Psalms 120
Butler1. IN my distress I cried unto the LORD, And he answered me. 2 Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, And from a deceitful tongue. 3 What shall be given unto thee, and what shall be done more unto thee, Thou deceitful tongue?
4. Sharp arrows of the mighty, With coals of juniper. 5 Woe is me, that I sojourn in Meshech, That I dwell among the tents of Kedar 6 My soul hath long had her dwelling With him that hateth peace. 7 I am for peace: But when I speak, they are for war.
Turs is the first of fifteen Psalms (120-134) all bearing the inscription, song of ascents or upgoings, i.e., sung during the periodical journeys or pilgrimages to Jerusalem at the times of the great yearly festivals. On these occasions the people are said, even in historical prose, to go up to Jerusalem, in reference both to its physical and moral elevation. The Hebrew verb employed in such connections is the root of the noun ascents in these inscriptions. This explanation of the title is much more satisfactory than any other which has been proposed. A.—In all probability the term is derived from the various “ascents,” or stations, by which the pilgrims to the feasts came up to Jerusalem. Perhaps these songs were intended as pilgrim-songs for the various companies who were wont to go up together to the mountain of the Lord with music and singing (compare Isa. 30:29). But whether actually used for this purpose or not, they present such remarkable unity as to mark them out as one series, intended to express the feelings of a devout Israelite on beholding Jerusalem and the Temple, and recalling the history and the hopes connected therewith. A. E.
Thrice every year, at the beginning and at the close of the wheat harvest, and again when the grapes were gathered and the wine made—at these natural seasons of joy and festivity every “son of the law” had to appear before God. So musical a people as the Jews would be sure to beguile the way with songs; so religious a people, bound, too, on an errand so sacred, would be sure to sing religious songs. And, therefore, we may reasonably infer, as most of our leading critics do infer, that these “Songs of the Goings-up” were the Psalms with which the Hebrew pilgrims lightened the way as, year by year, they went up to the Temple to keep the great feasts of their ecclesiastical calendar. Cox.—The whole group of Psalms is full of that blending of joy and sorrow, of triumph and aspiration, which were so strikingly characteristic of Israel, and which the great feasts were so eminently calculated to express and deepen. W. Milligan.
We may fully accept the view advocated by Hengstenberg, Alexander, and many others as to the sense—viz., songs of the upgoings, i.e., songs prepared to be sung by the exiles returning from Babylon to Jerusalem, and also subsequently on their stated journeys going up to the holy city to attend the three great annual festivals. This theory accounts well, both for the leading thoughts and also for the local allusions found in these Psalms. The thoughts meet the case of the restored Jews and their re-established temple worship. This noun (ascents or upgoings) and its verb are used repeatedly for these goings up; the presence of the article (the ascents) favors its definite reference to some well-known and established journeys like these; the oldest of these songs (Psalm 122) contains these very words, naturally suggestive of the sense of this title: “Let us go into the house of the Lord” (v. 1); “whither the tribes go up” (v. 4); and finally, such circumstantial allusions as appear (Psalm 121:1) show that they were approaching the holy city: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help.” C.
With this Psalm begins a series of fifteen Psalms, all bearing the same title, “Songs of the Goings-up,” and constituting originally, no doubt, a separate hymn-book—a Psalter within a Psalter. Of the different interpretations which have been given of the name the most probable is that which supposes that the Psalms to which this title is prefixed were intended to be sung by the caravans of pilgrims “going up” to keep the yearly feasts at Jerusalem. The collection in its present form must have been made after the return from Babylon, some of the songs containing manifest allusions to the captivity as still fresh in the recollection of the writers. All these odes have certain features in common. With one exception (the one hundred and thirty-second) they are all short—the utterance of a single thought or feeling, a sigh, a hope, a joy. They are alike in tone, in diction, in rhythm. They are all pervaded by the same quiet, graceful, tender beauty, the charm of which was so felt by a Spanish commentator, that he does not hesitate to say that this collection is to the rest of the Psalms what Paradise was to the rest of the world at its first creation. P.
It is not strange that Bible students love these pilgrim songs. They attach their great theological and moral utterances to the mind through simple and graphic picture lessons. There is one word which of itself gives them a lasting hold upon the thought and feeling of all Christian ages, and which gathers all their truths and illustrations into one sheaf. The emotion which shook the Hebrew’s heart whenever Jerusalem was named pervades them all. Each pilgrim has his eye upon Moriah while he sings, as the Moslem turns to Mecca in his prayer. Jerusalem! The glory of Solomon, the loved goal of generations of pilgrims, the bitter memory of the exile by the Euphrates, the sorrow of Jesus, the inspiration of Maccabeus, the fiery text of Peter the Hermit, the battle-cry of Godfrey and of Tancred—pervaded, even in eclipse, with that subtle attraction which drew two centuries against its walls in successive billows of blood, burden of mediæval hymns, touched with the glow of Dante’s verse and moving Tasso to immortal song, God’s own type of eternal rest, of a perfect society, and of a pure Church—so has the name passed into Christian thought and Christian song, that he who thinks of heaven has always the yearning of Bernard’s hymn in his heart, if not its words upon his lips:
“Jerusalem the glorious! The glory of the elect, O dear and future vision That eager hearts expect!
