1A song of ascents for David.
Were it not the LORD Who was for us
—let Israel now say—
2were it not the LORD Who was for us
3then they would have swallowed us alive
when their wrath flared hot against us.
4Then the waters would have swept us up,
the torrent come up past our necks.
5Then it would have come up past our necks—
the raging waters.
6Blessed is the LORD,
Who did not make us prey for their teeth.
7Our life is like a bird escaped
from the snare of the fowlers.
The snare was broken
and we escaped.
8Our help is in the name of the LORD,
maker of heaven and earth.
PSALM 124 NOTES
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1. Were it not the LORD Who was for us / —let Israel now say. The second of these two versets is a formal exhortation, probably on the part of a choral leader, to the community of worshippers to chant the words of the liturgical text that begins in the first verset and continues in verse 2 through to the end of the psalm. This is a collective thanksgiving psalm, though some of the language is drawn from the traditional formulations of individual thanksgiving psalms. The Hebrew, with its abundant use of incremental repetition, has a strong rhythmic character that would have lent itself to singing or chanting.
2. when people rose against us. The reference to “people” (or “humankind,” ʾadam) is very general, although, given the collective viewpoint, the psalmist is surely thinking of national enemies. He could be alluding specifically to the Babylonian conquest of Judah and the exile of part of its population, but that is not certain.
4–5. These two lines are an especially effective use of the emphatic structure of incremental repetition. Verse 4 displays semantic parallelism without verbal repetition in its two halves (“waters” / “torrent,” “swept us up,” / “come up past our necks”). Then 5a repeats “come up past our necks” and 5b repeats “the waters” from 4a, adding the adjectival increment “raging” and so producing a climactic effect. Being engulfed by a raging torrent is a metaphor for near death picked up from the psalms of individual supplication and thanksgiving.
6. prey for their teeth. This switch from the metaphor of drowning to the metaphor of being consumed by a wild beast follows “they would have swallowed us alive” from verse 3.
7. The snare was broken / and we escaped. Although this line looks rather like a gloss on the simile of the previous line of verse, it is perfectly plausible that for a liturgical text to be chanted by the community, the poet wanted to spell things out.
8. Our help is in the name of the LORD, / maker of heaven and earth. This concluding line is quite close to Psalm 121:2, and in general some exchange of language is noticeable among the various songs of ascents. The imposition of “the name of the LORD” between God and Israel as a kind of mediation is a development that becomes progressively pronounced in the Second Temple period.