Psalm 129    

“The plowers have plowed upon my back.” Psalm 129:3 has long been considered by spiritual people to refer to the suffering of Christ and the whippings he endured at the hands of the Romans, and that is no doubt the case. Although the Psalmist himself may have been whipped, and many others certainly have been, the great subject of the Word of God is Jesus Christ, and this verse and others like it must have helped prepare him for the things he had to go through to purchase our salvation. Thankfully, after the suffering comes the glory, and in the case of Jesus, the cords that bound him were eventually cut by God and he was delivered and glorified (Ps. 129:4).

“he has cut the rope of the wicked.” The context is the wicked plowing upon the back of the righteous. God delivers the righteous by cutting the rope. Exactly what the “rope” refers to is unclear, but the general meaning of the verse is very clear: God delivers the righteous. It is possible that the “rope” is the rope that connected the oxen to the plow, or it could be the rope that connects the yoke to the oxen. It is even possible that verse 4 is not connected to verse 3 and that the “rope” refers to some other kind of oppressive rope. Concerning Jesus, the “rope” was things that bound him, and God cut that rope and fully delivered and then glorified him.

The wicked often succeed “upon the backs” of the righteous, in other words, by making the righteous work and toil, but God sets the captives free.