Psalms · psalm 129 of 150
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Psalm 129 is a song of ascents in which Israel remembers having been greatly afflicted from its youth and yet never overcome by its enemies. It compares its suffering to a field plowed with long furrows on its back, but declares that the Lord is righteous and cut the cords of the wicked. It prays that those who hate Zion become like grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows.
Psalm 129 is the tenth of the Songs of Ascents. It is a national prayer: the people remember their long history of oppression, beginning with Egypt in their youth, and confess that God has sustained them. It contains a hard request against the enemies of Zion, typical of the psalms that ask God to bring justice, and so it should be read in context.
The psalm begins with a call to Israel: greatly have they afflicted me from my youth, let Israel now say. It is repeated in verse 2 with a conclusion: yet they have not prevailed against me. The people speak in the first person, as one body, and recall a long and repeated suffering.
Verse 3 uses the picture of a field: the plowers plowed upon my back; they made long their furrows. It is an image of pain suffered as if someone were plowing violently over the body. In verse 4 the answer comes: the Lord is righteous and has cut the cords of the wicked, that is, broken the bonds with which they wanted to hold his people.
Verses 5 to 8 ask that all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward. Let them be like the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up, with which the reaper does not fill his hand nor the binder of sheaves his arms. Those who pass by will not say, the blessing of the Lord be upon you, nor, we bless you in the name of the Lord.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
Israel remembers that they have afflicted it from its youth and yet have not been able to overcome it. The people still stand because the Lord has sustained them, not through their own strength.
The plowers plowed on its back and made their furrows long. It is a raw picture of the pain suffered, as if the people had been the land of others.
The Lord is righteous and cut the cords of the wicked. Deliverance is not Israel's merit but an act of God who breaks the bonds of oppression.
The enemies of Zion are like grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows. Grass without root yields no harvest: wickedness looks strong but has no future.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: From its youth. — Psalm 129:1
Answer: That they have not prevailed against Israel. — Psalm 129:2
Answer: They plowed and made their furrows long. — Psalm 129:3
Answer: He is righteous, and he cut the cords of the wicked. — Psalm 129:4
Answer: Grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows. — Psalm 129:5-6
Answer: The blessing of the Lord be upon you. — Psalm 129:8
Psalm 129 teaches us to remember suffering without bitterness and with faith: they have afflicted me much, but they have not overcome me. In a small group you can invite people to share hard times when God's faithfulness sustained them even when no way out was visible. That memory feeds hope.
The final prayer may make us uncomfortable. It should be read as a cry for justice handed over to God, not as permission for personal revenge. Jesus taught us to love our enemies and pray for them, and Paul reminds us that vengeance belongs to the Lord. Christians can pray that evil will not prevail and that their persecutors will repent, knowing that God is just.
Psalm 129 ends with the picture of grass without blessing or harvest. Psalm 130 moves from outside enemies to one's own sin: out of the depths the psalmist cries to the Lord and waits for his forgiveness.
The psalm speaks of the people of Israel as one person. Their youth is the time of their beginnings, when they were slaves in Egypt, and since then they have suffered oppression from various nations. Let Israel now say it shows that it is a shared experience.
Houses had flat roofs of earth, and grass grew there that dried quickly because it had no deep root. No one harvested it, since it was not worth the effort. It is a picture of something that looks green for a moment but produces nothing lasting.
Yes, if done with the perspective of the whole New Testament. One can pray that God will bring justice, stop oppression and not let evil prevail, without wishing personal harm to anyone. Christians also pray for the conversion of those who persecute the church.