message of deliverance from all spiritual bondage. For the individual
pray-er too, there are times when only Psalm 126 can capture the mood.

When the Lord delivered Sion from bondage,
it seemed like a dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
on our lips there were songs.

The heathens themselves said: “What marvels
the Lord worked for them!”
What marvels the Lord worked for us!
Indeed we were glad.

Deliver us, O Lord, from our bondage
as streams in dry land.
Those who are sowing in tears
will sing when they reap.

They go out, they go out, full of tears,
carrying seed for the sowing:
they come back, they come back, full of song,
carrying their sheaves.
                                         (vv. 1-6).

The worshipping community, gathered in the presence of God, look away from their present need (see vv. 4-6), to review their past experience of God, and learn from it what to do now. They remember their ecstatic joy when they were released from bondage after seventy years; the happiness of returning to their own land, and their own Temple, even though it meant that they had to rebuild it. They attribute their deliverance to the miraculous intervention of God on their behalf, an act that made even the pagan nations, among whom they lived, give praise to God. There was no proud boasting about their election by God then, just gratitude and joy, so that the pagan nations rejoiced with her in her second exodus to Israel. Entering once again into these events in memory, the community can rejoice in God for His great mercy in the past, and let this give her hope for a like deliverance now, in her present trouble (vv. 1-3).

Reassured by the memory of God’s loving-kindness in the past, the people turn to God and humbly request a miracle in the present. To turn the dry parched land of the Negeb in the South into streams of water was the miracle requested with such childlike simplicity. Since God is the God of the impossible, and He has already demonstrated this in the deliverance of the captives, the community could pray with real authority and hope in God for the new deliverance.

To express their prayer the psalmist uses the image of sowing and reaping. In the ancient world the time of sowing seed was considered to be a time of mourning, while the reaping of the harvest was the time for rejoicing. It was the dying and rising theme as seen in nature. Through it the people expressed their faith in the life-giving power of God, who transforms our present sufferings by showing us the way through them to future hope – God’s way of leading us from darkness to light (see Isaiah 44:3).

The early Church understood the delirious joy of this lovely psalm when the shock of the Resurrection of Jesus first dawned on her on Easter Day. “He is risen!” resounded everywhere, yet none could comprehend this greatest of all of God’s interventions in the history of man. It was really true that Jesus had delivered His people from every spiritual bondage, and as this is the root of all other types of bondage, it was the beginning of “Paradise regained”. The new life of adoption as God’s children was now open to all nations, for God wanted all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (see Acts 10:34-35). Jesus had kept His promise to come back to His own (see John 14:18), and He brought them joy and peace that would last for ever (see John 14:27, 16:16, 20:19-23). He also fulfilled the great Messianic promise to give the outpouring of the Spirit to the Church and to the world (see John 7:37, 20:23). They were now filled with the Holy Spirit and the power of God, full of joy and peace, and a
radiance that was Heaven-born.

Nevertheless, they were not allowed to stand about celebrating for ever, as there was a world out there to be saved. Jesus commissioned them to go out into this unwelcoming arena of hardened unbelief to sow the seed of God’s Word up and down the furrows of every land. Their mission would entail persecution, deprivation of every kind, and martyrdom in the end; hence the seed would be sown in tears, but the Church would rejoice to bring in a rich harvest of souls for God, as nation after nation was freed from its spiritual and material bondage – a miracle as great as the rivers in the Negeb. The dry spiritual desert of the world was to be transformed into fields ripe for harvesting, where sower and reaper would rejoice together. Jesus had sown the seed of the Word during His ministry and drenched it with the tears of His Passion and death; the Apostles were to reap this harvest, and then go on to sow with their own lives and martyrdom, which the next generation of Christians would reap, and so it would continue until the end of time (see John 4:34-38).

Those who really allow Jesus into their lives in such a way that He is given the freedom to release them from all bondage know the joy of this psalm, for it is their song of deliverance too. The released drug addict, the depressive, the alcoholic, those released from despondency and despair, all know this wondrous joy, and can say: “Indeed we were glad!” Nevertheless this initial release, that starts these sufferers on the spiritual journey, even though it is a wonderful intervention of God, is only the beginning of the miracles. They do not yet know that the field of their souls is as dry and parched as ever the Negeb was, and only God can make the streams of living water flow there to produce growth (see Isaiah 58:11). Jesus must be allowed to pour out His Spirit on them in overflowing abundance if real growth is to take place (see John 4:10, 7:37). Besides, they must cooperate with the work of sanctification by working at repentance and doing God’s will, while giving enough time to the study of God’s Word, feeding on the Eucharist, and spending sufficient time in prayer.

There is a proportion between sowing and reaping, for thin sowing means thin reaping, and the more you sow the more you will reap (see 2 Corinthians 9:6). The person who is lazy in the things of the Spirit cannot expect a great harvest. Another factor is that we reap what we sow; if we sow in the field of self-indulgence, then we reap a harvest of corruption; but if we sow in the field of the Spirit we shall reap a harvest of eternal life. The choice is ours (see Galatians 6:7-8). We need to learn patience in waiting for the harvest too! Spiritual harvests come very slowly, and many people miss them because they do not persevere, but when they do come, they are permanent.

The greatest deliverance a person can know this side of death is the deliverance from the clinging self. He will be freed to experience the full joy of being God’s child, and his journey ahead is into permanent joy and peace. Those who know this reality in their personal experience can enter fully into Psalm 126. This deliverance is like a dream; we can hardly believe it has happened to us. Then is our mouth full of laughter and song, and we sing that “He who is Mighty has done great things” for us. This liberated person will go on to do great work in releasing other captives, and so the story goes on . . . .

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