NOTES for Psa 129

The trials that befell the people of Israel were great both in ancient times and in recent history. Yet despite everything, the blessing given by God to Abraham and his descendants remained alive and effective.

Can we apply the psalmist’s words only to the destiny of Israel according to the flesh? For not only Abraham’s physical descendants, but all the faithful regardless of ethnic origin, may be called his descendants. It is hard not to notice that the destinies of the faithful in Old Testament and New Testament times have much in common. Accordingly, hostility toward Old Testament Israel and toward the Church, the people of God of the New Covenant, comes from a single source.

It is true that even now many refuse to understand this. But Christians who do not want to acknowledge it undermine their own roots. Meanwhile, in our own day the boundary between anti-Christianity and antisemitism is disappearing, and hatred increasingly joins Jews and Christians into a single image of the “enslaver of the whole world.”

And therefore the words of warning to those who hate Zion sound not only formidable, but also timely.