Psalms 124 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Attributed to David, about 1000 BC, though sung by later generations remembering national rescues including the return from exile
Location
Israel as a nation, with imagery drawn from flash floods in desert valleys and from bird trapping
Audience
The gathered people of Israel, led in a call-and-response by a worship leader
Situation
A leader calls the whole assembly to say together that if God had not been on their side, enemies would have swallowed them alive. The psalm pictures the danger as a torrent of water and then as a hunter's snare that has just been broken.
Key Background
The opening line invites the crowd to repeat it, which points to public worship where a leader sang a line and the congregation answered, a normal practice at Israel's festivals. Flash floods are a real hazard in the dry valleys of Judah, where a storm miles away can send a wall of water down a dry riverbed within minutes, so the image would have been immediate to listeners. Bird catching with a spring-loaded net was a common trade, and a bird escaping only because the net itself broke makes the point that the rescue was not the bird's doing.