Psalms 136:24 Meaning And Has Delivered Us From Our Adversaries

Avera: Freedom from enmity Avera is a mind with no enemy standing in it. Deliverance from adversaries is worth singing about, and the kings and armies behind this line were solid enough, yet the fuller rescue comes when the word "adversary" stops attaching to anyone at all. An enemy holds you the way a hook holds a fish: the line stays fastened even when the boat is far off.

Vimutti: Release Vimutti is the mind let loose from what tied it. "Delivered" carries the plain sense of hands working at a knot and then walking the captive out the door, no improvement to the captive, only an opening. Israel came out of Egypt free of its chains and still hungry for its food, so the outward rescue leaves an inward loosening yet to be done.

Mettā: Loving kindness Mettā is friendliness wished toward every being alike. Here loving kindness arrives in the same breath as the adversaries, and that nearness is the whole instruction, since warmth kept for one's own people is a fire that heats one side of the room. Sung right after a rescue, it faces both ways at once, toward those carried out and toward those they were carried away from.

Appamaññā: The boundless states Appamaññā names love with no boundary drawn around it. "Endures forever" sounds at first like a long stretch of time, though its stronger sense is that this kindness has no edge, no place where someone stands outside it. A lamp set in the middle of a room lights every corner, and none of them has to earn it.

Kataññutā: Gratitude Kataññutā is knowing what has been done for you. The refrain comes back after every line the way a bell is struck after every verse, and what it offers is not repayment but simple acknowledgment that the help came from past the reach of one's own arm. Saying each deliverance aloud, sea and wilderness and now these adversaries, keeps a person soft toward the next one who needs carrying.