Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Does God sleep?Psalm 121:3-4 flatly declares that the keeper of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep — a doctrinal claim about Yahweh's perpetual vigilance.
Isaiah 41:13(v2)For I, Yahweh your God, will hold your right hand, saying to you, ‘Don’t be afraid. I will help you.’
Psalms 120:1(v1)In my distress, I cried to Yahweh. He answered me.
Psalms 124:8(v2)Our help is in Yahweh’s name, who made heaven and earth.
Hebrews 13:6(v2)So that with good courage we say, “The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?”
Psalms 123:1(v1)I lift up my eyes to you, you who sit in the heavens.
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Isaiah 40:28-29(v2)Haven’t you known? Haven’t you heard? The everlasting God, Yahweh, the Creator of the ends of the earth, doesn’t faint. He isn’t weary. His…
Proverbs 3:26(v3)for Yahweh will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from being taken.
Deuteronomy 28:6(v8)You shall be blessed when you come in, and you shall be blessed when you go out.
Psalms 146:5-6(v2)Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in Yahweh, his God: who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in…
2 Timothy 4:18(v7)And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me for his heavenly Kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever.…
Psalms 46:1(v2)God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Psalms 91:9-12(v7)Because you have made Yahweh your refuge, and the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall happen to you, neither shall any plague come…
Jeremiah 3:23(v1)Truly help from the hills, the tumult on the mountains, is in vain. Truly the salvation of Israel is in Yahweh our God.
Psalms 115:15(v2)Blessed are you by Yahweh, who made heaven and earth.
Jeremiah 20:11(v2)But Yahweh is with me as an awesome mighty one. Therefore my persecutors will stumble, and they won’t prevail. They will be utterly…
Proverbs 3:23(v3)Then you shall walk in your way securely. Your foot won’t stumble.
Isaiah 2:3(v1)Many peoples shall go and say, “Come, let’s go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his…
Psalms 41:2(vv3, 7)Yahweh will preserve him, and keep him alive. He shall be blessed on the earth, and he will not surrender him to the will of his enemies.
1 Samuel 2:9(v3)He will keep the feet of his holy ones, but the wicked will be put to silence in darkness; for no man will prevail by strength.
Proverbs 2:8(vv3, 8)that he may guard the paths of justice, and preserve the way of his saints.
Psalms 2:6(v1)“Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.”
Isaiah 25:4(v5)For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, when…
Proverbs 3:6(v8)In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 12:21(v7)No mischief shall happen to the righteous, but the wicked shall be filled with evil.
Hosea 13:9(v2)You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, against your help.
Revelation 7:16(v6)They will never be hungry or thirsty any more. The sun won’t beat on them, nor any heat;
Psalms 91:1(v5)He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
Psalms 91:12(v3)They will bear you up in their hands, so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone.
Psalms 113:2(v8)Blessed be Yahweh’s name, from this time forward and forever more.
Isaiah 49:10(v6)They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun strike them: for he who has mercy on them will lead them. He will guide…
Psalms 127:1(vv3–4)Unless Yahweh builds the house, they who build it labor in vain. Unless Yahweh watches over the city, the watchman guards it in vain.
Isaiah 27:3(vv3–4)I, Yahweh, am its keeper. I will water it every moment. Lest anyone damage it, I will keep it night and day.
Psalms 66:9(v3)who preserves our life among the living, and doesn’t allow our feet to be moved.
1 Peter 1:5(v3)who by the power of God are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Exodus 13:21(v5)Yahweh went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them on their way, and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light, that…
Ezra 8:31(v8)Then we departed from the river Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month, to go to Jerusalem. The hand of our God was on us, and he…
Psalms 16:8(v5)I have set Yahweh always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Psalms 91:5-10(v6)You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of…
Psalms 145:20(v7)Yahweh preserves all those who love him, but he will destroy all the wicked.
Psalms 115:18(v8)but we will bless Yah, from this time forward and forever more. Praise Yah!
Isaiah 4:5-6(v5)Yahweh will create over the whole habitation of Mount Zion and over her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming…
Job 5:19-27(v7)He will deliver you in six troubles; yes, in seven no evil will touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death; in war, from the power…
Romans 8:35-39(v7)Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…
Ezra 8:21(v8)Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a straight way for us,…
Psalms 34:22(v7)Yahweh redeems the soul of his servants. None of those who take refuge in him shall be condemned.