Ev’n now by faith I see thee, Ev’n here thy walls discern; To thee my thoughts are kindled, And strive, and pant, and yearn.”
They are no less sermons for being poems. Their lessons are human, not local, fitting as aptly into the nineteenth century as into their own era; as fresh and as wholesome to-day as when the Hebrew pilgrim beguiled with their melody his way through the desert, or chanted them in the streets of his beloved city; and as the shadows lengthen and the degrees grow fewer by which we mount to the Jerusalem above, these pilgrim songs will be oftener on our lips, till we exiles tread the streets where they sing a new song, and need no more the shade at noon and the watch by night. V.
The tone and diction of this one hundred and twentieth Psalm mark it as belonging to the period of the Restoration. It begins with an acknowledgment of that great mercy (v. 1), followed by a prayer for deliverance from treacherous and spiteful enemies (v. 2), and a confident anticipation of their punishment (vs. 3, 4), but closes with a further lamentation and complaint of present suffering (vs. 5-7). In this, as in all the other Psalms of the series, the ideal speaker is Israel or Judah, considered as the Church or chosen people. This first verse, although general in its terms, is perfectly appropriate to the captivity, as the distress out of which the sufferer cried to God, and to the Restoration, as the answer to his prayer. A.—The Psalm aptly portrays the condition of the restored exiles, e.g., Zerubbabel and Jeshua, Ezra and Nehemiah, prosecuting the great work of rebuilding the temple and city; harassed by malign and lying enemies who misrepresented and traduced them before the Persian court; compelled them to desist from their enterprise, and caused them long and most vexatious delays and immense trouble. The feelings of those godly men are brought out in this Psalm. C.
1. Cried, answered. The verbs are in the past tense, but do not refer merely to a past occasion. Past experience and present are here combined. From the past he draws encouragement for the present. P.
2. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that half the miseries of human life spring from the reckless and malignant use of the tongue. And these wicked tongues generally wag fastest behind a man’s back, and amid the excitements of social intercourse. We judge these sins of the tongue all too lightly, until we ourselves are injured by them. We are apt to smile when James’ scathing description of the unruly, untamable member is read and enforced. Many a man, many a woman, thinks nothing of having spoken an untrue, unkind, or slanderous word, and is politely amused at you if you lay much stress upon it. Yet, so soon as we consider, we see that it is from the bitter waters of this fountain that most of our miseries flow; that the world would be a changed world indeed if none but true and kind words were spoken in it. Cox.
3. What will He give to thee, and what will He add to thee, thou tongue of fraud? Having complained to God of the false tongue, the ideal speaker turns to it as actually present and addresses it directly, speaking of God in the third person. The meaning of the question is, what recompense can you expect from an infinitely righteous God for these malignant calumnies? A.—The phrase seems to mean, “What calamities shall He heap upon thee? How shall punishment upon punishment visit thee?” P.
4. Answers v. 3 with the twofold punishment, which Jehovah will cause the false tongue to feel. The tongue which shot piercing arrows is pierced by the sharpened arrows of an irresistibly strong One; the tongue which set its neighbor in a fever of anguish must endure a lasting heat of broom-coals which consumes it surely and torturingly. D.—The slanderer shall feel woes comparable to coals of juniper, which are quick in flaming, fierce in blazing, and long in burning. He shall feel sharp arrows and sharper fires. The shafts of calumny will miss the mark, but not so the arrows of God; the coals of malice will cool, but not the fire of justice. S.
The verse gives a poetic expression to that sacred law of retribution which pervades the Scriptures: Men are to receive according to their deeds. Those whose lying lips shoot out arrows of calumny shall be shot through with arrows; those whose guileful tongue kindles a blackening fire on their neighbors shall themselves be consumed as with fire. It is the old law—old, but never out of date—that as men do, so it shall be done unto them again; that as they sow, so shall they also reap. Cox.
5. It is evident from v. 6 that Meshech and Kedar are mere types and representatives of those who hate peace and delight in war. Compare Ezek. 38: 2, where Meshech appears as a chief leader under Gog, the great prophetic representative of heathendom. A.
6,7. A longing for peace breathes through these verses of the Psalm, and infuses a catholic meaning into it, making it a song not for a day, but for all time. Think what man’s common life is like; how full of fret and care and strife; what a babble of conflicting voices from within and from without are forever falling on his ear! In the market, what rivalries and emulations and contentions! In politics, what differences of thought and opinion, what contradictory claims, what bitter enmities! In the home even, what selfishness and equivocation, what care and sorrow, what disappointment of reasonable hopes, what an impossibility of accurately or fully expressing one’s self even to the heart that is nearest and kindest! Is it any marvel that a Hebrew, with a deep spiritual longing for peace, should cry as he started for the Temple, “Let me get out of all that, at least for a time. Let me be quit of this fever and strain, free from the vain turbulence and conflicting noises of the world. Let me rest and recreate myself awhile in the sacred asylum and sanctuary of the God of peace. God of peace, grant me Thy peace as I worship in Thy presence; and let me find a bettered world when I come back to it, or, at least, bring a bettered and more patient heart to its duties and strifes.” Cox.