PSALM 126 – THOSE WHO SOW IN TEARS WILL REAP WITH SHOUTS OF JOY!

PSALM 126 – THOSE WHO SOW IN TEARS WILL REAP WITH SHOUTS OF JOY!

13^th December 2020

Third Sunday of Advent

Homely and yet profound piety is here combined with noble simplicity of artistic form in a wonderful harmony which imparts to this widely known psalm its singular value. The psalm is like a precious stone in a simple and yet worthy setting. The gentle spirit of a heartfelt and trusting hope based on faith pervades the whole psalm; and from this very trustfulness springs the strength of that hope which is a living fountain of true piety. It proves equally true of the pure childlike delight in the hoped-for happiness and blessing (vv. I-2), of awed and wondering praise of the majesty and grace of God (v. 3), of the intimacy and assurance with which the psalmist prays (v. 4), and of the powerful comfort which that hope imparts on the way through darkness to light (vv. 5-6).

 

1    When the Lord turned again the fortunes of Zion

then were we like men restored to I life

and our tongue with singing.

‘The Lord has done great things for them’

and therefore we rejoiced.

As the streams return to the dry south

shall reap with songs of joy

shall come again in gladness bringing his sheaves with him.

2    Then was our mouth filled with laughter:

At the very beginning of the psalm the faith of the cult community spreads the wings of its thoughts in a bold flight into the future and looks into the smiling fields of blissful hope as through a widely opened gate they do not dare to push open with their own hands. The gate which separates the dismal present from the bright future, knowing by faith that the decisive transformation of their present circumstances lies in the hand of God alone. Therefore, their entire hope is founded on God.

 

3    Then said they among the heathen:

4    Truly the Lord has done great things for us:

5    Turn again our fortunes O Lord:

6    Those that sow in tears:

 

The community’s supplication is followed by the answer, which was probably uttered by the priest or a prophet. The promise is clothed in the proverbial image of the sowing in tears and reaping with shouts of joy. The imagery developed when the Yahweh religion was taking over from Canaanite agriculture religion. In order to understand this image, which does not simply speak of the periodic succession of sowing and reaping in the sense, for instance, of the proverbial phrase ‘The calm after the storm’, we must study it in the light of its contemporary background. It is a common ancient idea, which is reflected in various customs of Near East nations, that the time of sowing was to be considered as a time of mourning. We know from Egyptian examples that sowing was accompanied by funeral hymns as a symbol of the burial of the god Osiris. At the root of this ceremony was the interpretation of the natural process as the dying and rising again of living things, a view which, as discoveries at Ras Shamra have confirmed, was also shared by the Canaanite cultic myth, and which has also found expression in the German proverb: ‘Do not laugh when you sow; otherwise you must weep when you reap’; it also underlies the biblical parable of the grain of wheat which must die in order to bear much fruit (John 12.24; I Cor. 15.36). It is only from this point of view that the phrases used in the psalm, ‘those who sow in tears’ and ‘they go along weeping' become intelligible. The poet shows his artistic power in keeping the metaphor of sowing and not adding an explanation. Of course he intends a reference to their present calamities; in present - suffering and death he discerns not only the allusion to the future of a new life but, as in the case of the seed corn planted in the earth, he sees already at work the mysterious power of God which creates new life out of death.

 

7    He who goes out weeping bearing the seed:

 

This is an incredibly hopeful and exciting poem that should buoy us up at this time of the surge in COVID-19 cases. Through all the fear and doubt that we experience from our fellow human beings the vision of faith we can see the exciting work of our Saviour who said, ‘unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain: but if it dies, bears much fruit.’

Thank you Fr Graham for your weekly narrative on the psalms.