“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream” (Psalm 126:1). If your Bible has a footnote there, the note will say something like, “or When the Lord brought back those who returned to Zion.” It’s because of this interesting Hebrew phrase: בְּשׁוּב יְהוָה אֶת־שִׁיבַת beshuv yhwh eth-shivath, which literally means “when Yahweh returned that which was returned.” It is a phrase that is purposely ambiguous: it could be talking about things that have been returned, or about people who have been returned. Sometimes it refers to when you’ve lost everything, and then God restored your possessions back to you once more. And sometimes – perhaps a bit more often – it means that you yourself were lost, and then the Lord brought you back home.

In Moses’ last great oration, he had warned the people of Israel that if in the future they turned away from God to worship idols, they would end up in captivity in a foreign land; and if they then turned back to God with all their hearts, “then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the Lord your God has scattered you” (Deuteronomy 30:3). Jeremiah echoed this promise, when the Exile was very nearly upon them: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the Lord, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their ancestors” (Jeremiah 30:3; see also 30:18, 32:44, 33:7, 33:26; Job 42:10; Psalm 14:7, 53:6, 85:1; Amos 9:14).

It is rather surprising to discover that God will also restore the fortunes of the Ammonites (Jeremiah 49:6). And also the fortunes of Samaria and even Sodom. What!? Yes. In Ezekiel’s great accusation against the sinfulness of Jerusalem, he noted that the people of Jerusalem used to scorn the people of Sodom for their wickedness (Ezekiel 16:56), but their own evils had become worse than Sodom’s or Samaria’s ever were (16:48, 51). And in the end, “I will restore their fortunes, the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters and the fortunes of Samaria and her daughters, and I will restore your own fortunes along with theirs” (16:53). The restoration God has in mind embraces not only us, but also the ones we scorn.

As for the people of Judah, it was like being in a dream as they hiked the last few miles of the long road home after decades of captivity in Babylon: here they were at last, the Lord had brought them home to Zion! “Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy” (Psalm 126:2). And yet, when they made it back to Jerusalem, the place was a wreck, everyone was exhausted, and they were low on food. And so, when the Lord had restored their fortunes (that is, had brought them back home), they rejoiced (126:3) and then prayed “Restore our fortunes, O Lord” (126:4) – because they still had to eat. Yet the psalm closes with a strong note of confidence that God would take care of that: “Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves” (126:6).

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We get ourselves so lost, O Lord; we feel like strangers in a strange land, exiles far from where we belong. Bring us home, O Lord: restore our fortunes, we pray. We will laugh and rejoice and offer glad shouts of joy, as you bring us to the fulfillment of the harvest time.

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