Those Who Sow in Tears
1 A Song of Ascents. When Yahweh brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like those who dream. 2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then they said among the nations, “Yahweh has done great things for them.” 3 Yahweh has done great things for us, and we are glad. 4 Restore our fortunes again, Yahweh, like the streams in the Negev. 5 Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. 6 He who goes out weeping, carrying seed for sowing, will certainly come again with joy, carrying his sheaves.
People who could not believe their own good news ask for it to happen again, and are answered with a farmer crying over seed.
A Song of Ascents. When Yahweh brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like those who dream.
The return from exile, and the psalm's first reaction to it is disbelief. Not joy first — the sensation of something being too good to be actual, which is what a dream feels like from inside.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then they said among the nations, “Yahweh has done great things for them.”
Laughter, which is rare in this collection.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then they said among the nations, “Yahweh has done great things for them.”
The verdict of outsiders, quoted — and the next verse repeats it in the first person: Yahweh has done great things for us, and we are glad Psalms 126:3. The congregation agrees with what the nations noticed.
Restore our fortunes again, Yahweh, like the streams in the Negev.
The psalm turns and asks for more, which tells us what the return was actually like. The exiles came home to a ruined city and a hard economy, and the great thing that had been done was not sufficient.
The image is precise. The Negev's watercourses are dry stone for most of the year, and after rain in the highlands they fill in minutes and run full. What is being asked for is that kind of reversal — sudden, total, and in a channel that currently looks dead.
Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.
He who goes out weeping, carrying seed for sowing, will certainly come again with joy, carrying his sheaves.
The answer to the request, and it is agricultural rather than miraculous. A farmer in a bad year carries out grain he could have eaten and puts it in the ground, which is why he is weeping. The psalm does not deny that sowing costs something real; it says what the going out and the coming back have in common, and that the man who carried seed out will carry sheaves in.
settled What this mark means