Psalms 109:31(v5)For he will stand at the right hand of the needy, to save him from those who judge his soul.
James 4:13-16(v8)Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city, and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.” Whereas you don’t…
Psalms 87:1(v1)His foundation is in the holy mountains.
2 Samuel 5:2(v8)In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led Israel out and in. Yahweh said to you, ‘You will be shepherd of my people…
Isaiah 32:2(v5)A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the storm, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a large…
Psalms 68:15-16(v1)The mountains of Bashan are majestic mountains. The mountains of Bashan are rugged. Why do you look in envy, you rugged mountains, at the…
Matthew 6:13(v7)Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.’
Psalms 97:10(v7)You who love Yahweh, hate evil! He preserves the souls of his saints. He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked.
Jonah 4:8(v6)When the sun arose, God prepared a sultry east wind; and the sun beat on Jonah’s head, so that he fainted, and requested for himself that…
Romans 8:28(v7)We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Psalms 78:68(v1)But chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion which he loved.
Matthew 23:37(v5)“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children…
Psalms 32:7-8(v4)You are my hiding place. You will preserve me from trouble. You will surround me with songs of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach…
Ecclesiastes 8:16(v4)When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on the earth (even though eyes see no sleep day or night),
1 Kings 18:27(v4)At noon, Elijah mocked them, and said, “Cry aloud; for he is a god. Either he is deep in thought, or he has gone somewhere, or he is on a…
Psalms 27:1(v4)Yahweh is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? Yahweh is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?
Revelation 7:15(v4)Therefore they are before the throne of God, they serve him day and night in his temple. He who sits on the throne will spread his…
Deuteronomy 28:19(v8)You will be cursed when you come in, and you will be cursed when you go out.
63 distinct cross-references across this passage (67 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (27 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
John Calvin1540 · Public DomainOn vv1, 3, 4, 6, 8l I will lift up my eyes to the…
l I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. The inspired writer, whoever he was, seems, in the opening of the Psalm, to speak in the person of an unbelieving man. As God prevents his believing people with his blessings, and meets them of his own accord, so they, on their part, immediately cast their eyes directly upon him. What then is the meaning of this unsettled looking of the Prophet, who casts his eyes now on this side and now on that, as if faith directed him not to God? I answer, that the thoughts of the godly are never so stayed upon the word of God as not to be carried away at the first impulse to some allurements; and especially when dangers disquiet us, or when we are assailed with sore temptations, it is scarcely possible for us, from our being so inclined to the earth, not to be moved by the enticements presented to us, until our minds put a bridle upon themselves, and turn them back to God. The sentence, however, may be explained as if expressed in a conditional form. Whatever we may think, would the Prophet say, all the hopes which draw us away from God are vain and delusive. If we take it in this sense, he is not to be understood as relating how he reasoned with himself, or what he intended to do, but only as declaring, that those lose their pains who, disregarding God, gaze to a distance all around them, and make long and devious circuits in quest of remedies to their troubles. It is indeed certain, that in thus speaking of himself, he exhibits to us a malady with which all mankind are afflicted; but still, it will not be unsuitable to suppose, that he was prompted to speak in this manner from his own experience; for such is the inconstancy natural to us, that so soon as we are smitten with any fear, we turn our eyes in every direction, until faith, drawing us back from all these erratic wanderings, direct us exclusively to God. All the difference between believers and unbelievers in this respect is, that although all are prone to be deceived, and easily cheated by impostures, yet Satan bewitches unbelievers by his enchantments; whereas, in regard to believers, God corrects the vice of their nature, and does not permit them to persevere in going astray. The meaning of the Prophet is abundantly obvious, which is, that although all the helps of the world, even the mightiest, should offer themselves to us, yet we ought not to seek safety anywhere but in God; yea, rather, that when men shall have long wearied themselves in hunting after remedies, now in one quarter and now in another, they will at length find from experience, that there is no assured help but in God alone. By the mountains, the Prophet means whatever is great or excellent in the world; and the lesson he teaches is, that we ought to account all such favor as nothing.
