The Futility of Hating God's City Text: Psalm 129:5-8
Introduction: The Pilgrim's Prayer Against the Rootless
Psalm 129 is one of the Songs of Ascent, a collection of psalms that the Hebrew pilgrims would sing as they made their way up to Jerusalem, up to Zion, for the great feasts. These are songs for a journey, and every Christian is on such a journey. We are pilgrims, and our destination is the Heavenly Jerusalem, the Zion of God. But as these opening verses of the psalm remind us, this pilgrimage is not a stroll through a park. It is a march through enemy territory. "Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth," Israel says. The world has always hated the people of God, from the youth of the covenant people to this present hour. The plowers have plowed upon our backs and made their furrows long.
But the testimony of the pilgrim is that the enemies of God have not prevailed. The Lord is righteous; He cuts the cords of the wicked. And it is on the basis of this righteous character of God that the pilgrim, having recounted the long history of affliction and deliverance, turns to prayer. But it is not the kind of prayer that makes modern, sentimental Christians comfortable. It is a prayer for the downfall of God's enemies. It is an imprecatory prayer. This is not a prayer of personal vindictiveness, a petty desire for revenge. This is a prayer for the glory of God, a prayer that His justice would be manifest and that His kingdom would advance without hindrance. It is a prayer that aligns our desires with God's declared will.
Many today want to quarantine these psalms. They treat them like an embarrassing relative at a family reunion. They want to affirm God's love but deny His wrath. But you cannot have the God of the Bible on your own terms. To love what God loves is to hate what God hates. To pray for the success of Zion is, by logical necessity, to pray for the failure of those who hate Zion. This psalm teaches us how to think about and pray about the opposition we face. It gives us a divine lens through which to view the fleeting, rootless, and fruitless nature of all rebellion against the living God.
The Text
Let all who hate Zion
Be put to shame and turned backward;
Let them be like grass upon the rooftops,
Which dries up before it grows up;
With which the reaper does not fill his hand,
Nor the binder of sheaves the fold of his garment;
And those who pass by will not say,
"The blessing of Yahweh be upon you;
We bless you in the name of Yahweh."
(Psalm 129:5-8 LSB)
The Great Reversal (v. 5)
The prayer begins with a petition for a great and public reversal.
"Let all who hate Zion be put to shame and turned backward;" (Psalm 129:5)
First, who are these who hate Zion? In the Old Testament, Zion was the city of David, the place where God set His name. It was the center of Israel's worship, government, and culture. To hate Zion was to hate the people of God and, more fundamentally, to hate the God of the people. In the New Covenant, Zion is the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the assembly of the saints, the city of the living God (Heb. 12:22). Therefore, to hate Zion today is to hate the Church, to despise her Lord, and to set oneself against the purposes of God in the world. This is not a small thing; it is cosmic treason.
The psalmist prays for two things to happen to them. First, that they be "put to shame." This is not a prayer for them to feel a little embarrassed. The biblical concept of shame is a public reality. It means to be exposed, disgraced, and shown to be on the wrong side of history and, more importantly, on the wrong side of God. It is a prayer that their proud rebellion would be revealed for the foolish and futile thing that it is. It is a prayer that their boasts would turn to ash in their mouths.
Second, he prays that they be "turned backward." This is a military image. It pictures an advancing army, confident in its strength, being suddenly thrown into confusion and forced into a humiliating retreat. The enemies of Zion are always advancing. They are always plotting, always scheming, always confident that this time, this new strategy, this cultural moment will be the one that finally eradicates the people of God. The psalmist prays that all their forward momentum would be broken and reversed. It is a prayer that God would turn their charge into a rout.
The Rooftop Rebellion (v. 6)
The psalmist then moves to a vivid agricultural metaphor to describe the pathetic nature of this hatred for Zion.
"Let them be like grass upon the rooftops, Which dries up before it grows up;" (Psalm 129:6 LSB)
In the ancient world, the roofs of houses were often flat and covered with a layer of packed earth. After a rain, it was common for a thin layer of grass to sprout up quickly. It looked for a moment like a vibrant, green lawn. But it was a complete illusion. Because it had no soil, no depth, no root system, the moment the sun came out in its strength, the grass would wither and die. It was a picture of fleeting, superficial life that had no substance and no future.
