Psalm 121
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
This is a psalm of pilgrimage – one of a series of psalms “of ascents”, which seem to have been sung by travellers on their way up to Jerusalem, perhaps for one of the three specified times of worship in the temple each year.
Picture the scene. A group of anxious folk are following a dusty track that is sometimes quite rough. They are in remote countryside where there are lions and tigers and bears (or there might be!). They are beginning to droop. Someone, perhaps their leader, strikes up a song ....
“There may be all kinds of dangers in these surrounding hills. The pagan peoples may imagine that their deities live on the different mountain tops. But what do they know? Their ‘gods’ are so ineffectual that they even need to take a nap sometimes! I look up to the mountains, but I can see much further. Where does my help come from? From the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth, of the whole cosmos.” (Eat your heart out, Professor Brian Cox.)
And then perhaps the leader turns to face the rest of his embattled band. Come on chaps! The Lord will keep your feet firmly on the ground, you will be safe! He is constantly on watch, on guard. Children go to sleep quietly if they imagine that mum or dad is sitting up all night next to the bed – our God actually does that for each one of us!
In Hebrew poetry, to speak of two opposites like the sun and the moon suggests that everything in-between is included. In a dry, dusty, barren land, shade is at a premium; God will stop us from being fried by the sun, an external danger. The moon was little understood, but seemed to them to have an influence on the moods and mental health of people – we get our word lunatic from the Latin word for moon. We do not need to take that belief on board, but we can understand that the psalmist is referring to dangers and illnesses that bubble up from within us. So whatever the threat, from out there or in here, God will protect us.
In verse 7 we read that He will protect us from all evil. The singer widens out our assurance of God’s watchful care from this particular journey that we are on, to all of our existence from the cradle to the grave. God is watching over us. It is in the spirit of our Lord’s teaching to us that we should pray “Lead us not to the time of trial, but deliver us from evil”.
This is a song of praise and rejoicing to carry us through Lent, to help us at work, rest or play, as we travel together with God.
Tom Wright reminds us that Jesus would have prayed this psalm. He suggests that we read it at different levels, conscious that Jesus believed this but also that he knew that his calling was to suffer and not always to be protected. If that were so, it would mean that God was still watching over him, even in the midst of pains and trials. It means also that God is watching over all those affected by earthquake and tsunami, warfare and civil unrest, sickness and death. He is the maker of heaven and earth, and we trust him in all things, now and forever more.
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