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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "//www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="//www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /><meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0;"/><title>Psalm 129 Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers</title><link rel="canonical" href="https://biblehub.com/commentaries/expositors/psalms/129.htm" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="/5001com.css" type="text/css" media="Screen" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="../spec.css" type="text/css" media="Screen" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 4800px), only screen and (max-device-width: 4800px)" href="/4801.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 1550px), only screen and (max-device-width: 1550px)" href="/1551.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 1250px), only screen and (max-device-width: 1250px)" href="/1251.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 1050px), only screen and (max-device-width: 1050px)" href="/1051.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 900px), only screen and (max-device-width: 900px)" href="/901.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 800px), only screen and (max-device-width: 800px)" href="/801.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-width: 575px), only screen and (max-device-width: 575px)" href="/501.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link media="handheld, only screen and (max-height: 450px), only screen and (max-device-height: 450px)" href="/h451.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /><link rel="stylesheet" href="/print.css" type="text/css" media="Print" /><script type="application/javascript" src="https://scripts.webcontentassessor.com/scripts/8a2459b64f9cac8122fc7f2eac4409c8555fac9383016db59c4c26e3d5b8b157"></script><script src='https://qd.admetricspro.com/js/biblehub/biblehub-layout-loader-revcatch.js'></script><script id='HyDgbd_1s' src='https://prebidads.revcatch.com/ads.js' type='text/javascript' async></script><script>(function(w,d,b,s,i){var cts=d.createElement(s);cts.async=true;cts.id='catchscript'; cts.dataset.appid=i;cts.src='https://app.protectsubrev.com/catch_rp.js?cb='+Math.random(); document.head.appendChild(cts); }) (window,document,'head','script','rc-anksrH');</script></head><body><div id="fx"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" id="fx2"><tr><td><iframe width="100%" height="30" scrolling="no" src="../cmenus/psalms/129.htm" align="left" frameborder="0"></iframe></td></tr></table></div><div id="blnk"></div><div align="center"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="maintable"><tr><td><div id="fx5"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" id="fx6"><tr><td><iframe width="100%" height="245" scrolling="no" src="//biblehu.com/bmcom/psalms/129-1.htm" frameborder="0"></iframe></td></tr></table></div></td></tr></table></div><div align="center"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="maintable3"><tr><td><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center" id="announce"><tr><td><div id="l1"><div id="breadcrumbs"><a href="//biblehub.com">Bible</a> > <a href="/commentaries/">Commentary</a> > <a href="../">Ellicott</a> > <a href="../psalms/">Psalm</a></div><div id="anc"><iframe src="/anc.htm" width="100%" height="27" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe></div><div id="anc2"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tr><td><iframe src="/anc2.htm" width="100%" height="27" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe></td></tr></table></div></div></td></tr></table><div id="movebox2"><table border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><div id="topheading"><a href="../psalms/128.htm" title="Psalm 128">◄</a> Psalm 129 <a href="../psalms/130.htm" title="Psalm 130">►</a></div></td></tr></table></div><div align="center" class="maintable2"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"><tr><td><div id="leftbox"><div class="padleft"><div class="vheading">Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers</div><div class="chap"><span class= "bld"> CXXIX.</span><p>Out of some deadly peril Israel looks for deliverance to the righteousness of Jehovah, which from the childhood of the race has repeatedly manifested itself in help and deliverance. As the cord of bondage was cut in Egypt so will it be cut again, and the same shame and confusion overtake the present oppressors which fell upon the Pharaohs. But of the precise time and occasion there is no indication. The two stanzas into which the poem falls would be perfectly similar but for the last line, which looks suspiciously like an after addition of some copyist to bring the harvest scene into exact correspondence with the picture in Ruth. (See Note to <a href="/psalms/129-8.htm" title="Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the LORD be on you: we bless you in the name of the LORD.">Psalm 129:8</a>.)<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/psalms/129-1.htm">Psalm 129:1</a></div><div class="verse">A Song of degrees. Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say:</div>(1) <span class= "bld">Many a time.</span>—Or more literally, <span class= "ital">much. </span>(See margin.)<p><span class= "bld">From my youth.</span>—Here, of course, not the youth of a person, but of the nation. The poet glances back even to the Egyptian bondage. (See <a href="/hosea/2-15.htm" title="And I will give her her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.">Hosea 2:15</a>, “as in the days of her youth, and as in the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt;” comp. <a href="/ezekiel/23-3.htm" title="And they committed prostitutions in Egypt; they committed prostitutions in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity.">Ezekiel 23:3</a>; <a href="/jeremiah/2-2.htm" title="Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus said the LORD; I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals, when you went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.">Jeremiah 2:2</a>; <a href="/jeremiah/22-21.htm" title="I spoke to you in your prosperity; but you said, I will not hear. This has been your manner from your youth, that you obeyed not my voice.">Jeremiah 22:21</a>, recalling all the long series of oppressions suffered by the race.)