Psalm 126 is a wisdom psalm. Making the psalm difficult to interpret is that it is unclear how to reconcile the reference to the past in verses 1-3 with the hopes for the future in verses 4-6. The restoration of fortune in verse 3 is also difficult to understand. Those who undertake their efforts in the Lord receive their reward. The psalm combines profound piety with noble simplicity. The psalmist gains deep strength from the hope of the people. The psalmist offers a plea for help. What the Lord has done becomes a paradigm for the help for which the community now pleads. It makes its point that those who undertake their work in the Lord will receive reward in a succinct way.
The life setting for the psalm is not clear. It may have been sung or chanted annually at the start of the planting season, or it may have been a special composition reserved for occasions of unexpected celebration. One need not take the agricultural language of the closing verses literally; it is quite possible that the traditional interpretation of the psalm as a celebration of Israel's deliverance from captivity — a celebration repeated annually — is correct. It is also possible that the psalm looked not so much to a specific event in Israel's past as the cause of celebration as much as the psalm looked forward to the day when the Lord would permanently restore Israel's fortunes in "the new thing" envisioned by such prophets as Isaiah (43:19).
Psalm 126: 1-3 recall a supreme moment of the past. The singer cannot believe that after so much misfortune, his time is 1when the Lord restored (shuv) the fortunes of Zion (shibat tziyon).[1] This could refer to the to the post-exilic mood or it could be a general term for improvement of one’s lot. The mood of the people was we were like those who dream.[2] The too-good-to-be-true becomes reality. To have one's "dream come true" about Zion in this commonly accepted, slightly Disneyesque fashion is edifying but difficult. The Lord is the only one who can turn their fortunes around. They see the future with faith but know that they cannot make it happen. That moment felt like a dream. 2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy. They have a childlike delight in hoped for happiness. A Yiddish proverb says that what soap is for the body, so laughter is to the soul. It is worth pondering how laughter cleanses the soul. Then it was said among the nations, those outside the people of God, “The Lord has done great things for them.” Thus, the coming salvation to Israel means a revelation of the Lord to other nations as well. It does not glorify Israel but glorifies the Lord through their saving history. The reaction of Israel's neighbors to Israel's fortunes or misfortunes was a recurring matter of concern at various stages of the canonical text. The Lord delivered the people out of Egypt in the sight of the nations (Leviticus 26:45). Moses says to the Lord that if the Lord kills the people, the nations will see it and claim the Lord was able to able to help them (Numbers 14:15-16). The nations will wonder what has caused this great display of anger (Deuteronomy 29:24). The Lord has made them a laughingstock among the nations (Psalm 44:14). The people should walk in the fear of God to prevent the taunt from the nations (Nehemiah 5:9). At stake was Israelite religion itself. Yahwism eventually triumphed as the faith of biblical Israel because Israel could trust Yahweh as Israel's divine patron. In an analogous way, Marduk became the divine patron of Babylon and Baal the divine patron of Canaan for the same reason. That trust rested on tangible and visible results — prosperity, security, deliverance from adversity, etc. — all of which the neighbors of Israel witnessed. The nations will proclaim that the Lord is king (I Chronicles 16:31, Psalm 96:10). The ends of the earth will see that the Lord has redeemed his people his servant Jacob (Isaiah 48:10). Not to do marvelous things for the chosen people would have meant that Yahweh was either (a) unable or (b) unwilling, and Israel's theologians chose to interpret the nation's adversities as the latter, resulting from Israel's unfaithfulness, and the nation's prosperity — or here, the restoration of fortunes — as a sign of divine favor. 3 The Lordhas done great things for us, the people of the Lord, and we rejoiced. The psalmist refers to the majesty of the Lord. In Joel 2:20-23 we find an interesting emphasis upon the wonderful things the Lord has done for us, so Zion can rejoice and be gland.
Psalm 126: 4-6 shift to a prayer of supplication. It repeats verse 1, but the past reference to the restoration of fortune becomes an imperative for the future. It begins by getting to the central desire of this psalm: 4 Restore our fortunes, O Lord. Such a prayer suggests that a crisis occurred in the present, and therefore, the people need such restoration. It uses the analogy that such restoration will be like the watercourses in the Negev during the rains. The point is that they fill suddenly and completely after winter storms. The Negeb was the desert and semidesert region of southern Israel (covering over half the current land area of the country), where annual rainfall ranges from 12 inches (in the northern area closest to the Mediterranean) to as little as 2 inches of rain (in the Arabah Valley). The few wadis ("watercourses" of v. 4b) found in the region flood during the winter rains, providing much-needed water for agriculture and transforming the areas immediately around the wadis into areas of sudden verdant growth. Such a prayer arises out of intimacy and assurance. It suggests belief in a Lord of miracles, a Lord who can do the impossible. The crisis may relate to agriculture, for it asks that 5those who sow in tears today will reap with shouts of joy, the second use of this phrase. The poet may allude to ritual weeping that was meant as a form of sympathetic magic to bring rainfall. Further, the prayer is that 6those who go out with seed for sowing while weeping today shall come home with shouts of joy, the third time for this phrase, carrying their sheaves. It cannot have been a rare occurrence for farmers to sow in tears and with weeping during extensive periods of drought, crop failure or pestilence forced them to sow the last of their reserve seed, knowing that another failed harvest would result in famine. In preindustrial, subsistent agricultural societies such as ancient Israel, famine was an omnipresent threat and frequent occurrence (see, for example, Gen 12:10; 26:1; 41:27; Ruth 1:1; II Sam 21:1; 1 Kings 18:2; and many others), so the imagery of the psalm draws from quotidian existence. However, the point of the image is not the suffering but the relief, attributed implicitly to the Lord. A bountiful harvest, now as then, was a cause of great rejoicing, as they rejoice at the harvest (Isaiah 9:3) and as shouting at the fruit of the harvest of fruit and grain ceased in Moab (Isa 16:9), all of which multiplied exponentially when the prospects at the time of planting were grim. The unspoken message of the psalm is that the only thing better than joy is being surprised by it. This psalm recognizes that the tides of life constantly shift. The Lord has a long story to which the person at prayer can refer. Amos 9:11-15 also uses agricultural images with the restoration of the fortunes of Israel.
