Psalms
Chapter 129
Israel looks back on a long history of being attacked and says that the attacks never destroyed her. The psalm pictures that suffering as plow marks cut across a back, and credits the LORD with cutting the ropes that held His people. It ends with a wish that everyone who hates Zion would fail like grass on a rooftop, which dries up before anyone can harvest it.
Plain reading written for preteens. Clear and complete, at about a fifth grade reading level.
Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say:
1Since I was young, enemies have hurt me again and again. Let Israel say it out loud.
2Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me.
2Since I was young, they have hurt me again and again. But they have never beaten me.
3The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.
3They cut across my back like men plowing a field. They made the cuts long and deep.
4The LORD is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.
4The LORD does what is right. He cut the ropes that wicked men used to tie me up.
5Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion.
5May everyone who hates Zion, the city of God's people, be shamed and driven back.
6Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up:
6May they be like grass that sprouts on a flat roof. It dries up before it can grow.
Houses there had flat roofs covered with packed dirt. Seeds blew up there and sprouted, but the soil was too thin, so the grass died young.
7Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.
7A man cutting grain cannot fill his hand with it. No one can gather an armful of it.
8Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the LORD be upon you: we bless you in the name of the LORD.
8And no one walking past says to them, "May the LORD bless you. We bless you in the LORD's name."
People passing a harvest would call out a blessing to the workers, and the workers would answer back. Rooftop grass never gets harvested, so no one ever says it.
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