Farther, these two verses ought to be read connectedly, bringing out this sense: When I shall have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, then I will at length experience that I have fallen into a rash and unprofitable mistake, until I direct them to God alone, and keep them fixed upon him. It is at the same time to be observed, that God in this place is not in vain honored with the title of Creator of heaven and earth; it being intended hereby tacitly to rebuke the ingratitude of men, when they cannot rest contented with his power. Did they in good earnest acknowledge him as Creator, they would also be persuaded, that as he holds the whole world in his hand, and governs it as seemeth good in his sight, he is possessed of infinite power. But when, hurried away by the blind impetuosity of their passions, they have recourse to other objects besides him, they defraud him of his right and empire. In this way ought we to apply this title of God to the case in hand. The amount is, that whilst we are naturally more anxious than is needful in seeking alleviation and redress to our calamities, especially when any imminent danger threatens us, yet we act a foolish and mistaken part in running up and down through tortuous mazes: and that therefore we ought to impose a restraint upon our understandings, that they may not apply themselves to any other but God alone. Nor is the opinion of those unsuitable, who think that the Hebrew word אל, el, which we translate to, namely, to the mountains, is put for על, al, which signifies above, giving this sense, That men, however high they may look, will find no true salvation except in God.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv1, 2, 3, 6, 8Or, about the mountains: meaning, that there is nothing…
Or, about the mountains: meaning, that there is nothing so high in this world, wherein he can trust, but only in God.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv1–8Psa 121:1 « A Song of degrees. » I…
Psa 121:1 « A Song of degrees. » I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
A Song of degrees] On, of ascensions, in singing whereof there should be ascensions in our hearts. See Psa 120:1.
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Ver. 1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills] Not to your mountains, Psa 11:1, human helps and carnal combinations, Jer 3:23, much less to those mountains, in quibus gentes idola collocant et colunt, wherein the heathens set and serve their idols, Deu 12:2, but to Zion and Moriah, where God’s sanctuary is, Psa 87:1, or rather to heaven, Psa 18:9, with 2Sa 22:10; 2Sa 22:14, where God himself is; and so it followeth.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8Unto the hills; either to Zion and Moriah, which…
Unto the hills; either to Zion and Moriah, which are called the holy mountains, Psa 87:1; or rather,
2. To the hills in general, whereof there were many in the land of Canaan, and upon which the forces, which he hoped would come to his aid, might be seen at a great distance.
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Cometh; or, may come; Heb. will come.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry1710 · Public DomainOn v1This psalm teaches us,
This psalm teaches us,
I. To stay ourselves upon God as a God of power and a God all-sufficient for us. David did so and found the benefit of it. 1. We must not rely upon creatures, upon men and means, instruments and second causes, nor make flesh our arm: "Shall I lift up my eyes to the hills?" - so some read it. "Does my help come thence? Shall I depend upon the powers of the earth, upon the strength of the hills, upon princes and great men, who, like hills, fill the earth, and hold up their heads towards heaven? No; in vain is salvation hoped for from hills and mountains, Jer 3:23. I never expect help to come from them; my confidence is in God only." We must lift up our eyes above the hills (so some read it); we must look beyond instruments to God, who makes them that to us which they are. 2. We must see all our help laid up in God, in his power and goodness, his providence and grace; and from him we must expect it to come: "My help comes from the Lord; the help I desire is what he sends, and from him I expect it in his own way and time. If he do not help, no creature can help; if he do, no creature can hinder, can hurt." 3. We must fetch in help from God, by faith in his promises, and a due regard to all his institutions: "I will lift up my eyes to the hills" (probably he meant the hills on which the temple was built, Mount Moriah, and the holy hill of Zion, where the ark of the covenant, the oracle, and the altars were); "I will have an eye to the special presence of God in his church, and with his people (his presence by promise) and not only to his common presence." When he was at a distance he would look towards the sanctuary (Psa 28:2; Psa 42:6); thence comes our help, from the word and prayer, from the secret of his tabernacle. My help cometh from the Lord (so the word is, Psa 121:2), from before the Lord, or from the sight and presence of the Lord. "This (says Dr. Hammond) may refer to Christ incarnate, with whose humanity the Deity being inseparably united, God is always present with him, and, through him, with us, for whom, sitting at God's right hand, he constantly maketh intercession." Christ is called the angel of his presence, that saved his people, Isa 63:9. 4. We must encourage our confidence in God with this that he made heaven and earth, and he who did that can do any thing. He made the world out of nothing, himself alone, by a word's speaking, in a little time, and all very good, very excellent and beautiful; and therefore, how great soever our straits and difficulties are, he has power sufficient for our succour and relief. He that made heaven and earth is sovereign Lord of all the hosts of both, and can make use of them as he pleases for the help of his people, and restrain them when he pleases from hurting his people.