This is the destiny of those who hate Zion. Their movements, their ideologies, their rebellions may spring up quickly. They may look impressive for a season. They may capture the headlines and the institutions. They may appear to be the future. But they have no root. They are not planted in the soil of God's reality. They are a flash in the pan, a rooftop phenomenon. The psalmist says it "dries up before it grows up." The Hebrew is even more striking; it withers before one can pull it up. It is so insubstantial that it dies before it can even be weeded. This is a prayer of profound theological confidence. It is not whistling in the dark. It is a statement of fact about the nature of reality. All opposition to God is a rooftop rebellion, destined to wither under the sun of His righteousness.
An Unharvestable Crop (v. 7)
The metaphor continues, emphasizing the utter worthlessness and futility of their efforts.
"With which the reaper does not fill his hand, Nor the binder of sheaves the fold of his garment;" (Psalm 129:7 LSB)
The rooftop grass is not just short-lived; it is completely useless. It produces nothing of value. A reaper goes out to a field to gather a harvest, to bring in something substantial that can feed a family. He fills his hand, and then his arms, with the stalks of grain. The binder of sheaves follows him, gathering the grain into bundles. This is a picture of productive, fruitful labor.
But no one goes to the roof to harvest. There is nothing there. You cannot fill your hand with it, let alone your arms. The psalmist is praying that the life's work of those who hate Zion would amount to this: nothing. He is praying that all their frantic activity, all their organizing, all their publishing, all their legislating, all their protesting would, in the final analysis, produce an unharvestable crop. Their lives will be a flurry of pointless motion, resulting in a handful of dust. They labor for the wind. This is the curse of all who set themselves against the Lord and His Anointed. They are busy, but they are barren.
The Withheld Blessing (v. 8)
The psalm concludes with the logical and covenantal consequence of such a barren life. They are cut off from the community of blessing.
"And those who pass by will not say, 'The blessing of Yahweh be upon you; We bless you in the name of Yahweh.'" (Psalm 129:8 LSB)
This verse gives us a beautiful little window into the culture of ancient Israel. When people would walk by a field during harvest time, it was customary to call out a blessing on the workers. We see a perfect example of this in the book of Ruth, when Boaz comes to his field and says to the reapers, "Yahweh be with you!" And they reply, "Yahweh bless you!" (Ruth 2:4). This was more than just a polite "how-do-you-do." It was a recognition of covenantal solidarity. It was an acknowledgment that the fruitful harvest was a gift from God, and the workers were laboring under His favor. It was a way of saying, "We are in this together, under the blessing of our God."
The prayer of the psalmist is that the enemies of Zion would be excluded from this circle of blessing. When people pass by their life's work, their rooftop patch of withered grass, no one will say, "The blessing of Yahweh be upon you." Why not? Because it would be a lie. It would be a contradiction in terms. There is no blessing there. Their labor is cursed because they themselves are outside the covenant of grace. They have chosen to hate Zion, the very place from which God's blessing flows into the world. To pray this is to pray that God's world would make sense. It is to ask that the clear lines of the covenant, the lines between blessing and cursing, life and death, be made visible for all to see.
Conclusion: Praying Against the Rooftops Today
So how does a New Covenant Christian pray this psalm? We pray it with the understanding that the enemies are, first and foremost, spiritual. Our battle is not against flesh and blood. But spiritual forces manifest themselves through ideologies and actions in the real world. We pray it against the spiritual forces of wickedness that animate the hatred directed at the Church of Jesus Christ.
When we see movements arise that are predicated on hatred for God's created order, for His law, for His people, we can and should pray this psalm. We pray that they would be put to shame and turned backward. We pray that their seemingly impressive growth would be revealed for the rootless, rooftop phenomenon that it is. We pray that all their efforts would come to nothing and that they would produce no harvest. And we pray that they would be visibly cut off from the blessing of God, so that others might see and fear.
Is this a prayer for their damnation? Not necessarily. The most effective way for an enemy of Zion to be "turned backward" is for him to be converted. Saul of Tarsus was charging hard against Zion, and God turned him backward on the road to Damascus, put his previous life's work to shame, and transformed him into the greatest harvester the Church has ever known. Our first prayer for our enemies should be for their conversion. But if they will not be converted, if they persist in their hatred of Zion, then our prayer must be that they be stopped. We pray that their plans would fail and their influence would wither. We pray this not out of malice, but out of love for the Church, love for the truth, and love for the glory of God.
We are pilgrims on the ascent to the heavenly city. Along the way, we will encounter those who hate that city and all it stands for. Let us not be timid. Let us have the confidence to pray as the saints of old prayed, trusting that our righteous God will indeed cause the rooftop rebellions of men to wither and blow away, while His own city, His beloved Zion, will stand forever.