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820 / 1113 · Psalms 120 · Return & Rebuilding · Undated — read here in the years after the return (after 538 BC)

Too Long Among Those Who Hate Peace

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Most journeys begin with a decision that you cannot stay where you are any longer. Someone living among people who mock them, in a workplace full of gossip or a neighbourhood that is always one quarrel from violence, finally says: enough. Psalm 120 begins there. It is the first of the pilgrim songs, but it does not start with Jerusalem's walls or the temple courts. It starts in distress, surrounded by lying lips and deceitful tongues, in a place that feels as foreign as the ends of the earth. The pilgrimage begins with homesickness for peace.

Where it sits in the story: Psalm 120 opens the Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120–134), fifteen short psalms each headed 'A Song of Ascents', long associated with pilgrims 'going up' to Jerusalem for the festivals. The collection moves from distance and hostility here to blessing in the temple at night in Psalm 134. In Act 3, after the return, it gave a scattered people a songbook for coming home.

What this chapter is doing: To start the pilgrim's journey honestly — from a place of pain and false words — and to name the longing for peace that sends a person out toward God's house.

Why it is read here: This psalm speaks of restoration, or of pilgrimage to a rebuilt Zion, so we read it in the years after the return. Some pilgrimage songs may be older, taken up again by the returned community.
The walk-through
  • 120:1–2 — In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. The prayer is simple: rescue me from lying lips and a deceitful tongue.
  • 120:3–4 — The psalmist turns to the deceitful tongue itself: what will be done to you? The answer is a warrior's sharp arrows and glowing coals of the broom tree — lies will be met with judgement as sharp and hot as their own damage.
  • 120:5–7 — Woe to me, living in Meshech, dwelling among the tents of Kedar. These are distant, far-apart peoples — one in the far north, one in the Arabian desert — standing for life among strangers. 'I am for peace', the psalmist says, but whenever I speak, they are for war.
What it showsPsalms 120–134 all carry the heading 'A Song of Ascents', and later Jewish tradition in the Mishnah links the fifteen songs to the fifteen steps of the temple, where Levites were said to sing.
Where the evidence stopsThe exact meaning of 'ascents' is uncertain — pilgrimage, temple steps, or a poetic feature are all proposed — and Meshech and Kedar are almost certainly figurative, so the psalm cannot be placed in a specific location or date.

Key verse: Psalm 120:7  ·  So what: Many readers know what it is to be the one person in a room who wants peace while others want a fight. Psalm 120 does not solve that; it names it, prays about it, and gets up to leave for somewhere better. Sometimes the first step toward God is simply admitting that you cannot keep living like this.

← They Cried Out, and He RescuedYou have just read the long thanksgiving that opens the Psalter's final book (Psalm 107); now Psalm 120 begins the pilgrim songs far from Zion. Next, the pilgrim lifts their eyes to the hills and asks where help comes from (Psalm 121).The Keeper Who Never Sleeps →
Sources & further reading
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