Psalm 129 (1928 BCP)
Psalm 129 (1928 BCP) is a Song of Ascents in the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer (1928). In eight verses it gives Israel a corporate voice of remembered oppression, confesses that the righteous Lord has prevented the oppressors' final victory, and entrusts the judgment of those who hate Sion to God. The 1928 Prayer Book appoints it at Evening Prayer on the twenty-seventh day of the month, following Psalms 126–128.[1]
Prayer Book Text
Sæpe expugnaverunt. MANY a time have they fought against me from my youth up, * may Israel now say; Yea, many a time have they vexed me from my youth up; * but they have not prevailed against me.
The plowers plowed upon my back, * and made long furrows. But the righteous LORD * hath hewn the snares of the ungodly in pieces.
Let them be confounded and turned backward, * as many as have evil will at Sion. Let them be even as the grass upon the housetops, * which withereth afore it be grown up; Whereof the mower filleth not his hand, * neither he that bindeth up the sheaves his bosom. So that they who go by say not so much as, The LORD prosper you; * we wish you good luck in the Name of the LORD.
The Psalm does not make a private complaint. “May Israel now say” turns memory into common prayer: the congregation names real injury without treating suffering as evidence that God has abandoned his people. The repetition of “from my youth up” reaches back to Israel's earliest history, while “they have not prevailed” names deliverance without denying the depth of the wounds. The strong image of the ploughshare says neither that evil is slight nor that its perpetrators are excused; verse 4 locates the limit of their power in the righteousness of the Lord.
Scripture, Affliction, and Hope
The Prayer Book text stands with Scripture's refusal to conceal violence. Isaiah's servant song uses closely related imagery of exposed suffering:
I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.
Christians therefore hear Psalm 129 neither as a license for revenge nor as a denial of the suffering of Israel. Its petitions place the cause of Sion before the righteous Judge. The New Testament makes the same confidence more explicit:
Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels.
This is why the Psalm can speak truthfully both of long furrows and of a Lord who cuts the oppressor's tackle apart. The final verses ask that enmity to Sion prove barren, not fruitful: the “grass upon the housetops” has an impressive position but neither deep root nor harvest. Prayed in the Office, that judgment warns the worshipper against joining hatred and teaches patient hope in God's justice.
Anglican Reading of the Psalm
John Calvin's historic Reformation commentary reads the opening as communal memory that strengthens believers under pressure:
It is then an exercise eminently fitted to comfort true believers to look back to the conflicts of the Church in the days of old, in order thereby to know that she has always labored under the cross, and has been severely afflicted by the unrighteous violence of her enemies.
Calvin's reading is not an excuse to universalize one's own grievances. It helps explain the Psalm's grammar: Israel remembers the Lord's preservation across time, and the Church may receive that memory as a summons to faithfulness under the cross, never as a claim to identify contemporary opponents casually with the Psalm's enemies. On the ploughing image he emphasizes the reality of affliction and the particular consolation of verse 4:
The epithet righteous, with which he honors God, must, in a suitableness to the scope of the passage, be explained as implying that, although God may seem to dissemble for a time, yet he never forgets his righteousness, so as to withhold relief from his afflicted people.
Augustine offers a distinct patristic Christian reading. He identifies Sion with the Church while acknowledging the Psalm's long history of faithful witnesses:
The Church speaks of those whom She endures: and as if it were asked, “Is it now?” The Church is of ancient birth: since saints have been so called, the Church has been on earth.
That theological appropriation must not erase the Psalm's Israelite speaker. Rather, it allows Christians to pray as a people joined to the Scriptures of Israel, confessing that God sustains his people amid affliction and leaving final judgment to him. Augustine's interpretation and Calvin's exposition are witnesses to reception, not substitutes for the 1928 Psalter's own words.
Liturgical Use
Psalm 129 is appointed at Evening Prayer on the twenty-seventh day, after the restoration and tears of Psalm 126, the confession of dependence in Psalm 127, and the household blessing of Psalm 128. This sequence matters. It prevents Psalm 129 from being a freestanding curse: it follows prayers about the Lord's restoration, a house and city kept only by the Lord, and the peace of Jerusalem. In common prayer its final words are a disciplined appeal for God to frustrate evil, while its earlier refrain trains the Church to remember mercy rather than to glorify injury.[10]
See Also
External Links
- Psalm 129 in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
- Calvin, commentary on Psalm 129:1–4
- Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 129
References
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 129, Sæpe expugnaverunt, and “The Twenty-seventh Day. Evening Prayer”; Psalm 129 in the 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 129:1–2, Sæpe expugnaverunt; Psalm 129:1–2 in the 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 129:3–4, Sæpe expugnaverunt; Psalm 129:3–4 in the 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalm 129:5–8, Sæpe expugnaverunt; Psalm 129:5–8 in the 1928 BCP Psalter.
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version (Cambridge: University Press, 1769), Isaiah 50:6; Bible Gateway, Isaiah 50:6, KJV.
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version (Cambridge: University Press, 1769), 2 Thessalonians 1:6–7; Bible Gateway, 2 Thessalonians 1:6–7, KJV.
- ↑ John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 5, trans. James Anderson (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), commentary on Psalm 129:1–4; Christian Classics Ethereal Library edition.
- ↑ John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 5, trans. James Anderson (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), commentary on Psalm 129:3–4; Christian Classics Ethereal Library edition.
- ↑ Augustine of Hippo, Exposition on Psalm 129, §2, trans. J. E. Tweed, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 8, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888); New Advent transcription.
- ↑ The Protestant Episcopal Church, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Psalter, Psalms 126–129 and “The Twenty-seventh Day. Evening Prayer”; 1928 BCP Psalms 126–129.