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Pope Benedict XVI met with 31,000 people during his general audience June 22. He offered some reflections on Psalm 124, a song of joy and thanksgiving to God for saving his people from evil.

“During his lifetime, man is surrounded by the snares of the wicked that not only threaten his life but also seek to destroy all human values,” Pope Benedict XVI remarked. “However, the Lord intervenes and watches over and saves the just.” Departing from his prepared text, he observed, “In a sense, this psalm is still relevant today.”

Whenever God's people were threatened by enemies who rose against them — like raging waters about to engulf them or hunters stalking them like birds of prey — the Lord was at their side, the Holy Father noted. He came to their help and rescued them from danger.

“Even when all human hope has disappeared, God's liberating power can appear,” he said. Pope Benedict XVI once again set aside his prepared text: “The Lord only desires our well-being and in this we find our trust and certainty.”

St. Augustine, he pointed out, gives a two-part interpretation of the psalm. First, he saw it as a song of the martyrs in heaven, rejoicing that God has delivered them from their sufferings and rewarded them with the crown of Glory. “St. Augustine was speaking about the martyrs from all ages, including our own century,” the Holy Father observed. St. Augustine also saw this psalm as the song of the Church on earth, expressing our confident hope that whatever difficulties may befall us, the Lord will be at our side.

We have here before us Psalm 124, which is a song of thanksgiving that the entire community gathered in prayer lifts up in praise to God for his gift of liberation. At the very beginning, the psalmist issues an invitation: “Let Israel say” (verse 1), to encourage all the people to lift up a hearty and sincere song of thanksgiving to God, their Savior. If the Lord had not been on their side when they were victims, they would have been powerless to free themselves with the limited resources they had, and their adversaries, like beasts, would have torn them to pieces and crushed them.

Although it has been suggested that the reference is to a specific historical event, such as the end of the Babylonian exile, it is more likely that the psalm is a hymn of thanksgiving to the Lord for providing safety from danger, and a plea for deliverance from every evil.

After the reference at the beginning to those “people” who rose up against the faithful and were capable of “swallowing them up alive” (see verses 2-3), there are two parts to the psalm. In the first part, the raging waters play a dominant role and are a symbol in the Bible of devastating chaos, evil and death: “The waters would have engulfed us, the torrent overwhelmed us; seething waters would have drowned us” (verses 4-5). At this point, however, the psalmist feels as though he is on the shore, having been miraculously saved from the fury of the sea.

The Lord Saves the Just

During his lifetime, man is surrounded by the snares of the wicked, which not only threaten his life but also seek to destroy all human values. However, the Lord intervenes and watches over and saves the just, as Psalm 18 proclaims: “He reached down from on high and seized me; drew me out of the deep waters. He rescued me from my mighty enemy and foes too powerful for me. … The Lord came to my support. He set me free in the open; he rescued me because he loves me” (verses 17-20).

In the second part of this song of thanksgiving, we move from images of the sea to a hunting scene, which is typical of many of the psalms of supplication (see Psalm 124:6-8). Reference is made to a wild beast that locks its fangs on its prey, and to a fowler's snare that has captured a bird. However, the blessing that is expressed in the psalm helps us to understand that the fate of the faithful, which was death, has been radically changed by a life-saving intervention: “Blessed be the Lord, who did not leave us to be torn by their fangs. We escaped with our lives like a bird from the fowler's snare; the snare was broken and we escaped” (verses 6-7).

At this point his prayer becomes a sigh of relief that rises from the depths of his soul: Even when all human hope has disappeared, God's liberating power can appear. Thus, the psalm ends with a profession of faith, which made its way into our Christian liturgy centuries ago as the ideal preface to all prayer: Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, qui fecit caelum et terram [Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth] (verse 8). In a particular way, God, who is almighty, allies himself with those who are victims and those who are persecuted, “who call out to him day and night,” and “he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily” (see Luke 18:7-8).

‘Sing With Hope'

St. Augustine has left us an articulated commentary on this psalm. In the first part, he observes that the “members of Christ who have reached a state of happiness” fittingly sing this psalm. So, in particular, “the holy martyrs, who, having left this world are with Christ in happiness, sing this psalm and are ready to take up again their incorruptible bodies, the same bodies that were corruptible before. During their lifetime, they suffered tortures in their bodies, but in eternity their tortures will be transformed into emblems of righteousness.”

In the second part, however, the bishop from Hippo tells us that we too can sing this psalm with hope: “We, too, inspired by a hope that is sure, will sing in exultation. Those who are singing the psalm are not strangers to us. …Therefore, let us all sing with one heart, both the saints who already possess the crown as well as those of us who lovingly unite ourselves to their crown. Together we desire the life that we do not have here below, but that we will never be able to have unless we have desired it in the first place.”

St. Augustine then returns to his first point and goes on to explain: “The saints look back on the sufferings they faced and, from the place of happiness and tranquility in which they find themselves, look at the road they traveled to attain it. Since it would have been difficult to attain deliverance if the hand of the Deliverer had not intervened to help them, filled with joy they exclaim, ‘Had not the Lord been with us!’ That is how their song begins. So great is their rejoicing that they do not even say what they have been delivered from” (Esposizione sul Salmo 124, 3: Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana, XXVIII, Rome, 1977, p. 65).

(Register translation)