“the trap broke, we flew free”

Ps. 124:7

How do we respond to trauma? Among the multiple helpful approaches developed over time by cultures that endure crises and challenges, poetry remains a constant. 

Whoever wrote the Psalms and especially these fifteen Psalms of Ascent was most likely responding to the greater recent crisis that the Jewish people had lived through: The destruction of the first temple and the exile to Babylon.  

Even most classical commentators of the Psalms, such as Rashi, attribute these chapters to this period. 

Today’s psalm, the 5th of the 15th Ascent psalms, backs this theory up in a significant way. It’s a dramatic poem of gratitude to God for preventing the complete devastation of the Jewish people. At least some of us survived. And had it not been for God’s choice - “we would all have been swallowed alive.” 

The main motif of relief is a bird, free to fly from its cage, once the cage was broken. It’s a curious metaphor that caught the attention of many readers over the ages, and remains salient and troubling, today:

נַפְשֵׁ֗נוּ כְּצִפּ֥וֹר נִמְלְטָה֮ מִפַּ֢ח י֫וֹקְשִׁ֥ים הַפַּ֥ח נִשְׁבָּ֗ר וַאֲנַ֥חְנוּ נִמְלָֽטְנוּ׃

Our souls like a bird escaped from the fowler’s trap;

The trap broke and we escaped.

Ps.124:7

What’s the trap in this metaphor, how does it break, and who is, and how are we the bird?  

Readers sought theological, historical, spiritual and political ways to make sense of this line. 

Rabbi David Kimchi, living in 12th century Italy, wrote that 

“Just as the bird cannot escape the trap containing it unless it is broken, so, too, Israel cannot escape the clutches of the nations restraining us without God’s help.”

The 6th Century CE collection of earlier commentaries, known as Midrash Shemot Rabbah  derives an imagined map of Jewish exiles based on these words:

“Our soul, like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the trappers” (Psalms 124:7). This is analogous to a dove that was sitting in its nest. A wicked serpent saw it and sought to ascend to it. It fled from it to another place. The serpent ascended and sat in its nest. The nest caught fire and the serpent was burned. The bird flew and sat on the roof. When the serpent and the nest were burned, they said to the bird: ‘How long will you fly from place to place?’ It went from the roof and found itself a fine, excellent nest and settled in it.

So it was for Israel when they left Egypt.”

Many have imagined, like this 1,500 year old text, that the bird will find a permanent safe nest. But perhaps that seems to be an ongoing quest and a national yearning for a nest that will resist the ravages of resistance, in whatever form of serpent or fire, traumas and troubles. 

There are also those who read this as an invitation for our own souls to flee the cages that contain our aspirations. Whatever circumstances break open, for just a moment, our ego’s hold on the soul, allows our soul to soar free and safe in the world - if only for a fleeting flight time. Where does our soul go next? There’s a Hasidic story about an old rabbi who was in despair about the violence and longing for peace, and when he walked out of the Synagogue after a particular potent prayer, bumped into the wall and his thick glasses smashed into smithereens. His face lit up and he exclaimed “the trap broken, we flew free!”

During these difficult days of death and destruction, displacement and despair - we hear these words, feel the flight longing to emerge from our souls, and long for the cruel cages of fear and rage to break down, wide open. Maybe the dove of peace is in one of those cages, waiting, eager, just like us, to fly, free, guilty, grieving, grateful to be alive?

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