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II. To comfort ourselves in God when our difficulties and dangers are greatest. It is here promised that if we put our trust in God, and keep in the way of our duty, we shall be safe under his protection, so that no real evil, no mere evil, shall happen to us, nor any affliction but what God sees good for us and will do us good by. 1. God himself has undertaken to be our protector: The Lord is thy keeper, Psa 121:5. Whatever charge he gives his angels to keep his people, he has not thereby discharged himself, so that, whether every particular saint has an angel for his guardian or no, we are sure he has God himself for his guardian. It is infinite wisdom that contrives, and infinite power that works, the safety of those that have put themselves under God's protection. Those must needs be well kept that have the Lord for their keeper. If, by affliction, they be made his prisoners, yet still he is their keeper. 2. The same that is the protector of the church in general is engaged for the preservation of every particular believer, the same wisdom, the same power, the same promises. He that keepeth Israel (Psa 121:4) is thy keeper, Psa 121:5. The shepherd of the flock is the shepherd of every sheep, and will take care that not one, even of the little ones, shall perish. 3. He is a wakeful watchful keeper: "He that keepeth Israel, that keepeth thee, O Israelite! shall neither slumber nor sleep; he never did, nor ever will, for he is never weary; he not only does not sleep, but he does not so much as slumber; he has not the least inclination to sleep." 4. He not only protects those whom he is the keeper of, but he refreshes them: He is their shade. The comparison has a great deal of gracious condescension in it; the eternal Being who is infinite substance is what he is in order that he may speak sensible comfort to his people, promises to be their umbra - their shadow, to keep as close to them as the shadow does to the body, and to shelter them from the scorching heat, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, Isa 32:2. Under this shadow they may sit with delight and assurance, Sol 2:3. 5. He is always near to his people for their protection and refreshment, and never at a distance; he is their keeper and shade on their right hand; so that he is never far to seek. The right hand is the working hand; let them but turn themselves dexterously to their duty, and they shall find God ready to them, to assist them and give them success, Psa 16:8. 6. He is not only at their right hand, but he will also keep the feet of his saints, Sa1 2:9. He will have an eye upon them in their motions: He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. God will provide that his people shall not be tempted above what they are able, shall not fall into sin, though they may be very near it (Psa 73:2, Psa 73:23), shall not fall into trouble, though there be many endeavouring to undermine them by fraud or over throw them by force. He will keep them from being frightened, as we are when we slip or stumble and are ready to fall. 7. He will protect them from all the malignant influences of the heavenly bodies (Psa 121:6): The sun shall not smite thee with his heat by day nor the moon with her cold and moisture by night. The sun and moon are great blessings to mankind, and yet (such a sad change has sin made in the creation) even the sun and moon, though worshipped by a great part of mankind, are often instruments of hurt and distemper to human bodies; God by them often smites us; but his favour shall interpose so that they shall not damage his people. He will keep them night and day (Isa 27:3), as he kept Israel in the wilderness by a pillar of cloud by day, which screened them from the heat of the sun, and of fire by night, which probably diffused a genial warmth over the whole camp, that they might not be prejudiced by the cold and damp of the night, their father Jacob having complained (Gen 31:40) that by day the drought consumed him and the frost by night. It may be understood figuratively: "Thou shalt not be hurt either by the open assaults of thy enemies, which are as visible as the scorching beams of the sun, or by their secret treacherous attempts, which are like the insensible insinuations of the cold by night." 8. His protection will make them safe in every respect: "The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil, the evil of sin and the evil of trouble. He shall prevent the evil thou fearest, and shall sanctify, remove, or lighten, the evil thou feelest. He will keep thee from doing evil (Co2 13:7), and so far from suffering evil that whatever affliction happens to thee there shall be no evil in it. Even that which kills shall not hurt." 9. It is the spiritual life, especially, that God will take under his protection: He shall preserve thy soul. All souls are his; and the soul is the man, and therefore he will with a peculiar care preserve them, that they be not defiled by sin and disturbed by affliction. He will keep them by keeping us in the possession of them; and he will preserve them from perishing eternally. 10. He will keep us in all our ways: "He shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in. Thou shalt be under his protection in all thy journeys and voyages, outward-bound or homeward-bound, as he kept Israel in the wilderness, in their removes and rests. He will prosper thee in all thy affairs at home and abroad, in the beginning and in the conclusion of them. He will keep thee in life and death, thy going out and going on while thou livest and thy coming in when thou diest, going out to thy labour in the morning of thy days and coming home to thy rest when the evening of old age calls thee in," Psa 104:23. 11. He will continue his care over us from this time forth and even for evermore. It is a protection for life, never out of date. "He will be thy guide even unto death, and will then hide thee in the grave, hide thee in heaven. He will preserve thee in his heavenly kingdom." God will protect his church and his saints always, even to the end of the world. The Spirit, who is their preserver and comforter, shall abide with them for ever.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv1–7I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,....…
