Ps 126 (as certain as a proverb)

When Yhwh restored

                Zion’s fortunes

                We were / like dreamers

Then were filled / with laughter / our mouths

                And our tongues / with happy shouts

Then it was said / among the nations

                Yhwh has done / a great work

                In his dealings / with them

Yhwh did do / a great work

                In his dealings / with us

                We were so glad

Yhwh / restore our fortunes

                Like river beds / in the Negeb

Those who / sow with tears

                With happy shouts / do reap

The one who carries / the bag of seed

                Weeps / as he goes along

But the one who carries / his sheaves

                Comes home / with a happy shout.

To really grasp the magnitude of the joy the psalmist expresses here we must have an understanding of Zion and what it means for the psalmist and Yhwh’s people. This is not simply the rebuilding of a building. Zion is the ground or wellspring of creation itself. It is the place where Yhwh’s Presence dwells with the people. As such, in Zion creation reaches its pinnacle by being brought beyond itself into Yhwh’s Presence, and Yhwh’s Presence is “brought beyond itself” as it descends to earth. In way, Zion exists in this borderland between heaven and earth. And this is something the psalmist and the pilgrims would have entered into and experienced when they visited Zion. To have Zion raised to the ground during the Babylonian captivity would have been tantamount to watching not just the earth destroyed, but heaven as well. In a very real sense, “heaven and earth would have passed away”, leaving the psalmist and the people in an existence that was neither earth nor heaven. The magnitude of that loss must be understood as stretching into this realm beyond comprehension. And yet, to then have Zion restored. To have been released from bondage in Babylon, to journey back to the Land, and experience Zion rebuilt, one would have been watching the construction of the Cosmos, of heaven and earth being rebuilt before their eyes. It must have been staggeringly joyous to experience.

It in this context that we should hear and see the images the psalmist uses to describe Zion’s rebuilding. Just as Zion itself stands between heaven and earth, so too does its redemption and reconstruction exists “as in a dream”. It is simply too great to formulate within the waking world. It is too real. In the imagery of the psalm it is the time of homecoming, the time of return, flooding, restoration, happiness and harvest. The clarity of Yhwh’s deliverance is so great that it expands beyond the border of Israel and is spoken of by the nations. Unlike in the time of the exodus, when the nations heard of Yhwh’s wonders because of the great devastation he wrought on Egypt, here the proclamation of Yhwh’s deliverance is grounded purely in his gracious and astounding return of his people to their land and the rebuilding of Zion.

For the psalmist, this time of joy is in the past. And yet, his recounting of it is an act of thanksgiving. It is an acknowledgement of Yhwh’s deliverance and it does not seek to lessen its impact even though the present is marked by a “loss of fortune”. Something has occurred after Zion’s rebuilding. On some level, the people feel as if they are sliding back into the time of exile. They are, now, ‘sowing in tears’. They are, now, living as in a time of drought. These images of loss parallel the images and time of exile. Just as their return was occasioned with a “happy shout”, so too do they now look to a time of reaping and “happy shouts”.

It is here where the psalmist accomplishes something important. By paralleling the imagery of the present with the past, he is able to see that the present suffering must be similar to the older form of suffering. And, because he knows that Yhwh has worked for them in the past in a truly staggering fashion, he perceives that the present time and the past were times of “sowing”. This is key. The past sheds light on the present which, in turn, sheds light back on the past. So, what could have appeared as Yhwh’s abandonment during the time of the Babylonian captivity is understood now, after the fact, as a time of ‘sowing’. It is deeply significant. The captivity was traumatic. It was a time of weeping and loss. But, it was the trauma, weeping and loss of sowing and planting. It was the time when the seed would fall the ground and die but only for the purpose of growth and harvest and abundance. It was necessary but not ultimate; it was penultimate. And the psalmist, on the far side of the harvest, can now see that and, more importantly, can situate the present suffering within that same time of sowing.

It is now at this point that we can see what the psalmist is accomplishing in the final few lines. Standing in the middle of the psalm is the only direct petition to Yhwh, and it is only two lines long: “Yhwh restore our fortunes, like river beds in the Negeb.” Following that is a type of wisdom saying—the summation of the psalmist’s understanding we described above. The psalmist is clearly asking Yhwh to work another “great work”. He clearly wants Yhwh to “bring them home” with “sheaves”. But, importantly, he is now so firm in his understanding that this is how Yhwh works, that he can cite this assurance as a type of proverb, something that is as certain to occur as harvesting follows sowing.