Psalm 121

Psalms 121:1-2

The second Song of Ascents opens on the hills the pilgrim's eyes could actually see rising toward Jerusalem, and the readings on what the hills mean are named rather than settled: some of the bench read the hills as the source of help itself, Zion's heights where the Lord is enthroned, others read the opening as a searching question, since the same hills also carried the high places of idol worship the traveler had to pass. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth answers either reading the same way, naming the maker of the hills as the true help rather than the height itself. Spurgeon calls the verse a traveler's psalm, sung by a heart already moving before the feet have gone far.

Psalms 121:3-6

The keeper vocabulary begins here and runs through the psalm's second half, one Hebrew root translated keepeth at verses 3 and 4, keeper at verse 5, and preserve at verses 7 and 8, six occurrences of the same word holding the psalm together, as the older commentators note. He that keepeth thee will not slumber, and behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep moves from a promise to an individual to the same promise proven true of the whole nation, personal trust anchored in the people's own history. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand, and the sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night names two dangers of a pilgrim's daytime and nighttime travel, heat and whatever harm the older writers associated with the night air, both covered by the same watching presence.

Psalms 121:7-8

The chain of keeping closes with its final two occurrences, preserve named twice more, thy soul as well as thy body, and the psalm's scope widens from the pilgrim's road to the whole of his life, thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore. The psalm that opened scanning the hills for danger closes certain rather than searching, the same watchfulness that never slumbers now extended past the return from this one ascent into every future one. Spurgeon reads the closing formula, going out and coming in, as covering the whole compass of daily life, not travel only but every ordinary departure and return a life contains.