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,.... Not to the hills and mountains in Judea, looking about to see if the inhabitants of them, or any bodies of men, appeared upon them to his help in distress; rather to the hills of Moriah and Zion, where the ark of God, the symbol of his presence, was, and to whom he looked for assistance and deliverance: or to heaven, the holy hill of the Lord, and to him that dwelleth there; see Psa 3:2. The lifting up of the eyes is a prayer gesture, Joh 11:41; and is expressive of boldness and confidence in prayer, and of hope and expectation of help and salvation, Job 11:15; when, on the contrary, persons abashed and ashamed, hopeless and helpless, cannot look up, or lift up their eyes or face to God, Ezr 9:6. Some read the words, "I will lift up mine eyes upon the hills" (f); standing there and looking up to the heavens, and God in the heavens; who is the most High over all the earth, higher than the highest, and above all gods. Others render them interrogatively, "shall I lift up mine eyes to the hills?" (g) to the idols worshipped on hills and mountains, and pray unto them, and expect help from them? No, I will not; salvation is not to be had from them, Jer 3:23; or to the kings of the nations, as R. Obadiah interprets it; and to powerful kingdoms and states he was in alliance with, comparable to mountains and hills, Psa 46:2? No, I will not; "it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes", Psa 118:9. And so the following clause may be read,
from whence shall my help come? (h) not from hills and mountains; not from men, for vain is the help of man; not from kings and princes, the great men of the earth, nor from the most powerful nations; but from the Lord, as in Psa 121:2, which may be an answer to this.
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(f) "super montes", Vatablus, Amama; so Kimchi. (g) "attollerem oculos meos ad illos montes?" Junius & Tremellius; "attollamne", &c. Piscator; so Gejerus and Ainsworth. (h) So Musculus, Cocceius, Gejerus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Michaelis.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv1, 5, 6David assures himself of help from God, ver. 1,…
David assures himself of help from God, ver. 1, 2. He assures others of it, ver. 3-8. A song of degrees.
Hills - To Sion and Moriah, which are called the holy mountains.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8The resolution of a godly man, 1, 2.
PSALM CXXI
The resolution of a godly man, 1, 2.
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The safety and prosperity of such, as they and theirs shall
be under the continual protection of God, 3-8.
NOTES ON PSALM CXXI
This appears to be a prayer of the Jews in their captivity, who are solicitous for their restoration. It is in the form of a dialogue.
Ver. 1, 2. The person who worships God speaks the two first verses, "I will lift up mine eyes - my help cometh," - Ps 121:1-2.
Ver. 3. The ministering priest answers him, "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved." "He that keepeth thee will not slumber," Ps 121:3.
To which the worshipper answers, that he knows that "he who keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep," Ps 121:4; but he seems to express a doubt whether he shall be an object of the Divine attention.
Ver. 5, c. The priest resumes and, to the conclusion of the Psalm, gives him the most positive assurances of God's favour and protection.
Verse 1. Unto the hills] Jerusalem was built upon a mountain; and Judea was a mountainous country; and the Jews, in their several dispersions, turned towards Jerusalem when they offered up their prayers to God.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv1, 3Psa 121:1-2. I will lift up mine eyes unto…
Psa 121:1-2. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills — To Zion and Moriah, called the holy mountains, Psa 87:1, the hills on which the tabernacle or temple stood, where were the ark of the covenant, the oracle, and the altars. I will have an eye to the special presence of God in his church, and with his people, and from thence I will expect help. My help cometh from the Lord — From God alone, and therefore to him alone will I turn mine eyes; which made heaven and earth — And therefore how great soever my straits and difficulties may be, he has power sufficient for my succour and relief.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv1–8I will lift up mine eyes - Margin, “Shall…
I will lift up mine eyes - Margin, “Shall I lift up mine eyes to the hills? Whence should my help come?” The expression would properly denote a condition where there was danger; when no help or aid was visible; and when the eyes were turned to the quarter from which help might be expected to come. What the danger was cannot now be ascertained.
