Psalms · psalm 124 of 150
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Psalm 124 is a song of David in which the people acknowledge that they would have been destroyed if the Lord had not been on their side. Their enemies would have swallowed them alive, like a flood or a torrent. But the Lord rescued them, as a bird escapes from the fowler's snare, and so their help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
Psalm 124 is the fifth of the Songs of Ascents and the second by David in this collection. It is a song of thanksgiving for a deliverance in the past, sung by all Israel, for the psalm itself calls on Israel to say it. The text does not specify what danger they were saved from, so it can be applied to many periods of the people's history.
The psalm begins with a condition said twice: if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel say. The repetition underlines that the people did not come through by their own strength.
Verses 3 to 5 describe what would have happened. When men rose up against them, they would have been swallowed alive in the heat of their anger. The waters would have overwhelmed them, a torrent would have swept over them, and raging waters would have covered them. The images of a monster swallowing its prey and of a flood express a threat they could not stop.
From verse 6 the tone is praise: blessed be the Lord, who did not give us as prey to their teeth. The people escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare was broken and they were free. The psalm ends with a confession: our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Twice the psalm says that, had the Lord not been on their side, the people would have been defeated when men rose up against them. Salvation does not come from Israel's strength but from God's presence.
Without God, the waters would have covered them and a torrent would have swept over them. The flood is a biblical image of danger that overwhelms every human defense.
The people escaped like a bird from the fowler's trap: the net was broken and they were free. It is a picture of an unexpected rescue that can only be credited to God.
The people's help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. It ends as Psalm 121 began: help does not come from human resources but from the Creator.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: The men who rose up against them would have swallowed them alive. — Psalm 124:1-3
Answer: The waters would have overwhelmed them and a torrent would have swept over them. — Psalm 124:4-5
Answer: They bless him, because he did not give them as prey to their enemies' teeth. — Psalm 124:6
Answer: A bird escaping from the snare of the fowlers. — Psalm 124:7
Answer: It was broken, and the people escaped. — Psalm 124:7
Answer: In the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. — Psalm 124:8
Psalm 124 invites us to look back and recognize the times God rescued us from evils we could neither foresee nor overcome. A good small group activity is for each person to share an occasion when they could say, if the Lord had not been on my side. Remembering like this strengthens gratitude and trust.
It also frees us from the temptation to take credit for everything. The people do not say they were stronger, but that the Lord was their help. For Christians, the greatest deliverance is the one Christ won on the cross, when he broke the snare of sin and death. We can say with the psalmist that our help is in the name of the Lord.
Psalm 124 ends with the confession that the people's help is in the Lord, maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 125 develops that security with another picture: those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved.
The psalm does not say. Some link it to a threat from David's time, but others think that the title of David and its use by all Israel make it fit any deliverance. It is best read as a general confession that the people live because God keeps them.
It is a poetic image of total and sudden destruction, like a monster devouring its prey or the earth opening. It also recalls the story of Korah in Numbers 16, where the ground swallowed the rebels. Here it expresses how close Israel came to being destroyed.
A bird caught in a net cannot free itself; it is free because the net was broken. In the same way the people were not freed by their own skill but by God's intervention. The picture stresses the people's frailty and the strength of their Savior.