This touching Psalm is an utterance of unfaltering faith and patience in the face of contemptuous scorn and mockery. The Psalmist speaks in Psalms 123:1 in the singular as a leader or representative of the people, and passes naturally into the plural in Psalms 123:2 ff. as he joins all the members of the suffering community with himself in faith and prayer. The Psalm may have been written about the time of Nehemiah's first visit to Jerusalem. It was a report of the miserable plight of the remnant of the returned exiles which induced him to go there (Nehemiah 1:3); and he speaks repeatedly of the contempt and scorn with which the Samaritans and the heathen neighbours of the Jews viewed his efforts for the restoration of the city, until the success of those efforts provoked them to measures of active hostility. See Nehemiah 2:19; Nehemiah 4:1-4; Nehemiah 4:7 ff. The simile of Psalms 123:2 may naturally be connected with a phrase characteristic of the narrative of that period, the handor the good hand, of our God. Cp. Ezra 7:6; Ezra 7:9; Ezra 7:28; Ezra 8:18; Ezra 8:22; Ezra 8:31; Nehemiah 2:8; Nehemiah 2:18.
Von Gerlach, quoted by Kay, well observes, "To enter fully into the temper of mind exhibited in the Psalms of this period we must consider what the expectations of the restored Jews were. They looked for the coming in of Messianic glories; and here they were a laughing-stock to the Samaritans. What a school of patience and high-toned spiritual hope was this!" Comp. introd. to Psalms 131.