Today’s Passage: Psalm 123
This is another of the songs sung on the road up to Jerusalem, and once again the eyes are lifted, though not to the hills this time. They are lifted higher, to the One enthroned in heaven. The whole psalm turns on a single picture: a servant watching the hand of a master, waiting on the smallest sign of mercy, while contempt and scorn press in from every side. Let that one picture do its quiet work, and do not weigh it down with more than it means to carry.
As you read, hold this: Our eyes are on the LORD our God until He shows us mercy.
Psalm 123:1-2 (BSB)
A song of ascents. ¹ I lift up my eyes to You, the One enthroned in heaven. ² As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes are on the LORD our God until He shows us mercy.
Context Eyes on a hand
In the old households a servant kept his eyes on the master’s hand, watching for a small sign, a gesture rather than a spoken command. The psalm takes that ordinary watching and lifts it toward God. What it describes is not a passing glance but a steady, held gaze, one that stays fixed and does not look away until He shows us mercy.
It opens with the lifting of the eyes toward the One enthroned in heaven, and then it hands us the picture to make it plain. avadim, pronounced ah-vah-DEEM. Strong's H5650, servants, slaves, bondsmen. The word itself is an ordinary one, but the watching it describes is anything but ordinary. Eyes fixed on a hand, waiting for the smallest signal to come, and that steady waiting is itself the prayer. look to the hand of their master, and a maidservant looks to the hand of her mistress, and it is that same patient watching the psalm asks of us. Our eyes stay right there, on the LORD, until His mercy comes.
Psalm 123:3-4 (BSB)
³ Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy, for we have endured much contempt. ⁴ We have endured much scorn from the arrogant, much contempt from the proud.
Have mercy, and have mercy again. The cry comes twice over before the trouble behind it is ever named, and only then does the naming come: contempt and scorn, the arrogant and the proud. It is a weight already borne, endured long before this prayer was prayed, and through all of it the eyes never once leave the hand.
Study notes The same gaze, aimed at Jesus
The letter to the Hebrews takes up this same watching and names the very One our eyes are meant to land upon.
"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:2 (BSB)
He endured the shame first, and then He sat down at the right hand of God. And so our eyes are on the LORD our God until He shows us mercy.
Our eyes are on the LORD our God until He shows us mercy.