Psalm 124:7

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) Snare.—Another rapid transition to a favourite figure, that of the hunter’s net. (Comp. Psalm 10:9, &c)

Benson Commentary

Psalm 124:7-8. Our soul is escaped as a bird, &c. — This is the third image by which the marvellous deliverance of Israel is illustrated. Having compared it to that of a person snatched, by a miracle, from the fury of surrounding and overwhelming torrents, and to that of a lamb rescued from the jaws of a wolf or lion, he here illustrates it by the escape of a bird, through breaking the snare, before the fowler came to seize and kill it. Our help is in the name of the Lord — David, who had directed us (Psalm 121:2) to depend upon God for help, as to our personal concerns, saying, My help is in the name of the Lord, here directs us to the same dependance as to the concerns of the public, observing, Our help is so. It is a comfort to all that have the good of God’s Israel at heart, that Israel’s God is he that made the world, and therefore will have a church in it, which he can secure in times of the greatest danger and distress. In him therefore let the church’s friends place their confidence, and they shall not be put to confusion.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

124:6-8 God is the Author of all our deliverances, and he must have the glory. The enemies lay snares for God's people, to bring them into sin and trouble, and to hold them there. Sometimes they seem to prevail; but in the Lord let us put our trust, and we shall not be put to confusion. The believer will ascribe all the honour of his salvation, to the power, mercy, and truth of God, and look back with wonder and thanksgiving on the way in which the Lord has led him. Let us rejoice that our help for the time to come is in him who made heaven and earth.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Our soul is escaped - We have escaped; our life has been preserved.

As a bird out of the snare of the fowlers - By the breaking of the snare, or the gin. The bird is entangled, but the net breaks, and the bird escapes. See the notes at Psalm 91:3.

The snare is broken ... - It was not strong enough to retain the struggling bird, and the captive broke away. So we seemed to be caught. The enemy appeared to have us entirely in his power, but escape came to us as it does to the bird when it finds the net suddenly break, and itself again at large.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6, 7. The figure is changed to that of a rapacious wild beast (Ps 3:7), and then of a fowler (Ps 91:3), and complete escape is denoted by breaking the net.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers,.... The people of God are like little birds, being harmless and innocent, singing forth the praises of God for his goodness to them; as also because weak and unable to resist their foes; and worthless in themselves, like sparrows, as the word (i) here used signifies; and are fearful and timorous, and flee at the least apprehension of danger, Psalm 102:7. Satan, and wicked men under his influence, are like fowlers who lay snares for them, to draw them into sin, into immorality and error, in order to bring them to ruin and destruction; hence we read of the snare of the devil and of wicked men, 1 Timothy 3:7, 2 Timothy 2:26; and who form plans and lay schemes to oppress and destroy them; but through the wisdom given them to discern these devices and stratagems, and through the power of divine grace, accompanying them, they escape what was intended for their hurt, and particularly in the following manner:

the snare is broken, and we are escaped; measures concerted by wicked men are broken, their schemes are confounded, their devices are disappointed, so that they cannot perform their enterprise; and by this means the saints escape the evils designed against them, the afflictions of the world, and the temptations of Satan.

(i) , Sept. "sicut passer", V. L.

Geneva Study Bible

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the {d} snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.

(d) For the wicked not only furiously rage against the faithful, but craftily imagined to destroy them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

7. The timorous defenceless bird is an apt emblem for weak helpless men. Cp. Psalm 11:1. By ‘snare’ (pach) is probably meant a kind of clapnet. The frame breaks or the spring fails to act, so that the bird is not captured, or else escapes. See the illustration in Driver’s Joel and Amos, p. 157.

we are escaped] We is emphatic. We, who seemed certain to become the prey of our enemies. But God “frustrated (lit. broke, though the word is a different one) their counsel” (Nehemiah 4:15).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. - Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers (comp. Psalm 91:3; Psalm 140:5; Psalm 141:10). Another metaphor. We have been like birds taken in the "snare," or net, of a fowler. But now we are escaped - not, however, of our own strength or of our own cleverness. The snare is broken for us by God's providence, and so we are escaped. Psalm 124:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

After the fact of the divine succour has been expressed, in Psalm 124:6 follows the thanksgiving for it, and in Psalm 124:7 the joyful shout of the rescued one. In Psalm 124:6 the enemies are conceived of as beasts of prey on account of their bloodthirstiness, just as the worldly empires are in the Book of Daniel; in Psalm 124:7 as "fowlers" on account of their cunning. According to the punctuation it is not to be rendered: Our soul is like a bird that is escaped, in which case it would have been accented בפשׁנו כצפור, but: our soul (subject with Rebia magnum) is as a bird (כּצפור as in Hosea 11:11; Proverbs 23:32; Job 14:2, instead of the syntactically more usual כּצּפור) escaped out of the snare of him who lays snares (יוקשׁ, elsewhere יקושׁ, יקוּשׁ, a fowler, Psalm 91:3). נשׁבר (with ā beside Rebia) is 3rd:praet.: the snare was burst, and we - we became free. In Psalm 124:8 (cf. Psalm 121:2; Psalm 134:3) the universal, and here pertinent thought, viz., the help of Israel is in the name of Jahve, the Creator of the world, i.e., in Him who is manifest as such and is continually verifying Himself, forms the epiphonematic close. Whether the power of the world seeks to make the church of Jahve like to itself or to annihilate it, it is not a disavowal of its God, but a faithful confession, stedfast even to death, that leads to its deliverance.