Read Psalm 126
We briefly touched on the reality that not all of life is hunky-dory, making joy easily and realistically accessible at any given moment. In fact, if you were happy all the time to the point of denying anything and everything negative we would probably think something was wrong with you. So what do we do with the opposing facts that the fruit of the Spirit is joy, and the fact of life is often not joyful? Psalm 126 is one of those psalms which can help us find the words for the tension that exists between what is true in the moment versus what is true in the long run.
A Psalm of Ascents
Psalms 120-134 are unified by the subtitle “a psalm/song of ascents.” There is some debate over the exact context in which they were used — were they sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem for one of the three major festivals (Jerusalem sitting at a higher elevation than the surrounding country and therefore requiring those coming to the city to ascend), or were they sung by Levites standing on the fifteen steps leading up to the main court of the temple, or were they celebrations of return from exile in Babylon?1
These psalms all broadly focus on Zion, which is another name for Jerusalem — Zion is perhaps the earlier Canaanite name for the hill/mountain which the city is built on. Zion/Jerusalem is recognized as a holy city, but unlike most of their neighbors, the Israelites did not claim that the city had primeval importance — in other words, the city was not connected with a divine moment in mythological ages past. Instead, Zion is recognized as holy because at a specific moment in time (David and the Davidic Covenant to be exact), God chose it to be the city in which his presence would dwell with his people.2
The people of Israel are generally unique in their religious views when it comes to the fact that they believe themselves to be God’s people because God chose them and not through anything special they did to get it, and their most holy spot is holy not because in some murky time past something important happened there, but because, once again, God made a choice.
Already/Not Yet
Psalm 126, outside of its inclusion in these psalms of ascent, defies easy categorization beyond this point — is it a community psalm of praise, or is a community psalm of lament? The tension lies in the differences between the two stanzas, consisting of verses 1-3 and 4-6. The first stanza focuses on rejoicing, while the second contains sorrow. But laments can contain, or even be, “expressions of praise, offered in a minor key.”3
If you are not familiar with music terms, consider the difference between the song “Joy to the World” (major key) and the song “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (minor key) — major keys conjure bright ebullience well, where minor keys conjure a haunting feeling. I love the description of lament as “expressions of praise, offered in a minor key,” because it offers a nuance we often miss when we talk about songs/psalms of lament. When we hear “lament” we may think doom and gloom and everything is awful. While lament recognizes loss and trauma and despair, we cannot lament what we have not loved, and the most poignant laments are those laced with somber hope, and what is hope but a form of praise?
While lament recognizes loss and trauma and despair, we cannot lament what we have not loved, and the most poignant laments are those laced with somber hope, and what is hope but a form of praise?
Psalm 126 also encapsulates the tension between the already (the loss) and the not yet (the hope) of lament. In the first stanza, the community celebrates its return (we typically assume from Babylonian captivity, though it remains a possibility that it speaks generically of improvement in fortune), yet in the second stanza, they call on God to restore them.
It is possible that this could be explained by the differences in expectation of homecoming (for instance, dreaming of returning to an idyllic childhood home) and the reality of homecoming (maybe you get there and the home is a rundown ramshackle shell of its former glory) — the hope of going home has been fulfilled, but it is no longer glorious. This is further complicated by some difficulties in translation. The following is a comparison between the first three verses in the NRSV and the TANAKH (a Jewish translation).
The question of whether to translate as past tense (most Christian translations) or future tense (TANAKH), hinges on how the Hebrew here translated alternately “restored” and “restores” is understood. It can be used to mean something that has already happened or something that will be happening imminently. For instance, in Genesis we see the same word used with the two different meanings in chapter 18: “I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son” (14); “When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home (33).
Similarly, “we were like those who dream” or “we see it as in a dream,” a translation choice which is first determined by the question of past or future tense, then is decided by asking whether this is dreamlike in the sense of feeling too good to be true, or dreamlike in a prophetic sense. Therefore, even when the translation feels to us like an exclusively future tense of things not yet and that therefore the whole psalm is hoping for better things to come, in actuality the first stanza remains an assurance that this is going to happen — it is as definite as the Lord returning to Abraham and Sarah “next year”. But, as in the situation of the promised son to Abraham and Sarah, it is the assurance of a desperate hope to be fulfilled at a later date, which perhaps makes you struggle to believe it. So we’re back to square one, where is joy when we are facing the already and the not yet?
When Delayed Gratification is Life and Death
If we can use such pedestrian terminology, the psalm can be seen in the light of joy in delayed gratification. There are times when choosing to hope in the joy to come, we are choosing to embrace a measure of sorrow today. At times, making the choice to face hardship is more than uncomfortable, it is potentially deadly. When the psalm was first penned and sung, the majority of the people singing were farmers, and all people were dependent on the produce of said farms which were located in an arid environment. While trade certainly existed and flourished in the region, the vast majority of your day-to-day needs were met by your own work or the work of others in your community.
Today we tend to take this for granted. As anyone who has tried to start a vegetable garden knows, there are times when you get three tomatoes and a zucchini for all your labor because the weather was just not right or the soil was off or the June bugs ate it all, etc. It’s disappointing and maybe upsetting when you consider the time and money you put into the garden, but you’re not going to go hungry because of it. Even if all of your neighbors were unsuccessful with their gardens as well, you can still get food at the grocery store. This has not been the case for the majority of the world for almost the entirety of history.
The “watercourses in the Negeb” (or “the streams in the south”) of verse 4 refer to the wadis found in the region of Palestine. These turn into overflowing streams or rivers during the rainy season, but dry up completely in the summer. Similarly, the growing season has its cycle. When harvest comes, the people can eat and be full, but by the time it comes to sow the seed again, unless the previous season was especially bountiful and nothing happened to spoil the excess stores, families are down to the bare sustenance required to survive all while bags of the very thing that could feed them now are being scattered into the field in the hopes that the rains will come and the seed will grow, and they will harvest again.
They sow in tears because they are hungry now, their children are starving now, and this bag of seed grain could save them now. But if they choose to rejoice now, where does that leave them later? If they eat now, they have no hope for the future. But if they sow in sorrow today, then the joy will come again just as the wadis will fill with water again.
Most of us will not have to make a life or death decision when it comes to choosing to take a sorrowful path now with an eye towards future joy, but sometimes we face choices that are decidedly unpleasant, or will make something unpleasant or uncomfortable for a while. Maybe for a long while. But choosing that option because it is a choice between the unpleasant/uncomfortable yet God-honoring option also means choosing a better future of joy when we remain in the will of God. Choosing a future of joy with sorrow now chooses to trust that the God who has already given you cause for joy in the past, will give you cause again. As Jesus reminds us, “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh” (Luke 6:21).
Questions for Discussion and Reflection
Laments form a large portion of the writings in Scripture, but in modern worship are often all but nonexistent. Why do you think we resist including lament in our regular worship? How might greater inclusion of lament change your worship? Is there an effective way to worship in the tension of lament and joy?
Have you had a moment in your life where you recall choosing the less immediately pleasant option because it would honor God more? Have you had a moment in your life where you recall choosing the more immediately pleasant option in spite of what would honor God? What have you learned from those experiences?
“Pilgrim Psalms” in NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 1007.
Bernhard W. Anderson, Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today, 3rd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 172.
Ibid, 60.