What if God had not been on our side? (Psalm 124)
Ps 124:1-8
In my early twenties, I was going to a friend’s wedding in Budapest. Having just returned from a trip to the UK, I got used to looking right when crossing the road. I was in an unfamiliar part of town, so the instincts born of a lifetime of habit in my own neighbourhood did not kick in. I had no idea of my mistake until after I looked right, saw no traffic, and confidently stepped off the curb – in front of a car coming from the left. There was a terrible screeching of brakes and the car stopped before it could hit me, and I walked on as if nothing had happened. The driver on the other hand must have been badly shaken, as he stopped the car by the curb, and I only heard it start up again a good minute later. Looking back, it chills me to think how nonchalant I was about it all; that incident felt like barely a blip in the events of the day. Yet, I believe that if God had not protected me that day, I could have been killed or seriously injured.
An imaginary scenario
Today’s reading imagines a hypothetical scenario of God not intervening for His people. Although the psalm makes the conditional ‘if’ a statement (‘if the LORD had not been on our side’; Ps 124:1), the NLT provocatively translates it as a question. ‘What if the LORD had not been on our side?’ As the psalmist imagines disaster, he uses imagery of being swallowed alive by an enormous monster perhaps, or by tidal waves engulfing the people (Ps 124:3-5). The imagery of water harks back to Israel’s association of water with chaos that disrupts and destroys God’s order. At Passover especially, Israel would have remembered their narrow escape through the waters in the exodus and the wiping out of the pursuing Egyptian army. The psalm then recalls God’s intervention: God’s people have escaped like a bird from a trap because the Lord, the Creator of all was their help (Ps 124:7-8).
The psalm’s context
We may think of two objections to the way this psalm is developed. On the one hand, imagining a situation of what-if can feel speculative. How do we know what may or may not have happened? The answer is that we cannot, but the psalm is inviting us with an imaginative exercise to envisage what life would be like in God’s absence, if He were to withdraw from His people. In this unusual way, the singers are saying that without God we cannot survive or overcome.[1] The second objection to this psalm may be that it seems to assume that God’s people are always saved out of suffering or disaster, and this does not ring true. It is, of course, true that we are not exempt from pain, but context may explain why the psalm focuses on deliverance. This song is among ‘the Psalms of Ascents’ (Pss 120-134), sung by pilgrims coming up to the Temple in Jerusalem on the three major festivals (Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles). They are meant to prepare the worshippers for their celebrations, so they focus on God’s saving acts, because that is what the festivals recall. The Passover speaks of His deliverance from death and slavery, while Weeks (in early harvest) and Tabernacles (late harvest) recall God’s gracious provision of land and its fruit that is so unlike Israel’s wanderings in a barren desert.[2] Thus the psalm stresses God’s help both through a negative (if speculative) scenario (of Him being absent from their lives) and positively of coming to their aid.
Wonder at His mercy
The psalm’s message then is simply that God’s people are shipwrecked and heading for disaster without Him, but because He is their help, they are a saved people, a redeemed community. To translate this into our Christian context, we might ask, if God had not reached out to rescue us from the slavery of sin and eternal death, where would we be? If the Lord had not given His Holy Spirit to indwell us, how could we be transformed into His image? We are reminded not to take our redemption for granted or emphasise our own response to His call or our achievements in His service but to reflect with a fresh wonder at His mercy.
[1] This is true of unbelievers as well, though the psalm does not mention this aspect. God cares for all of creation (and this care is known as His ‘common grace’) though He especially looks after His redeemed people. We sometimes imagine God as ‘a clockmaker’ who made the clock (the world), got it started and then left it to run (using the laws of nature), but the Bible affirms that the world only goes on because God continues to be involved in it. This is the underlying assumption of the psalm.
[2] Passover corresponds to the Christian Easter and Weeks to our Pentecost. Although Weeks is primarily a harvest festival (Deut 16:9-12), its spiritual parallel with Pentecost lies in the association of the harvest of souls through the giving of the Holy Spirit. Tabernacles is called that because during its celebration, Israel was meant to live in makeshift tents to remind them of their wilderness wanderings (Lev 23:42-43) and, by implication, help them appreciate how far they have come by God’s provision as they lived in a settled existence and rested in their own land. This feast has no Christian equivalent, but it is generally associated with the glorious future at the end when God’s kingdom comes.
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