Psalms 123
Psalm 123 carries the heading A Song of degrees - one of the fifteen Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120-134), the short pilgrim songs sung on the way up to Jerusalem and the temple. It is among the briefest of them, just four verses, and at its centre is a single, unforgettable gesture: the lifting of the eyes. Where the psalm just before it (Psalm 122) sang of arriving at the house of the LORD, this one is all upward look - the prayer of someone who has run out of places to turn on earth and turns his face to heaven instead.3
The first two verses build one extended picture. Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens (v. 1) - the gaze goes up, past the horizon, to the One enthroned above. Then the psalmist reaches for an image from ordinary household life to say exactly what that look is like: Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us (v. 2). A servant in that world watched the master's hand - for the gesture of command, for provision, for protection, for the signal that mercy was coming. The whole self was bent toward that hand in patient, attentive dependence. So, the psalmist says, are our eyes toward God.
The last two verses tell us why the eyes are lifted in the first place. Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us (v. 3) - the one petition of the psalm, doubled, the way you repeat a thing when it matters too much to say once. And the reason: for we are exceedingly filled with contempt. Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud (vv. 3-4). The pilgrim is not in physical danger so much as ground down by scorn - the sneer of the comfortable, the contempt of the proud, an attack on the soul rather than the body. Against that wearying flood he sets the upward look and the oldest prayer there is. The New Testament will put that same cry - have mercy - on the lips of the blind and the broken who come to Jesus, and will show the One they cried to as Himself the Servant who was despised and rejected, and who bore the contempt all the way to a cross.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 123:1-2 · A Song of degreesUnto Thee Lift I Up Mine Eyes
1Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens. 2Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.
The psalm begins with a movement of the body that is also a movement of the soul: Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens. Before a word of petition, before any naming of the trouble, there is simply the lifting of the eyes. It matters where a person looks when they are pressed. The natural pull, under scorn, is to look down - at the dust, at one's own feet, at the faces of those doing the scorning. The psalmist does neither. He lifts his gaze clean off the horizontal world of human approval and contempt and sends it upward, to the One that dwellest in the heavens. The phrase is deliberate. God is not pictured as one more figure in the crowd whose opinion must be managed; He is enthroned above it all, beyond the reach of the proud, untroubled by the powers that trouble the psalmist. To lift the eyes to Him is already to be partly free - to have remembered that the loudest voices in the room are not the highest, and that there is a throne above every throne. The whole psalm flows out of this first deliberate look up.1
Now the psalmist tells us exactly what kind of look he means, with an image drawn from the most ordinary corner of daily life: Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God (v. 2). Picture the scene. A servant stands at the edge of the room, eyes never leaving the master's hand, because in that world the hand carried everything - the gesture that gave a command, the hand that meted out provision, the hand that defended and the hand that withheld. The servant who is paying attention catches the smallest motion and is ready before a word is spoken. Notice the qualities folded into the picture. It is dependence - the servant has nothing of his own and waits entirely on what the hand will give. It is attentiveness - the eyes do not wander; the whole self is bent toward that one point. And it is patience - the servant waits as long as the waiting takes, until the hand moves. The psalmist takes that posture and turns it heavenward: this is how our eyes are toward God - fixed, dependent, waiting on His hand for everything, and unwilling to look away until mercy comes.3
Psalm 123:3-4Have Mercy Upon Us
3Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us: for we are exceedingly filled with contempt. 4Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud.
After the long, patient gaze of the first two verses, the psalm finally opens its mouth - and it asks for one thing, twice: Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us (v. 3). There is no list of requests, no spelling out of remedies, no instructions to God about how the rescue should be arranged. Just the bare, doubled cry for mercy. The repetition is not padding; it is the way the heart speaks when a single thing matters too much to say only once. A drowning person does not compose a paragraph. And notice how much the prayer leaves in God's hands. The servant of verse 2 watched the master's hand without presuming to dictate what it should do; here the psalmist asks for mercy and leaves the form of it to God. This is prayer reduced to its essence - not the management of an outcome, but the casting of the whole self on the goodness of the One who dwells in the heavens. It is the shortest possible prayer and, it turns out, one of the truest: the soul that has lifted its eyes can finally only ask the One it is looking at to be merciful, and trust Him to know what mercy requires.
The psalmist now names what has driven him to the lifted eyes and the doubled cry: for we are exceedingly filled with contempt. Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud (vv. 3-4). This is not an assault on the body but on the soul - the slow, grinding weight of being looked down on. Twice the psalmist says exceedingly filled, the way you say a cup has gone past the brim; the contempt has accumulated until there is no more room for it. And he is precise about its source. It comes from those that are at ease - the comfortable, the untroubled, the ones with the leisure and the security to sneer - and from the proud, whose contempt for others is the natural overflow of their high opinion of themselves. There is a particular bitterness to scorn that comes from the comfortable: it is the disdain of those who have never had to lift their eyes anywhere because nothing has ever pressed them. Against that wearying flood the psalmist has no weapon of his own, and he reaches for none. He does not return the contempt, does not argue, does not try to climb to a place of ease himself. He simply lets the contempt drive him further up - into the one place where the scorn of the proud carries no weight at all, the hand of the LORD who holds mercy.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 123 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the repeated verb chanan (vv. 2-3, “have mercy / be gracious”), for ayin (v. 1, the “eyes” that are lifted), and for the word buz (vv. 3-4, the “contempt” the soul is filled with).
- Psalm 123 ↔ Matthew 20 · Luke 18 · Hebrews 12Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Psalm 123 to the New Testament - the cry have mercy upon us (v. 3) taken up by the blind men (Matt. 20:30-31) and the publican (Luke 18:13), and the contempt of the proud (v. 4) borne by the One who endured the cross, despising the shame (Heb. 12:2).
- Psalm 123 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 123 - the force of the servant-watching-the-master's-hand image in verse 2, the doubled plea for mercy in verse 3, and the meaning of the “contempt” and “scorning” that fill the soul in verses 3-4.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Unto Thee Lift I Up Mine Eyes
- Psalm 121:1-2I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD.A neighbouring Song of Ascents with the same opening gesture - the lifted eyes that look for help from God alone.
- John 5:19The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do.The servant’s eyes on the master’s hand of verse 2, lived out perfectly - the Son watching the Father.
- Psalm 25:15Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.The same fixed gaze as verse 1 - the eyes that will not turn from the LORD.
- Isaiah 50:4he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.The attentive, dependent Servant of verse 2 - eyes and ears turned to the One who directs Him.
Have Mercy Upon Us
- Luke 18:13God be merciful to me a sinner.The publican who would not lift up his eyes prays the psalm’s cry - and goes home justified.
- Matthew 20:30-31Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David.The blind men by the road cry the doubled plea of verse 3 almost word for word to Jesus.
- Isaiah 53:3He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.The contempt of the proud in verse 4 borne by the Servant who was despised in our place.
- Hebrews 12:2who... endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.The One enthroned in heaven (v. 1) first went down into the contempt (v. 4) and was lifted up through it.