Verse 1. - Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth. Israel's recollection is one of frequent, almost constant, "affliction." She has been downtrodden beneath the feet of Egyptians, Moabites, Mesopotamians, Canaanites, Ammonites, Philistines, Syrians. Assyrians, Babylonians. Her sufferings began in her extreme youth, as soon as she was a nation (Exodus 1:11-22). May Israel now say; rather, let Israel now say. The psalmist directs his countrymen to look back upon their past history.

Verse 2. - Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth. The repetition emphasizes the fact of Israel's long and bitter suffering. Yet they have not prevailed against me. Israel has not been given as a prey to the heathen's teeth (Psalm 124:6). She is still a nation, unsubdued; she holds her own; the struggle is not ended.

Verse 3. - The plowers plowed upon my back. A strong metaphor, which does not elsewhere occur. The idea is perhaps taken from the cruel treatment of captives in those days, who, in certain cases, were "put under saws and harrows of iron" (2 Samuel 12:31), or, as it is elsewhere expressed, "threshed with threshing instruments of iron" (Amos 1:3). They made long their furrows; i.e. "lengthened out their tortures."

Verse 4. - The Lord is righteous. Still, God is just. He allowed these sufferings to be inflicted on us because we deserved them; and he interposed on our behalf when we had been sufficiently punished, and cut asunder the cords of the wicked. Cut, i.e., the cords wherewith they had bound us. The "retrospect" here ends, and in the next verse the "anticipation" begins.

Verse 5. - Let them all be confounded; or, "they shall all be confounded," or "put to shame." And turned back. Made to turn their backs upon their foes. That hate Zion. That have shown themselves enemies to Israel. The main verbs are in the future tense, but may be taken as expressive either of a wish or of a confident expectation.

Verse 6. - Let them be as the grass upon the housetops; literally, they shall be as the grass of housetops. The fiat roofs of Oriental houses are usually covered in early spring with a crop of bright-green grass. But the scorching rays of the sun soon burn this up, and it becomes dry and withered (see 'The Land and the Book,' p. 682; and comp. Isaiah 37:27). Which withereth afore it groweth up; literally, before it is unsheathed; i.e. before the blossom has left the sheath in which it is formed.

Verse 7. - Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand. Which is so worthless that no one takes the trouble to mow it. Nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom. Much less does any one bind it into sheaves and store it away.

Verse 8. - Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of the Lord. Harvesters were thus greeted (Ruth 2:4), and still are to this day. "These expressions," says Dr. Thomson, "are most refreshingly Arabic. Nothing is more natural than for Arabs, when passing by a fruit-tree or cornfield loaded with a rich crop, to exclaim, Barak Allah! 'God bless you!'" ('The Land and the Book,' p. 682).