Welcome to the second part of our (brief) series on Psalm 126. In the first part, we explored the first few verses of the Psalm, noting how our text starts with praise. Now we explore how praise turns to prayer.
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In verse 4, the praise turns to prayer. From our perspective, the psalm makes an unexpected jump. We are not given any indication of change, no description of the circumstances that may have arose between the praise and gladness in verse 3 and the prayer and petition in verse 4.
Look with me at verse four. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev.” To understand this metaphor, it helps to understand the topography and climate of the Middle East, and some of you farm people are going to understand these verses better than city people. During arid seasons, riverbeds in the wilderness become dry, but during a rainy season, those dry beds fill with water as rushing torrents run down from mountains, irrigate plants, and fill the area with life.
This prayer in verse 4 asks God to take our circumstances, which look like dry riverbeds, and to pour out a rainy season of goodness and grace, kindness and blessing, on His people.
The psalmist follows that petition with more insights from agriculture. Verse five says, “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.” This profound biblical truth is echoed in the New Testament. Jesus draws upon the picture of sowing and reaping for His parable in Matthew 13, and the apostle Paul says in Galatians 6:7, “That what a man sows, he shall also reap.”
It is difficult for city people to understand farming metaphors, but I think you can follow the logic. Consider two laws of the harvest:
you reap later than you sow, and
you reap more than you sow.
Watch for those laws in the next verses.
As we move to the next verse, notice how the psalmist uses verse 6 to not only restate verse 5 but also elaborate on it. He seems worried that we will not really believe what he wrote in verse 5, so he repeats himself with greater emphasis, like using a neon pink highlighting marker
to ensure we don’t miss it. Verse five says, “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.” Verse six says, “He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”
Remember our two laws of the harvest: We reap later than we sow. Psalm 126 describes a day of sowing, going out with a pouch of seeds around your shoulder and tears your eyes. At the end of the day of sowing, there’s no reaping, just an empty pouch and ruined mascara. Farming means waiting. On another day, a later day, the harvest will come. We reap later than we sow.
Law number two: We reap more than we sow. That day of the harvest will not have a seed pouch around one shoulder, but armfuls and cart-fuls (“sheaves”) of wheat. That day will not have tears in our eyes but joy in our shouting mouths. We reap more than we sow.
In our next newsletter, we will explore how this feels. How does it feel to be restored and needing restoration, to be praising and praying, winning and waiting?
In a word, it feels disorienting.
We will explore three implications for us in one of the most practical things I’ve ever written.