Psalms 129
Big idea: A national scar, described as farm damage: the plowers plowed on my back; they made their furrows long. And the sentence that makes it a psalm rather than a complaint is the second half of verse 2 — yet they have not prevailed against me. What follows is a curse shaped as an anti-harvest. Let the enemies be like grass on a flat mud roof: green after rain, dead within days, and never enough for a reaper to get a handful, so nobody passing ever calls out a blessing on the crop.
Psalm 129 survives long affliction. Psalm 130 goes further down than affliction and cries from there.
129:1–8 — The plowers plowed on my back
A national song with the ugliest image in the Ascents: plowmen driving furrows down Israel's back, making them LONG. It is a picture of scarring and of deliberate, unhurried work. And yet the refrain is not a complaint — 'yet they have NOT PREVAILED against me' — so the whole song is about surviving something that left permanent marks.
1 A Song of Ascents. Many times they have afflicted me from my youth up. Let Israel now say: 2 many times they have afflicted me from my youth up, yet they have not prevailed against me. 3 The plowers plowed on my back. They made their furrows long. 4 Yahweh is righteous. He has cut apart the cords of the wicked. 5 Let them be disappointed and turned backward, all those who hate Zion. 6 Let them be as the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up, 7 with which the reaper doesn’t fill his hand, nor he who binds sheaves, his bosom. 8 Neither do those who go by say, “The blessing of Yahweh be on you. We bless you in Yahweh’s name.”
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).