A song of ascents. 2
123:1 I look up 3 toward you,
the one enthroned 4 in heaven.
123:2 Look, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a female servant look to the hand of her mistress, 5
so my eyes will look to the Lord, our God, until he shows us favor.
123:3 Show us favor, O Lord, show us favor!
For we have had our fill of humiliation, and then some. 6
123:4 We have had our fill 7
of the taunts of the self-assured,
of the contempt of the proud.
A song of ascents, 9 by David.
124:1 “If the Lord had not been on our side” –
let Israel say this! –
124:2 if the Lord had not been on our side,
when men attacked us, 10
124:3 they would have swallowed us alive,
when their anger raged against us.
124:4 The water would have overpowered us;
the current 11 would have overwhelmed 12 us. 13
124:5 The raging water
would have overwhelmed us. 14
124:6 The Lord deserves praise, 15
for 16 he did not hand us over as prey to their teeth.
124:7 We escaped with our lives, 17 like a bird from a hunter’s snare.
The snare broke, and we escaped.
124:8 Our deliverer is the Lord, 18
the Creator 19 of heaven and earth.
1 sn Psalm 123. The psalmist, speaking for God’s people, acknowledges his dependence on God in the midst of a crisis.
2 sn The precise significance of this title, which appears in Pss 120-134, is unclear. Perhaps worshipers recited these psalms when they ascended the road to Jerusalem to celebrate annual religious festivals. For a discussion of their background see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 219-21.
3 tn Heb “I lift my eyes.”
4 tn Heb “sitting.” The Hebrew verb יָשַׁב (yashav) is here used metonymically of “sitting enthroned” (see Pss 9:7; 29:10; 55:19; 102:12).
5 sn Servants look to their master for food, shelter, and other basic needs.
9 tn Heb “for greatly we are filled [with] humiliation.”
13 tn Heb “greatly our soul is full to it.”
17 sn Psalm 124. Israel acknowledges that the Lord delivered them from certain disaster.
18 sn The precise significance of this title, which appears in Pss 120-134, is unclear. Perhaps worshipers recited these psalms when they ascended the road to Jerusalem to celebrate annual religious festivals. For a discussion of their background see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 219-21.
21 tn Heb “rose up against us.”
25 tn Or “stream.”
26 tn Heb “would have passed over.”
27 tn Heb “our being.” The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) with a pronominal suffix is often equivalent to a pronoun, especially in poetry (see BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 4.a).
29 tn Heb “then they would have passed over our being, the raging waters.”
33 tn Heb “blessed [be] the
34 tn Heb “[the one] who.”
37 tn Heb “our life escaped.”
41 tn Heb “our help [is] in the name of the
42 tn Or “Maker.”