Thou broughtest us into the net; thou laidst affliction upon our loins.
Psalm 66 belongs to the experience of the Jews returning from Babylonian captivity, with mixed emotions of joy, sorrow, and anxiety surrounding the building and dedication of the second temple and its triumphs. It is a song of prayer and praise sung on a moonlit mountainside overlooking pilgrim tents and Beeroth with Zion to the south, moving from trembling emotion to triumphant joy. It describes severe oppression as being caught as in a net and burdened with affliction upon the loins, a picture extended in the next verse to being trampled by men riding over their heads and passing through fire and water.
God himself brings his people into this distress and lays affliction upon them, as a chastening that he sends or controls. He does this to test and refine his people and their faith, as silver is tried in a refining fire. Though the trials may feel severe, God knows the need of his people and limits each test to what his grace enables them to bear. The trial is part of God's purpose that leads toward deliverance, bringing his people out into a wealthy place of abundance.
The verse sets human frailty, weakness, and utter need alongside God's great strength, love, and mercy, and as a remembered verse it gives keeping power in times of trouble. Hardship is endured with God through prayer, by keeping the Lord before him and relying on prayer instead of giving up in discouragement, with the assurance that God does not turn away prayer nor withhold mercy. The surrounding passage serves as encouragement and ground for faith in institutional distress, such as the threatened failure of a mission institution, bringing light in perplexity and confidence in God's deliverance.
Psalm 66 belongs to the experience of the Jews returning from Babylonian captivity, with mixed emotions of joy, sorrow, and anxiety surrounding the building and dedication of the second temple and its triumphs. It is a song of prayer and praise sung on a moonlit mountainside overlooking pilgrim tents and Beeroth with Zion to the south, moving from trembling emotion to triumphant joy. It describes severe oppression as being caught as in a net and burdened with affliction upon the loins, a picture extended in the next verse to being trampled by men riding over their heads and passing through fire and water.
God himself brings his people into this distress and lays affliction upon them, as a chastening that he sends or controls. He does this to test and refine his people and their faith, as silver is tried in a refining fire. Though the trials may feel severe, God knows the need of his people and limits each test to what his grace enables them to bear. The trial is part of God's purpose that leads toward deliverance, bringing his people out into a wealthy place of abundance.
The verse sets human frailty, weakness, and utter need alongside God's great strength, love, and mercy, and as a remembered verse it gives keeping power in times of trouble. Hardship is endured with God through prayer, by keeping the Lord before him and relying on prayer instead of giving up in discouragement, with the assurance that God does not turn away prayer nor withhold mercy. The surrounding passage serves as encouragement and ground for faith in institutional distress, such as the threatened failure of a mission institution, bringing light in perplexity and confidence in God's deliverance.