to kneel · verb, qal passive participle, masculine singular absolute
LORD
יְהוָ֑הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
given
נְתָנָ֥נוּne.ta.Na.nu
H5414
to give · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix
prey
טֶ֝֗רֶףTe.ref
H2964
something torn · noun, common masculine singular absolute
teeth
לְשִׁנֵּיהֶֽםle.shi.nei.Hem
H8127
a tooth (as sharp) · preposition + noun, common feminine dual construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 118:13 Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall: but the LORD helped me.
Exodus 15:9-10 The enemy said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my lust shall be satisfied upon them; I will draw my sword, my hand…
Psalms 145:5-6 I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works.
Isaiah 10:14-19 And my hand hath found as a nest the riches of the people: and as one gathereth eggs that are left, have I gathered all the earth; and there…
Psalms 17:9 From the wicked that oppress me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about.
1 Samuel 26:20 Now therefore, let not my blood fall to the earth before the face of the LORD: for the king of Israel is come out to seek a flea, as when on…
Judges 5:30-31 Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colou…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 124:6–end
Here the psalmist further magnifies the great deliverance God had lately wrought for them.
I. That their hearts might be the more enlarged in thankfulness to him (Psa 124:6): Blessed be the Lord. God is the author of all our deliverances, and therefore he must have the glory of them. We rob him of his due if we do not return thanks to him. And we are the more obliged to praise him because we had such a narrow escape. We were delivered, 1. Like a lamb out of the very jaws of a beast of prey: God has not given us as a prey to their teeth, intimating that they had no power over God's people but what was given them from above. They could not be a prey to their teeth unless God gave them up, and…
Blessed be the Lord,.... Here begins the church's thanksgiving for deliverance from all their enemies, their proud persecutors; and from all afflictions and troubles by them; which they could never have been delivered from, had not the Lord appeared for them; and therefore it is but just that he should have all the glory of it, and be blessed and praised on account thereof;
who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth; the teeth of wicked men are like spears and arrows, like swords and knives, to devour good men; their passions are strong, and their desires very vehement after their ruin; and, if suffered, the saints would fall an easy prey to them: but God will not give them up to them,…
Psalm 124:6-8
6. Blessed be Jehovah! who gave us not for a prey to their teeth [79] 7. Our soul has been rescued as a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare has been broken, and we have been delivered [80] 8. Our help is in the name of Jehovah, who made heaven and earth.
6. Blessed be Jehovah! The Psalmist now exhorts the godly to a grateful acknowledgment of the divine goodness, and as it were puts words into their mouth. Here also he shows by another similitude, that it would have been all over with them had not God succoured them; affirming that they were delivered not otherwise than if some one had plucked the prey from the teeth of a wild and cruel beast. Of the same import is…
The Church Fathers
Let them escape the water without substance, and say, "Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth" [Psalm 124:6]. For the hunters were following, and had placed a bait in their trap. What bait? The sweetness of this life, so that each man for the sake of the sweetness of this life may thrust his head into iniquity, and be caught in the trap. Not they, in whom the Lord was, they who say, "If the Lord Himself had not been in us;" they have not been taken in the trap. Let the Lord be in thee, and thou wilt not be taken in the trap.
What then is our duty, my brothers, for the sake of these things, but to praise and give thanks to God, the king of all? And let us first exclaim in the words of the psalms, "Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us over as a prey to their teeth." Let us keep the feast in that way that he has dedicated for us unto salvation—the holy day Easter—so that we may celebrate the feast which is in heaven with the angels. Thus anciently, the people of the Jews, when they came out of affliction into a state of ease, kept the feast, singing a song of praise for their victory. So also the people in the time of Esther, because they were delivered from the edict of death, kept a feast to the Lord, considering it a feast, returning thanks to the Lord and praising him for having changed their condition. Therefore let us, performing our vows to the Lord and confessing our sins, keep the feast to the Lord, in conversation, moral conduct and manner of life; praising our Lord, who has chastened us a little but has not utterly failed or forsaken us or altogether kept silence from us. For if, having brought us out of the deceitful and famous Egypt of the opponents of Christ, he has caused us to pass through many trials and afflictions, as it were in the wilderness, to his holy church, so that from hence, according to custom, we can send to you, as well as receive letters from you; on this account especially I both give thanks to God myself and exhort you to thank him with me and on my behalf, this being the apostolic custom, which these opponents of Christ, and the schismatics, wished to put an end to and to break off. The Lord did not permit it but both renewed and preserved that which was ordained by him through the apostle, so that we may keep the feast together, and together keep holy day, according to the tradition and commandment of the fathers.
We have sung a psalm: Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth [Psalm 124:6]. Due gratitude for the gifts of God. Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. It is certainly a voice of gratitude, and worthy gratitude. And when are human thanks sufficient for such divine gifts? When in this place the most blessed martyr shed sacred blood, I do not know whether such a crowd of raging people was here, as there is now a multitude of praising people. I say again—for it delights me indeed, to see people gathered in the house of the Lord with the utmost piety in this place, and to compare times with times—hence I say again and repeat, and commend to your senses, with as much devotion as I can; when in this place the most blessed martyr shed sacred blood, I do not know whether such a crowd of raging people was here, as there is now a multitude of praising people. But even if there was, blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. When they were killing, they believed they had won; they were being conquered by those dying, and they rejoiced. If they were conquered, surely they raged. Therefore, the crowd of raging people has departed, and the multitude of praising people has succeeded. Let the multitude of praising people say, say: Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. To whose teeth? To the teeth of enemies, to the teeth of the impious, to the teeth of the persecutors of Jerusalem, to the teeth of Babylon, to the teeth of the hostile city, to the teeth of the crowd raging in crimes, to the teeth of the crowd persecuting the Lord, abandoning the Creator, turning to the creature, worshipping what is made by hand, despising the One by whom it was made. Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. The voice of the martyrs is: surely it is the voice of those who preferred to be killed for the name of Christ, rather than live by denying Christ. Therefore, if they wanted to kill, these were killed; they did what they wanted, these suffered; how: Blessed be the Lord, who did not give us as prey to their teeth? What kind of gratitude is: Blessed be the Lord, who did not give us as prey to their teeth? Because the persecutors did not wish to kill, but to devour, that is, to transfer into their own body. They were pagans, they were impious, they were worshippers…
Dictionary and topics
Praise · Is due to God on account of: Deliverance — Is due to God on account of: Deliverance
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
After the fact of the divine succour has been expressed, in Psa 124:6 follows the thanksgiving for it, and in Psa 124:7 the joyful shout of the rescued one. In Psa 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 Psa 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 Hos 11:11; Pro 23:32; Job 14:2, instead of the syntactically more usual כּצּפור) escaped out of the snare of him w…
The enemies of God’s people, like lions or bears who tear their prey with their teeth (see 57:4; Prov 28:15), had their mouths shut by the Lord (Dan 6:22).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 124:6
Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.
Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. Leaving the metaphor of a boiling flood, he compares the adversaries of Israel to wild beasts who desired to make the godly their prey. Their teeth are prepared to tear, and they regard the godly as their victims. The Lord is heartily praised for not permitting his servants to be devoured when they were between the jaws of the raging ones. It implies that none can harm us till the Lord permits: we cannot be their prey unless the Lord gives us up to them, and that our loving Lord will never do. Hitherto he has refused permission to any foe to destroy us, b…
