This pilgrim psalm looks back over a long, difficult national history and reaches a genuinely surprising conclusion — not “we have suffered,” though that much is obviously true, but “they have not prevailed,” a claim about survival rather than ease.
A study in Psalm 129 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 9 min read
Many A Time Have They Afflicted Me
“Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say: many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me.”
Psalm 129:1-2
“From my youth” reaches back to Israel’s earliest history, likely the Egyptian slavery, and the repeated phrase “many a time” refuses to pretend this affliction was ever rare or occasional — the honesty here is deliberate, not softened for the sake of a tidier testimony.
The Plowers Plowed Upon My Back
“The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows. The LORD is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.”
Psalm 129:3-4
Plowing a back rather than a field is a deliberately brutal image, likely describing actual scourging — wounds inflicted in straight, deliberate lines, the same way a plow cuts furrows across open ground.
As The Grass Upon The Housetops
“Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up: wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.”
Psalm 129:6-7
Seeds that sprouted in the thin soil packed onto a flat rooftop had no real depth to root in, and withered almost as soon as they appeared — a specific, familiar sight to anyone in that culture, chosen here as the image for enemies whose apparent strength never actually has time to mature.
“Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the LORD be upon you: we bless you in the name of the LORD.”
Psalm 129:8
This refers to an actual harvest custom, passersby calling out a blessing to workers gathering grain — the psalm’s final image denies the wicked even this small, ordinary courtesy, their entire harvest amounting to too little for anyone to bother blessing.
