Where the reward took time and trust, we are suddenly thrust now into a reversal of fortune. The movement from Psalm 128 to 129 is the most drastic change in all the flow of this progression. Psalm 128 was enjoyment around a table of blessing. Psalm 129 is a cry of pain, and the scariest reality encountered in this entire 15 Psalm series of Ascent.

The fact that this can happen, and so suddenly begs some closer examination. What is the real nature of good things we enjoy? Good is typically something ‘organic’, that is, it grows with cultivation and care. Evil is like a car crash; you didn’t see it coming until it hit you.

Good is a crafted re-making. It’s participatory also: some one is involved with some stuff, and this emerges with grace (see the entire triplet just before 129 crashes into the story). Evil is autocratic, at its entry you had no say. This contrast was very evident in the beginning (read the 1^st 3 chapters of Genesis). And both these realities, good and evil, have shown themselves as exhibits A-Z throughout all of human history. This is so anyone with eyes to see and a hungry, struggling heart can make up their own mind from their own experiences with good and with its opposite about which place they want to call home.

I’m calling it out: this obvious contrast between good and evil, and I am doing so because I don’t like to see what happens to people stuck in Psalm 129. I’ve hated, just viscerally hated being there myself. And I am bearing a deep sadness for a couple people I know who are there right now.

In this series of 15, we have now plunged into the 4^th triplet. I’ve named it TRIAL. It begins hard and it becomes harder until some release at the end of this triplet. It is the most difficult to experience and the harshest visually. In my rendition you can see this with color, line and cords of pain. But paradoxically, this triplet (Ps.129-131) includes my very favorite and most practiced prayer. We’ll get there soon; but for now, don’t deflect the excruciating reality of this harsh place, it must be walked through before more can be realized.

Jesus carefully warned his intimates, in the last week of his life here about harsh times coming, saying that for many their “love will grow cold.” And hundreds of years earlier the prophet Habakkuk saw the same on the horizon “and I fear”.

It is an act of faith for God-followers to voice, out loud and to Him, when things get really tough, being honest with the One we say we trust. If He is real, then an expectation of justice is reasonable. If He is not real, then any words, and any expectations are entirely meaningless.

In the Jewish Talmud, Ben Bag-Bag said: “Turn it over, and [again] turn it over, for all is therein. And look into it; And become gray and old therein; And do not move away from it, for you have no better portion than it.”

I will just add (and it’s on good authority that I can) to Ben Bag-Bag’s wisdom, that the better portion is yet coming. Jesus and Habakkuk spoke of that also. This place of despair is not the end; it is only the voicing in the distress. We’re not finished yet. Even in Psalm 129 this expectation is hinted at, even as it trails off in sadness.

Psalm 129, a song of ascents

“Since my youth they have often attacked me,” let Israel say.
² “Since my youth they have often attacked me, but they have not defeated me.
³ The plowers plowed my back; they made their furrows long.
⁴ The Lord is just;
he cut the ropes of the wicked.”
⁵ May all who hate Zion be humiliated and turned back.
⁶ May they be like the grass on the rooftops, which withers before one can even pull it up, ⁷ which cannot fill the reaper’s hand, or the lap of the one who gathers the grain.
⁸ Those who pass by will not say,
“May you experience the Lord’s blessing!
We pronounce a blessing on you in the name of the Lord.”

(NET version)