<p><span class= "bld">May Israel now say.</span>—There is in the original no adverb of <span class= "ital">time: </span>“let Israel say.”<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/psalms/129-3.htm">Psalm 129:3</a></div><div class="verse">The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.</div>(3) <span class= "bld">Furrows.</span>—The Hebrew word only occurs once besides, in <a href="/1_samuel/14-14.htm" title="And that first slaughter, which Jonathan and his armor bearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were an half acre of land, which a yoke of oxen might plow.">1Samuel 14:14</a>, where the margin renders as here, <span class= "ital">furrow</span>—a rendering which plainly <span class= "ital">there </span>is not intelligible. “Half a furrow of an acre of land,” as a space in which twenty men were killed, gives no clear idea to the mind. But Dr. J. G. Wettstein, in his excursus at the end of Delitzsch’s Commentary, explains the <span class= "ital">ma’an </span>to be the strip of ground which the ploughman takes in hand at one time, and round which consequently at the end of each furrow the plough turns. Delitzsch’s “furrow-strip,” therefore, more exactly reproduces the word, though here doubtless it is used with a poetic freedom and may be translated <span class= "ital">furrow. </span>The double image, suggesting the lash given to a slave, and at the same time the actual and terrible imprints of oppression left on the country as well as the race, is as striking as poetry ever produced. It, in fact, combines two separate prophetic figures, <a href="/isaiah/1-6.htm" title="From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.">Isaiah 1:6</a>; <a href="/isaiah/51-23.htm" title="But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict you; which have said to your soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and you have laid your body as the ground, and as the street, to them that went over.">Isaiah 51:23</a>.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/psalms/129-4.htm">Psalm 129:4</a></div><div class="verse">The LORD <i>is</i> righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.</div>(4) <span class= "bld">The</span> <span class= "bld">Lord is righteous</span>.—This expression of faith, introduced without any conjunction, is itself a revelation of the deeply-rooted religion of Israel.<p><span class= "bld">Cords</span>.—Literally, <span class= "ital">cord. </span>As in <a href="/psalms/124-7.htm" title="Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.">Psalm 124:7</a>, the net was broken and the bird escaped, so here the cord binding the slave (comp. <a href="/psalms/2-3.htm" title="Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.">Psalm 2:3</a>) is severed and he goes free.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/psalms/129-6.htm">Psalm 129:6</a></div><div class="verse">Let them be as the grass <i>upon</i> the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up:</div>(6) <span class= "bld">Which withereth afore it groweth up.</span>—This clause, with its Aramaic colouring, probably contains a textual error. The context seems certainly to require the meaning “before it is plucked up,” and many scholars get this meaning out of the Hebrew verb used elsewhere of “plucking off a shoe” and “drawing a sword.” They give, which is no doubt legitimate, an impersonal sense to the active verb, “which withereth before one pulls it up.” The LXX. (received text), the Vulg., Theodotion, and the Quinta favour this rendering. On the other hand, the image of grass withering before it comes to maturity is exactly what we should expect here, growing as it does without soil (comp. the “seed on the rock” in the parable of the sower), and suggests a more complete and sudden destruction of the enemies, who perish before the abortive plans of evil can be carried out. The rendering of the Authorised Version is therefore to be retained, and is actually supported by Aquila, Symmachus, the Sexta, and in various readings of the LXX. A thatched cottage in our country might present the picture suggested by the verse, but it was much more familiar where the housetops were flat and plastered with a composition of mortar, tar, ashes, and sand, which, unless carefully rolled, would naturally become covered with weeds. Indeed, in many cases, especially on the poorest sort of houses, the roof would be little better than hard mud. For similar allusions comp. <a href="/2_kings/19-26.htm" title="Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the house tops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up.">2Kings 19:26</a> and <a href="/isaiah/37-27.htm" title="Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded: they were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops, and as corn blasted before it be grown up.">Isaiah 37:27</a>.<p> <div class="versenum"><a href="/psalms/129-8.htm">Psalm 129:8</a></div><div class="verse">Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the LORD <i>be</i> upon you: we bless you in the name of the LORD.</div>(8) This harvest scene is exactly like that painted in <a href="/ruth/2-4.htm" title="And, behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem, and said to the reapers, The LORD be with you. And they answered him, The LORD bless you.">Ruth 2:4</a>, and the last line should be printed as a return greeting from the reapers.<p><div id="botbox"><div class="padbot"><div align="center">Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers<br /><br />Text Courtesy of <a href="//biblesupport.com" target="_top">BibleSupport.com</a>. 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