[1] It is one of 15 psalms that begin with the words "A song of ascents" (Shir Hama'alot).

[4] The psalm forms a regular part of Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and other Protestant liturgies.

Barnes argues that this psalm "would be applicable to many periods of the Jewish history, and it is not of such a nature that it can with certainty be referred to any one of them.

There is nothing in it which would forbid us to suppose that it was composed on the return from the Babylonian exile, but there is nothing to fix it definitely to that event ...

[10] Heinrich Schütz composed a metred paraphrase of Psalm 129 in German, "Die Feind haben mich oft gedrängt", SWV 234, for the Becker Psalter, published first in 1628.