Psalm CXXI

A Song of degrees.

1 I WILL lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not

slumbei-.

4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. C The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by right.

7 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

8 The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in From this time forth, and even for evermore.

“A Song for the goings up!” {rrhvb).* The pilgrim sings it as he leaves his home to meet the Lord in the Great Congregation at Jerusalem; and the believer (like the Master) sings it as he journeys through earth to the New Jerusalem. Abraham (Gen. xxii. 4) “lifted up his eyes” and saw the hills of Moriah on the third day. The worshipper sets forth with the desire to fix his eyes at last on the hills where his trials are, not, like Abraham’s, to reach their crisis, but to end. “I will lift. i(p mine eyes to the hills.’” (Ver. 1.) This is his resolution; his motive for leaving home and kindred is to reach “the holy mountains,” as they are called, Psa. lxxxvii. 1, — those hills that are the emblems of Jehovah’s faithfulness, Psa. cxxv. 1, 2, — that spot where Jehovah is specially present because of the Propitiation being there, (1 Kings viii. 42; Dan. vi. 10).

* This is the only time that this form of the expression occurs, and so it is probably meant to signify something different from “Song of Degrees.” It may be, in poetical style, like in “Psalm TTl”?,” Ts-alm composed by David,

q. d., a Psalm which the goings up to Jerusalem may be said to have composed.

This, then, is his resolution. But there are perils by the way, and so he asks —

“Whence shall my help come?” (^^^<Q, which Phillip and others remark, is always interrogative.)

What a full answer is at once returned to his soul: “My help is from (pu from with, coming out from that depository of help) Jehovah, the Maker of heaven and earth.” And then he speaks to his soul, as the singer of Psa. ciii. does — “He will not suffer my feet to totter! Thy keeper is not one that slumbers!” He is not like Baal, (1 Kings xviii. 27).

“Behold, lie never slumbers I He never falls asleep, the Keeper of Israel (Num. vi. 24). My keeper is Jehovah.’” —

that Jehovah in whom Israel is blessed (Num. vi. 24) by their High Priest — whose blessing awaits the pilgrim who reaches the city. He shall keep thee, making thy experience in thy journey to become oft-times a type of the rest where “the sun* shall not smite them nor any heat,” (Rev. vii. 16) — the rest in the Kingdom, and the rest of which Israel shall partake in the latter day, (Isa xlix. 1 0). Thus shalt thou be kept till the glory comes, and thou “goest no more out,” but art a pillar in the temple of God,

“From henceforth and for ever.’”

* The Psalmist speaks of “the moon” smiting. He may mean all the noxious influences of night, but still he refers most specially to the moon. The force of this allusion may be understood by the following quotation from Wallstedt’s City of the Caliphs: — “The glare of the moon in the Persian Gulf is so baneful, and creates feelings so disagreeable, that at night a person may be seen sheltering himself from those rays with the same care as he would in the day from the heat of the sun. The effect of lunar rays in producing decomposition of fish, and other animal substances, is known, though not yet explained; all in the East and West Indies are familiar with the fact.” Moonlight specially injures the traveller’s sight, as the coup-de-soleil endangers his very life. Prof. Piazzi Smyth, at Teneriffe, lately ascertained that there is some heat in moonbeams, for his thermometrical instruments were sensibly affected by the moon’s rays. In these tropical climes, meat putrifies rapidly in moonlight, and negroes, who do not hesitate to expose themselves to the sun, muffle head and face from the moon, believing that it causes distortion of the face and swelling.

With such a song of faith, keeping in sight the faithfulness and love of Him in whose law he delights, whose feasts he keeps, in whose ways he walks, the Master and his disciples no doubt often left the peaceful shores of the Lake of Galilee to go up to Jerusalem to worship; often realised, under some fig-tree’s seasonable shade, or some convenient cloud bringing down the heat by its shadow the deliverance from the sun’s intolerable rays; and found in all an emblem of their journey through earth to the Kingdom whose capital is New Jerusalem, and whose congregation is the Assembly of the first-born. It is a song of

The Lord’s servant, as he goes forth on his journey, committing himself to Jehovah alone.