“Bringing in the Sheaves” is a title of an old American gospel hymn written in 1874 and inspired by the last verse of this psalm. Here are some of the lyrics: Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,/Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;/Waiting for the harvest and the time of reaping,/We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves. Refrain: Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,/We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves (2x).
The Puritans, early settlers from Europe on this continent, have gotten a reputation for the repression of joy, and especially sexual behavior. They had the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.[3] Even the word “puritanical” is one we usually take to mean sexless and joyless. What, then, are we to make of this letter from [John] Winthrop, many times the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to his fiancée, Margaret Tyndal? “Being filled with the joy of thy love, and wanting opportunity of more familiar communion with thee, which my heart fervently desires, I am constrained to ease the burden of my mind by this poor help of my scribbling pen. …” Love was their banqueting house, love was their wine, love was their ensign; love was his invitings, love was her faintings; love was his apples, love was her comforts, love was his embracings, love was her refreshing.” The Puritans believed that the love between married people was the closest humans could get on Earth to experiencing the joy of being united with Christ in heaven. And love in marriage had no higher expression than sex. The Puritan minister at Cambridge, Mass., Thomas Shepard, often described the passion people felt in marriage in his sermons: “In all marriage bonds there is a choice made, and, if love be great, there is little standing on terms — let me have him though I beg with him.”[4]
This psalm is for those on a journey, a journey that has a specific destination, and yet people cannot believe their good fortune in the process. The joy they express is the result of the event of the good fortune they have experienced. The joy they experience is contingent upon this restoration to good fortune. The repetition of the phrase “shouts of joy” is striking. When we connect with the Lord, we connect with joy. The Lord is joyful. To enter the presence of the Lord is to connect with joy. Such divine joy is contagious.[5] The heart that is not yet sure of its God is afraid to laugh in the divine presence.[6] We cannot pretend that evil is not present, but we need the weapons to fight it. one of our greatest weapons is laughter, a gift for fun, and a sense of play. The paradox is that if we are to take ourselves seriously enough, we need to take ourselves lightly.[7]
Such joy can come from turning yet another corner in our lives. We have a sense of joy in the healing potential of this moment and of the future possibilities. Yet, let me suggest that the brokenness that many people feel in our culture needs a deeper healing that only the Lord can bring into their lives. Think of the joy of allowing the Lord to heal brokenness. Think of the joy of finding who and whose you are. C. S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, said that joy is "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” When you have such a joy, you would not “exchange it for all the pleasures in the world."
[1] The traditional translation of the opening hemistich — "When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion" — can also be translated more prosaically as, "When the Lord brought back those who returned to Zion," as the NRSV notes. The alternatives depend on the translation of various forms of the Hebrew roots shuv, a very common verb meaning "turn back" or "return," and shavah, a much less common verb meaning "take captive." The two roots and their various derivatives appear to have been confused in the biblical text (see F. Brown, S.R. Driver, and C.A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906], 986). Charles Briggs, in his turn-of-the-century commentary on the psalms, identified the "fortunes of Zion" (shibat tziyon) broadly, referring to general agricultural prosperity and explicitly rejecting the widespread (and obvious) view of many commentators that the restoration referred to was the release of the Israelite people from Babylonian captivity in 539 B.C. (a rejection shared by Mitchell Dahood; see C.A. Briggs, The Book of Psalms [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1909], vol. II, 455; and M.J. Dahood, S.J., Psalms II, 51-100 [The Anchor Bible, vol. 17; New York: Doubleday, 1968], 217).
[2] The consonantal text of the Hebrew translated "we were like those who dream" (v. 1b) can also be translated "we became like the sands of the sea" (Dahood, 217), which makes a certain sense in the context, but like many of Dahood's proposals, this one depends on the use of the enclitic mem construction, a stylistic feature identified in Hebrew poetry more often by Dahood than by virtually any other commentator. Dahood's rendering may be correct, but it remains a minority view.
[3] H.L. Mencken
[4] —“Myth No. 3, Puritans Hated Sex,” from Lori Stokes, “Five Myths About Puritans,” The Washington Post, November 18. 2016.
[5] Brian D. McLaren, Naked Spirituality: A Life With God in Twelve Simple Words, (HarperOne, 2011), Chapter 8.
[6] —George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie (Oxford, 1879), 15.
[7] —Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet (HarperSanFrancisco, 1972), 99.
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