Unto the hills - Hebrew, the mountains. To the quarter from where I look for assistance. This (as has been shown in the Introduction) may refer
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(1) to the mountains from where one in danger expected help; or
(2) to heaven, considered as high, and as the abode of God; or
(3) to the hills on which Jerusalem was built, as the place where God dwelt, and from where aid was expected.
The third of these is the most probable. The first would be applicable to a state of war only, and the second is forced and unnatural. Adopting the third interpretation, the language is natural, and makes it proper to be used at all times, since it indicates a proper looking to God as he manifests himself to people, particularly in the church.
From whence cometh my help - A more literal rendering would be, “Whence cometh my help?” This accords best with the usage of the Hebrew word, and agrees well with the connection. It indicates a troubled and anxious state of mind - a mind that asks, Where shall I look for help? The answer is found in the following verse.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures1864 · Public DomainOn v1Psalms 121
Psalms 121
A Song of degrees
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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 slumber.
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.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
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.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Contents and Composition.—The Poet lifts his eyes to the mountains, upon which is Jehovah’s seat, with the assurance, that from thence protection from all that can imperil body and soul, and help in every situation of life, will be vouchsafed him by the almighty and eternal God, who is not only the Creator of the world, but the Keeper of Israel, and who never grows weary in His activity and care. The change of persons is probably to be regarded as a poetical figure. A responsive song between a single voice (Psa_121:1; Psa_121:3), and the believing Church (Psa_121:2; Psa_121:4), with the words of the Priest in (Psa_121:5-8), in support of such trust (Olsh.), is not definitely indicated. The confidence of trust is expressed already in Psa_121:1 b, without the need of taking the sentence relatively (the German, English and Dutch Bibles) against the prevailing usage of מֵאַיִן (yet comp. Jos_2:4).
The question is not one of uncertainty or doubt, but is a figure of speech.
The particular situation of the Poet cannot be discovered. It is not even to be assumed with certainty that he was in exile, or on a festival journey. For the mountains to which he lifts his eyes are not any high places whatever in the world (Calvin et al.), from which help was expected, or the mountains within his present range of vision (Amyrald, Geier, J. H. Mich.), or those of Palestine, which the homesick exile beholds in fancy (De Wette), but those of Jerusalem, or of Zion (Psa_87:1; Psa_125:2; Psa_133:3) as the dwelling-place of God and the place whence help proceeds (Psa_3:5; Psa_14:7). But there is nothing to show whether the Poet was in Jerusalem itself, or in its vicinity, or at a distance. The conjecture of an allusion to Samaria, in the sixfold repetition of the catchword שׁמר (Hengstenberg, Hitzig), is too bold, since the guardianship of Jehovah is the fundamental thought.
Psa_121:1-4. [The second member of Psa_121:1, Should be an interrogative sentence as explained above.—J. F. M.]. It is by no means admissible to obliterate (Rosenm., De Wette) the distinction between the subjective negative אל ver 3, and the objective לֹא, Psa_121:4. [Perowne: “The Psalmist turns to address himself. First he utters the wish that God’s watchful care may be extended to him, and then the conviction that the Keeper of Israel, He who has been the God of his fathers, who has led the nation through all its eventful history, doth not, will not, cannot, slumber or sleep, comp. Psa_132:4, 1Ki_18:27; Isa_5:27; Job_7:20.”—J. F. M.]. By the exclamation: behold! (Psa_121:4), the assurance, that the Keeper of Israel cannot sleep, is still further supported. As the seed of Abraham, Israel could appropriate to itself the promise of Gen_28:15, so much the more confidently. No climax, however, is to be sought (Calv. Geier, J. H. Mich.), in the two verbs. On the contrary the former is the stronger, meaning literally: to snore. (Hupfeld). The strengthening of the expression is effected by the accumulation of synonyms.
