Saturday, November 8, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Isaiah 65-66, Jeremiah 1-7
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 129
Devotional Thought
The closing chapters of Isaiah and the opening chapters of Jeremiah belong to the darkest hours of Judah’s life, and yet they are set in the same book where God declares, “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.” Isaiah 65 and 66 show a God who stretches out His hands all day long to a rebellious people, a people who provoke Him to His face by burning incense on bricks and sitting among the graves. Yet in the same breath He promises a remnant, a seed out of Jacob, and a peace like a river. Then Jeremiah 1 opens with the young prophet’s call in the thirteenth year of Josiah, and God’s words to him are a warning and a mercy at once: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.” The people have traded the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns, and Jeremiah 7 thunders at the gates of the temple where they chant “The temple of the LORD” while their hands are full of oppression.
In the middle of that long rebellion stands Psalm 129, a pilgrim song that remembers the affliction of Israel “from my youth.” The psalmist is not being abstract. He is recalling Egypt, the brick kilns and the whips, and then the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians—one empire after another that “plowed upon my back” and made “long their furrows.” The image is brutal and agricultural: the people of God as a field, torn open by an enemy’s plow. Yet the psalm turns on a single hinge: “The LORD is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.” The plowman is gone. The cords that bound the yoke are severed. The oppressor is left like grass on a housetop—sprouting in shallow soil, withering before it can be gathered, so that no reaper fills his hand and no passerby can even say, “The blessing of the LORD be upon you.”
We read this in November, when the year itself seems to be plowed under. The fields are bare stubble, the garden is blackened by frost, and the days close in early. It is a season that can feel like furrows on the back. Many of us carry our own Egypts—years of a hard marriage, a prodigal child, a body that will not heal, a church that has known division. The psalm does not pretend the plowing never happened. It says “many a time.” But it also says “yet they have not prevailed.” The righteous LORD has cut the cords. What looked like the end of the field was only the turning of the soil, and the One who plows is not finally the enemy but the Husbandman who prepares a harvest He will gather in His own time.
Reflection
- Where in your own life has an old affliction left “long furrows”—and can you name one way the LORD has already cut asunder a cord that once bound you?
- Psalm 129 refuses to bless the wicked or wish them well; how does that honesty about enemies sit alongside Jesus’ command to love them, and what does it teach us about trusting God with vengeance?
Prayer
Righteous LORD, we come to You as a field that has been plowed many a time from our youth. You have seen the furrows on our backs, the cords drawn tight, the reapers who meant to gather us for their own gain. We bless You that You are righteous, and that You have cut asunder the cords of the wicked. Do not let the old wounds harden us. Make the broken ground ready for Your seed, and let the grass on the housetop wither while Your harvest ripens in us. In the name of Jesus, who bore the plow for our sake. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 129:1 — “Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say:”