Psalm 124: a finished journey to escape among many unfinished ones

 

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
Let Israel now say—

If it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
When men rose up against us,

Then they would have swallowed us alive,
When their wrath was kindled against us;

Then the waters would have overwhelmed us,
The stream would have gone over our soul;

Then the swollen waters
Would have gone over our soul.”

Blessed be the Lord,
Who has not given us as prey to their teeth.

Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers;
The snare is broken, and we have escaped.

Our help is in the name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.

So far in my haphazard reflections on the Psalms of Ascent, I have thought about travelling with people on unfinished journeys. Their feet have slipped, their eyes have looked to the hills, their voices have lifted in longing, in protest, in hope. These have been psalms for unfinished journeys—of pilgrims still walking.

But Psalm 124 feels different. This is a song sung not on the way, but from the far side of catastrophe. This psalm is not yearning, but relief. Not anticipation, but gratitude. The crisis has passed. The enemy has been held off. The waters have not drowned us. Somehow—somehow—we are still here.  It isn't about looking ahead to a place we are headed, but looking back to a place where we've been.
And the reason, says the psalmist, is God.

But this raises a hard question: what about those for whom the waters do sweep in? Is God not with them? Is survival the only sign of divine favour?

“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side—let Israel now say
If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when men rose up against us…”
 
These lines are the gathering call. The leader invites all Israel to remember. Not privately, not abstractly—but collectively and urgently. The repetition is insistent: we survived only because God was with us.
This is a community memory, not an individual testimony. It assumes shared trauma and shared deliverance—likely national threat or invasion. The people’s safety is not attributed to strategy or strength, but to God's presence “on our side.”

Our Western 21st century mindset does not always sit easy with common collective narratives - the story of our nation - grand national narratives.  In Britain today, we don’t often sing our national story in unison. We’re more used to personal experience than communal psalms.

And yet… when we remember the Blitz, or the NHS in the pandemic, or grieve together after tragedy, we find ourselves telling shared stories—stories of near-misses, of grace under fire, of survival.

Psalm 124 dares us to ask: who tells the story? Whose escape do we celebrate? And how do we walk with those still in danger of being swept away?

And yet, that phrase—on our side—is dangerous if misunderstood. The psalmist is not claiming that God endorses Israel’s every action. Rather, it’s a stunned acknowledgement that, in this moment, God’s mercy saved them. The survival of a community is not a proof of superiority. It’s a revelation of God's grace.

“Then they would have swallowed us alive,
When their wrath was kindled against us;
Then the waters would have overwhelmed us,
The stream would have gone over our soul;
Then the swollen waters would have gone over our soul.”

These vivid metaphors—wild beasts, raging flood—capture the raw terror of near-destruction. The escape was not inevitable. It felt, at the time, like the end.  But for the psalmist, the fact that they are still alive is itself a miracle. This is rescue language—not ease or comfort, but being pulled from the brink.

So many of us have our own flood stories. Some physical, some emotional. But again, this isn’t about individual suffering and recovery. It’s about the survival of a whole people.
And it forces the unsettling question: what about when the waters DO engulf a people? Armenians. Jews in the Shoah. Palestinians today. Sudanese. Rohingya. Does their suffering mean that God was not “on their side”?

The psalmist doesn’t ask that question. But we must. Not to dismiss this song of gratitude, but to avoid turning it into triumphalism.

“Blessed be the Lord, Who has not given us as prey to their teeth.”

This is a line of astonishment. We were prey, the psalm says. We should have been devoured. But something—Someone—intervened.
Again, it's crucial not to hear this as implying others were devoured because God abandoned them. Scripture holds together both songs of rescue and laments of abandonment. One psalm says “we escaped”; another says “my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Our task is to sing both. To refuse simplistic equations. To resist turning survival into superiority.

“Our soul has escaped as a bird from the snare of the fowlers;
The snare is broken, and we have escaped.”

This verse offers a delicate image of hope. A bird, fluttering into freedom just as the net tears. There is grace in the timing. But there's also recognition: the trap was real. The danger was near.

Many today still live in that trap—systems of violence, cycles of poverty, racial injustice, climate collapse. And not every snare breaks in time.

So when we do escape, we remember: not everyone does. And rather than boasting, we become advocates—for justice, for peace, for freedom for others.

“Our help is in the name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.”

The psalm ends not with nationalism, but with universal praise. The God who rescued Israel is no tribal deity. He is the maker of all that is. The one to whom all oppressed people may cry.

This verse lifts the psalm from the specific to the cosmic. If God is the creator, then his justice is not for one people alone. It is for every place where the floods rise. For every soul caught in the snare.

Psalm 124 teaches us to celebrate rescue—but never with arrogance. To give thanks for deliverance—but never forget those still trapped. It reminds us that while this community's journey through disaster may have ended safely, many journeys remain unfinished.

Our task is to give thanks and to walk in solidarity. To name God’s grace in our lives and to work for it in the lives of others. Because “our help” is not just personal. It’s collective. And it points us to the kind of world where every snare breaks.

God of floodwaters and broken snares,we thank you for the times we have escaped—when the danger passed,

when the grip loosened,
when we came through
and could breathe again.

But we do not forget those still trapped.
Those still caught in war or poverty,
in prejudice or despair,
in systems too strong for one person to fight.

Teach us not to hoard our survival
as though it were proof of your favour.
Teach us instead to remember that our help—
our only help is in your name, the name that speaks mercy,
the name that made the heavens and the earth.

And so we ask:

Break every snare.
Still every storm.
And make of us not just grateful people,
but good companions
for all who still walk the hard road toward freedom.

Amen.