Psa_121:5-6. The shade is an image of protection (Num_14:9; Psa_91:1); and this figure has something peculiarly attractive to the Oriental, even when not a traveller. It occurs here as preparing the way for the mention of the Sun, which immediately follows, but has not a physical and local meaning=over thy right hand (Luther) or: lying towards thy right hand, that is, towards the south, or protecting on the sunny side (J. D. Mich., Muntinghe). This is plain, if we consider that the injurious influences proceeding from the sun and moon are introduced only as representative of dangers by day and night, against which the ever-watchful God grants protection. But a real phenomenon of nature lies at the foundation of the figure. Recent travellers of scientific culture report expressly, that hurtful influences upon the human frame are not only everywhere ascribed to the moon by popular belief, but that effects similar to those manifested in sun-stroke, are produced by the moonbeams. There is no reference, therefore, to coldness by night as contrasted with the heat of the day, Gen_31:40; Jer_36:30 (Hengst., after Aben Ezra, Kimchi, Calvin, Geier, et al.), nor is the moon introduced for the sake of the poetic parallelism (Hupfeld) הִכִּהto smite, of the destructive beating of the sun (Is. 49:40), upon plants, causing them to wither (Psa_102:6), and upon the head (Jon_4:8), resulting (Del.) in the symptoms of sunstroke (2Ki_4:19, Jdt_8:2 f.). [Delitzsch: “Many years ago I heard a clergyman elucidate this passage from his own experience. While he was ascending a peak of the Riesengebirge, the moonbeams smote upon him so strongly, that he was compelled to shield his eyes with leafy twigs. And not long since I heard from Texas, that sleeping in the open air when the moon shines was in that country frequently followed by dizziness, mental aberration, and even death.” Other accounts from Batavia are given by De Wette and from the East generally by Ewald. Many expositors, however, understand by the smiting of the moon, the cold that is felt during the night, as being contrasted with the heat of the sun, comp. Gen_31:39; Jer_36:30 (Hengst. et al.) De Sacy remarks: “they say sometimes of intense cold, as of intense heat that it is burning.” “The Arab also says of snow and cold as of fire, jahrik, it burns.” (Delitzsch). The same usage was noticed by Defoe, who, in Robinson Crusoe, makes Friday utter the same exclamation during his first experience of snow.—J. F. M.].
Psa_121:8. The going out and the coming in do not denote specially going abroad and returning home, in the beginning and completion of any undertaking (Hengst.). but the whole life, and its occupations (Hupfeld, et al.). This is proved by the usage of the expression in many passages [Perowne: “Comp. Deu_28:6; Deu_31:2; 1Sa_29:6, etc. The threefold expression: ‘shall keep thee... thy soul... thy going out and thy coming in,’ marks the completeness of the protection vouchsafed, extending to all that the man is, and that he does. Comp. 1Th_5:23.”—J. F. M.].
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Men have not only to expect confidently help from God, they must also pray for it, and are permitted to resort trustingly to Him.—What consolation is contained in the reflection, that the Creator of the world is not only the God of revelation, but also the eternal Keeper of His Church, and of each of its members!—God neither confines His help to time and place, nor is limited in it by any creature whatever, nor directs it to any exclusive sphere of bodily or spiritual need.—God is our Keeper in everything; but do we at all times place ourselves rightly under His protection?
Starke: In time of need, our ruined nature is sorely inclined to seek help in those objects which can render none.—As mountains are a natural stronghold, so are God’s protection and assistance our more than natural mountain and fortress.—Thou troubled child of God, dost thou doubt that thou shalt be preserved? If God preserves the heavens and the earth which He has made, should He not also preserve thee?—God has a watchful but loving and merciful eye upon His children, He sees from afar all misfortune, and can avert it in time.—If the soul is lost, all is lost; Satan is continually laying his snares for it; do thou then pray the more fervently; O Lord! keep my soul!—The most important changes of a man’s life, are his entrance into the world and his departure from it; in both the Divine preservation is indispensable.—Thou hast God’s promise, so do thou, O fellow Christian! appropriate it believingly to thyself in every undertaking.—Frisch: Distress teaches us men to look around for help. But it is to be lamented that the timid heart does not know how to compose itself and seek it in the right place.—Help does not come to men from the place whither the flesh looked for it, but whither the soul of David turned to receive it.—Umbreit: All the acts of the pious are performed under God’s protection, whether abroad or at home.—Guenther: The departure from life, and the entrance into the eternal abodes of safety, are the goal of life, the first of all cares, and the highest of all joys.—O Lord! we are all travellers through life; we would also be true pilgrims.—Taube: The guardianship of God over the whole life, over time and eternity.—Huyssen: The hope of the Christian in the dangers of war.—Diedrich: God’s Church is exhausted here and encompassed by dangers; our comfort is, that God will guard us His inheritance, and lead us home to Himself.
