The Broken Snare and the Unshakeable Help Text: Psalm 124:6-8
Introduction: The Joy of the Close Call
There is a particular kind of joy that only comes after a last minute deliverance. It is the joy of the near miss, the close call, the narrow escape. It is the feeling of solid ground after the floodwaters have receded, the deep breath of clean air after being pulled from the smoke. The earlier verses of this psalm paint a series of terrifying pictures. Had it not been for the Lord, we would have been swallowed alive, drowned by a torrent, consumed by rage. The danger was not imaginary; it was visceral and immediate. The enemy was real, their teeth were sharp, and their traps were set.
This is the necessary backdrop for understanding the explosive gratitude in our text. This is not the polite, abstract thankfulness of someone who has never known real peril. This is the raw, exuberant cry of those who have looked death in the face and have been snatched away at the last possible moment. God delights in these kinds of deliverances because the joy that follows them is unlike any other. It is a joy that knows its own helplessness and magnifies the power of the deliverer. As Chesterton once said, "The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle, and not lose it."
The world wants us to believe that our security lies in avoiding all snares, in building our lives in such a way that we never face the fowler's trap. But the Bible teaches us a different lesson. God brings us to the brink, He allows the snare to be set, so that we might learn that our trust is not in our own cleverness to avoid the trap, but in the God who breaks the trap. This psalm is for those who know what it is to have the snare break. It is a song for delivered birds, for escaped souls. And it teaches us where our true and lasting help is to be found.
The Text
Blessed be Yahweh,
Who has not given us to be prey for their teeth.
Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper;
The snare is broken and we have escaped.
Our help is in the name of Yahweh,
Who made heaven and earth.
(Psalm 124:6-8)
Doxology for Dental Deliverance (v. 6)
We begin with a burst of praise, a doxology rooted in a graphic deliverance.
"Blessed be Yahweh, Who has not given us to be prey for their teeth." (Psalm 124:6)
The first response to deliverance is not self-congratulation but worship. Blessed be Yahweh. The imagery is savage and primal. Our enemies are depicted as ravenous beasts, and we were the intended meal. Their desire was not simply to defeat us, but to consume us, to tear us apart, to utterly destroy us. This is not the language of polite disagreement. This is the language of spiritual warfare. The apostle Peter uses similar imagery when he warns us that our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).
Notice the grammar of grace here. God has "not given us" over. This implies that if God had not actively intervened, we would have been given over. Our natural trajectory, when confronted by such feral hatred, is to become prey. We are, in ourselves, defenseless sheep before wolves. Our safety is not in our own strength or speed, but in the fact that the Shepherd did not hand us over. He stood between us and the ravening jaws. Every deliverance from sin, from demonic assault, from the wicked designs of men, is a direct result of God's active, restraining, and protecting grace. He did not permit it. Therefore, let His name be blessed.
The Broken Trap (v. 7)
The psalmist now shifts the metaphor from a wild beast to a cunning trapper, highlighting a different aspect of our peril and God's rescue.
"Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper; The snare is broken and we have escaped." (Psalm 124:7)
If the first image emphasized the raw power and fury of the enemy, this one emphasizes their craftiness and deceit. A fowler does not hunt with a lion's roar, but with a hidden trap, a subtle lure. Our enemies, both human and demonic, are masters of the snare. They lay traps of temptation, of false ideology, of compromise, of fear. The world is full of such snares, designed to entangle and capture the people of God.
And we are like the bird, small, fragile, and easily panicked. A bird caught in a net cannot free itself. The more it struggles, the more entangled it becomes. This is a picture of our utter helplessness. We cannot reason our way out of the snare. We cannot fight our way out. We are caught.
But then comes the glorious announcement: "The snare is broken." The bird did not break it. The bird was powerless. Someone else, an outside force, intervened and shattered the trap. The deliverance is sudden, complete, and decisive. One moment the bird is caught and fluttering in a panic, the next it is flashing away into the safety of the trees. This is what God does. He does not teach us how to skillfully wiggle out of the net. He breaks the net. Christ, on the cross, broke the snare of sin and death. He did not just loosen it; He shattered it. And because the snare is broken, "we have escaped." Our freedom is an accomplished fact, secured by the mighty intervention of our God.
The Foundation of All Help (v. 8)
The psalm concludes by anchoring our confidence for all future deliverance in the ultimate reality of God's identity.
"Our help is in the name of Yahweh, Who made heaven and earth." (Psalm 124:8)
This is one of the great summary statements of the Christian's confidence. Where is our help? It is not in our government, our bank accounts, our wits, or our own righteousness. "Our help is in the name of Yahweh." In the Bible, the "name" of God is not a mere label. It is the summation of His revealed character, His attributes, His power, and His covenant promises. To trust in His name is to trust in who He has revealed Himself to be: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. It is to trust in the God who keeps His promises.
But the psalmist does not stop there. He grounds the character of God in the power of God. Which Yahweh are we talking about? We are talking about the one "Who made heaven and earth." This is crucial. The doctrine of creation is not some abstract point for theologians to debate; it is intensely practical and full of comfort. Our God is not a local deity, a tribal god who is strong in one area but weak in another. He is the Creator of all things. The teeth of our enemies, the wood and cord of the snare, the ground on which the trapper stands, all of it is His creation. He made it all out of nothing.
Therefore, no problem we face can ever be bigger than our God. Is your enemy a powerful nation? God made the heavens. Is your problem a subtle and entangling sin? God made the earth and everything in it. The one who spoke the universe into existence is the one in whose name we find our help. If He can manage galaxies, He can handle your predicament. To trust in an evolutionary process is to have a helper who is making it up as he goes along. To trust in the Creator of heaven and earth is to have a helper who holds all the atoms of your problem in His hand. This is the bedrock of our security. Our help is not in a finite power, but in the infinite Creator.
Conclusion: Singing Like a Delivered Bird
This psalm moves from the "if" of mortal peril (vv. 1-5) to the "is" of divine deliverance (vv. 6-7) to the "always" of covenantal confidence (v. 8). This is the pattern of the Christian life. We will face teeth and snares. The world, the flesh, and the devil will see to that. We will have moments where we feel the trap closing and hear the roar of the lion.
In those moments, we are not to look inward to our own strength, but upward to our Deliverer. We are to remember the broken snares of the past. Like Israel, we must "now say" what God has done. We must recount His faithfulness. Every time God has delivered you, it was a down payment on all His future deliverances.
And we must look to the ultimate broken snare. At the cross, the greatest trap ever laid by the fowler of Hell was sprung on the Lord Jesus. Satan thought he had captured the Son of God in the snare of death. But on the third day, that snare was broken to pieces. The bird flew free. And because we are in Him, we fly free with Him. The snare of eternal death is broken, and we have escaped.
Therefore, our confidence is not wishful thinking. It is grounded in the character and power of the God who made all things. He is our help. He is our security. Let us then live not as panicked birds, but as birds who know the snare is broken. And you haven't lived until you have heard delivered birds singing Psalm 124. Let us sing our hearts out, for our help is in the name of Yahweh, who made heaven and earth.