1 When Jehovah brought back the captives of Zion,
We were like as if dreaming.
2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
And our tongues with joyful cries;
Then said they among the nations,
Jehovah has done great things with these [people].
3 Jehovah has done great things with us;
We were glad.
4 Bring back, Jehovah, our captives,
Like watercourses in the Southland.
5 They who sow with tears
With joyful cries shall reap.
6 [The husbandman] goes, going and weeping,
[While] bearing the handful of seed;
He shall surely come with joyful cries,
[When] bearing his sheaves.
As in Psalm lxxxv., the poet's point of view here is in the midst
of a partial restoration of Israel. In vv. 1-3 he rejoices over
its happy beginning, while in vv. 4-6 he prays for and confidently
expects its triumphant completion. Manifestly the circumstances
fit the period to which most of these pilgrim psalms are to be
referred--namely, the dawn of the restoration from Babylon. Here the
pressure of the difficulties and hostility which the returning exiles
met is but slightly expressed. The throb of wondering gratitude
is still felt; and though tears mingle with laughter, and hard
work which bears no immediate result has to be done, the singer's
confidence is unfaltering. His words set a noble example of the
spirit in which inchoate deliverances should be welcomed, and toil
for their completion encountered with the lightheartedness which is
folly if it springs from self-trust, but wisdom and strength if its
ground is the great things which Jehovah has begun to do.
The word in ver. 1 rendered captives is capable of other meanings.
It is an unusual form, and is probably an error for the more common
word which occurs in ver. 4. It is most probable that the expressions
should be identical in both instances, though small changes in a
refrain are not infrequent. But if this correction is adopted, there
is room for difference of opinion as to the meaning of the phrase.
Cheyne, with the support of several other commentators, takes the
phrase to mean "turn the fortunes" (lit., a turning), but allows that
the "debate is not absolutely closed" (Critical Note on Psalm xiv.
7). The ordinary rendering is, however, more natural, "captivity"
being the mass of captives. Others would regard the two words in
vv. 1 and 4 as different, and render the former "those who return"
(Delitzsch) or "the returned" (Perowne).
Sudden and great revolutions for the better have for their first
effect bewilderment and a sense of unreality. Most men have some
supreme moment of blessedness in their memories with which they were
stunned; but, alas! it is oftener the rush of unexpected miseries
that makes them wonder whether they are awake or dreaming. It is not
lack of faith, but slowness in accommodating oneself to surprising
new conditions, which makes these seem unreal at first. "The sober
certainty of waking bliss" is sweeter than the first raptures. It is
good to have had such experience of walking, as it were, on air; but
it is better to plant firm feet on firm ground.
The mood of the first part of this little psalm is momentary; but
the steadfast toil amid discouragements, not uncheered by happy
confidence, which is pictured in the second part, should be the
permanent temper of those who have once tasted the brief emotion. The
jubilant laughter and ringing cries with which the exiles streamed
forth from bondage, and made the desert echo as they marched,
witnessed to the nations that Jehovah had magnified His dealings with
them. Their extorted acknowledgment is caught up triumphantly by the
singer. He, as it were, thanks the Gentiles for teaching him that
word. There is a world of restrained feeling, all the more impressive
for the simplicity of the expression, in that quiet "We became
glad." When the heathen attested the reality of the deliverance,
Israel became calmly conscious of it. These exclamations of envious
onlookers sufficed to convince the returning exiles that it was
no dream befooling them. Tumultuous feeling steadied itself into
conscious joy. There is no need to say more. The night of weeping was
past, and Joy was their companion in the fresh morning light.
But the work was but partly done. Difficulties and hardships were
not abolished from the world, as Israel had half expected in the
first flush of joy. We all are apt to think so, when some long
wished and faintly hoped-for good is ours at last. But not such is
the Divine purpose for any life here. He gives moments of untroubled
joy, when no cloud stains the blue and all the winds are still, in
order to prepare us for toil amid tempests and gloomy skies. So the
second half of the psalm breathes petitions for the completion of the
Restoration, and animates the returned exiles with assurances that,
whatever may be their toils, and however rough the weather in which
they have to sow the seed, and however heavy the hearts with which
they do it, "the slow result of winter showers" is sure. Lessons
of persevering toil, of contented doing of preparatory work, of
confidence that no such labour can fail to be profitable to the doer
and to the world, have been drawn for centuries from the sweet words
of this psalm. Who can tell how many hearts they have braced, how
much patient toil they have inspired? The psalmist was sowing seed,
the fruit of which he little dreamed of, when he wrote them, and his
sheaves will be an exceeding weight indeed.
The metaphor in ver. 4 brings before the imagination the dried
torrent-beds in the arid Negeb, or Southland, which runs out into the
Arabian desert. Dreary and desolate as these dried wadies lie bleaching
in the sunshine, so disconsolate and lonely had the land been without
inhabitants. The psalmist would fain see, not the thin trickle of a
streamlet, to which the returned captives might be compared, but a
full, great rush of rejoicing fellow-countrymen coming back, like the
torrents that fill the silent watercourses with flashing life.
He prays, and he also prophesies. "They who sow with tears" are
the pioneers of the return, to whom he belonged. Vv. 6, 7, merely
expand the figure of ver. 5 with the substitution of the image
of a single husbandman for the less vivid, clear-cut plural. The
expression rendered "handful of seed" means literally a "draught of
seed"--_i.e._, the quantity taken out of the basket or cloth at one
grasp, in order to be sown. It is difficult to convey the force of
the infinitives in combination with participles and the finite verb
in ver. 6. But the first half of the verse seems to express repeated
actions on the part of the husbandman, who often goes forth to sow,
and weeps as he goes; while the second half expresses the certainty
of his glad coming in with his arms full of sheaves. The meaning
of the figure needs no illustration. It gives assurances fitted to
animate to toil in the face of dangers without, and in spite of a
heavy heart--namely, that no seed sown and watered with tears is
lost; and further, that, though it often seems to be the law for
earth that one soweth and another reapeth, in deepest truth "every
man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour,"
inasmuch as, hereafter, if not now, whatsoever of faith and toil and
holy endeavour a man soweth, trusting to God to bless the springing
thereof, that shall he also reap. In the highest sense and in the
last result the prophet's great words are ever true: "They shall not
plant, and another eat ... for My chosen shall long enjoy the work of
their hands" (Isa. lxv. 22).