Part 1 of exegesis of psalm 124:1-2
This psalm is the cathartic culmination of all the pathos and sublime that the first 4 psalms have been leading up to. I have heard it said that the Hebrews were, rather that they are very doleful during the feast seasons. Remember the suffering. Remember. Suffer. Remember. Suffer. Ausubel says "the Jewish people imposed on itself until the coming of the Messiah, a perpetual mourning for the 'temple in Jerusalem' that had been destroyed by the Romans in the year 70AD. The commemorative program of never ending grief brought from the very beginning a rabbinic ban against all choral and instrumental music in any house of prayer. This prohibition helps explain why the art of music, was allowed to languish and wither on the vine in the synagogue" (Ausubel, 220). This ban seemed to be put in place much latter during the middle ages, 5th-10th Century AD, when rabbis perceived that borrowing and mixing of cultures in the music as assimilation and profaned it. [Pictured: Templ...
