Psalm 122

The psalm captures a single moment: the pilgrim's feet are standing inside the gates. After days on the road, the arrival is the event, and the song is written in the pause just inside the wall.

Jerusalem is described as a city joined tightly together. Ancient cities were dense by necessity — the wall was expensive, so everything crammed inside it, and houses shared walls along narrow lanes. That compactness is used as a picture of the nation itself packed in around one sanctuary.

Going up was a legal requirement and a national habit. The tribes came up to give thanks, as the Law said, three times a year, and the roads filled with families at Passover, at the wheat harvest feast, and at Tabernacles in the autumn.

Thrones of judgment stood there too. The king's court heard the cases that local elders could not settle, so the city was the supreme court as well as the sanctuary. A pilgrim arriving saw both the altar and the bench.

The prayer at the end plays on the city's own name, which carries the word for peace in it. Praying for the peace of Jerusalem was praying that the place would live up to what it was called.