Psalm CXX

A Song of degrees.

1 In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me.

2 Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue.

3 What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false

tongue?

4 Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.

5 Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!

6 My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace.

7 I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.

We could have imagined Hannah, the mother of Samuel, taking up this song in her lips when going up to the Feast at

* This feature of these fifteen Psalms is itself sufficient to set aside the idea of a writer in the Jewish Chronicle, that they were specially for domestic use, and get their name from the steps, or ascent to the house-top, where devout Jews were wont to worship. Some have conjectured that the title “Degrees” may refer to the musical instruments used in chaunting them. The common idea that the name refers to the steps of the Temple, is that expressed in Parker’s old translation — “These fifteen Psalms next following be songs be named of steps and stairs, for that the choir on them did sing.”

Shiloh. She carried her private sorrows to the Great Congre- Hope in sorrow.

gation, that in the midst of the many worshippers she might

find the special presence of Jehovah. The complaint, in her

case, was her adversary’s tongue; so, here it is the tongue —

“the false tongue.” At the same time, it is “sore distress,”

for the form rYl”^ is emphatic (ver. 1), just as in Psa. iii. 3,

TM1)?)Uy is the emphatic form to signify complete deliverance.

We see a worshipper, who enjoys little peace in his own The plan. country, coming up to the City of Peace, Salem, there to realise peace at one of those feasts which exhibited such a spectacle of united devotion. In the sanctuary, the pilgrim is enabled to see the end of those who so hate the godly, that they make war upon them. He sees

“The arroios of the Mighty One sharpened;” as if anticipating the day of God, when he, the Mighty One, sung of in Psa. xlv. 3, shall send forth his arrows — arrows of fire — “glowing embers of genista fuel” — in other words, “The flaming fire that takes vengeance on his foes,” (2 Thess. i. 8).

Meanwhile, it is a saddening thought that as yet the days of the Prince of peace have not come. But we may have his sympathy, for once the Prince of peace felt thus himself, tabernacling among us,

“Woe’s me! for I tarry in Mesech!
I pitch my tents with the tents of Kedar /”

As Isaiah i. 1 0 brands the apostate people and rulers of Jerusalem as “people of Sodom and rulers of Gomorrha,” and as Ezek xvi. 4 calls them “Amorites” and “Hittites,” so does the Psalmist speak of his harassing foe, as like the barbarous men of Mesech in the obscure north (the Moschian mountains), or near the Caspian Sea (see Ezek. xxxviii. 2), and the everunsettled tribes of Kedar in the south. And so he sighs

“It is wearisome for my sold to dtcell with the hater of peace /” (Hengst.) Literally, “Enough of this dwelling “Is not this the very feeling of the Church at this hour, in these days of never-ending forms of lies and vanity that assail the truth? They cry,” O when shall the Prince of peace arrive! And so felt the Lord himself, when on earth, as we see in his teaching his fol-

382 PSALM CXXI. — THE LORD’s SERVANT

lowers the blessedness of being “peace-makers.” Indeed, who would sing this pilgrim-song so truly from the heart as” The Master V It is a song for

The servant of the Lord weary ivifh the strife of tongues.