[Matt. Henry: It is infinite wisdom that contrives, and infinite wisdom that works the safety of those, that have put themselves under God’s protection.—Those must needs be well kept, that have the Lord for their Keeper. If by affliction they be made His prisoners, yet, still He is their Keeper.—He shall prevent the evil thou fearest, and sanctify, remove, or lighten the evil thou feelest. He shall keep thee from doing evil, 1Co_13:7, and so far from suffering evil, as that whatever afflictions happen to thee, there shall be no evil in them. Even that which kills shall not hurt.—He will keep thee in life and death, thy going out and thy going on while thou livest, and thy coming in when thou diest, going out to thy labor in the morning of thy days, and coming home to thy rest, when the evening of old age calls thee in. Psa_104:20.—J. F. M.].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv1–81. I will lift up mine eyes unto the…
1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills—Not to the hills of Palestine in general, but to those of Jerusalem and its environs. See on Psa_125:2. Mount Zion, in David’s time, and Moriah afterward, were particularly holy mountains, the abode of Jehovah. Psa_14:7; Psa_20:2; Psa_48:2; Psa_48:11-12. The lifting up of the eyes here implies devotional trust and desire, or the lifting up of the soul, as in Psa_123:1; Psa_143:8.
From whence cometh—The compound particle, meayin, is an interrogative, and should read, “From whence shall my help come?” The question is abrupt, but gives a dramatic effect, and prepares for the answer which immediately follows.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 81. I will lift up mine eyes unto the…
1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains:
From whence shall my help come? (R.V.)
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The mountains are not the “mountains of Israel” (Eze_6:2 and often), to which the exile turns his longing eyes, but the mountains upon which Zion is built (Psa_87:1; Psa_125:1-2; Psa_133:3), the seat of Jehovah’s throne (Psa_78:68), from which He sends help to His people (Psa_3:4; Psa_20:2; Psa_134:3). The question of the second line (which cannot be taken as a relative clause) is not one of doubt or despondency, but is simply asked to introduce the answer which follows in Psa_121:2. That answer gives a deeper turn to the thought of the question. It is not from the mountains of Zion, but from Jehovah Who has fixed His earthly dwelling-place there that help comes.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv1–8(1) Whence.—Our version is certainly incorrect in following the…
(1) Whence.—Our version is certainly incorrect in following the LXX. and Vulg. in making whence a relative. The Hebrew word is always interrogative; even in Jos_2:4 it is indirectly interrogative. But the margin is hardly right in making the whole verse interrogative. Render, I will lift up mine eyes to the hills. Whence comes my help? The hills are those on which Jerusalem is built, the plural being understood, as in Psa_87:1. (See Note.) This gaze of hope does not absolutely decide the standpoint of the poet. He might have been like Ezekiel (Eze_6:2) when bidden to turn “towards the mountains of Israel” in the distant plain of Mesopotamia; or he may have been close on the end of the pilgrim journey, and actually under the sacred hills. But wherever he stands, this question is not one of doubt; he knows, as in Psa_3:4; Psa_14:7, that help will come from God’s holy hill “out of Zion.” He puts the question for the sake of the emphatic answer in the next verse. Possibly, as suggested by the marginal rendering and reference, the poet may in his mind have been contrasting the confidence with which a worshipper of Jehovah might look up to the sacred city on the crest of the holy hill with that superstition and idolatry which was associated with so many hills and high places in Canaan. If this is so, the best commentary, both on the poetry and the religion of the psalm, is to be found in Mr. Ruskin’s fascinating discourses on mountains in “Modern Painters,” their influence on the ancient, mediaeval, and modern mind, and the part they have played alike in the mythology of the pagan times and the religion of the Christian world. There must also be added, in connection with the feeling of the Jew, the part his mountains played as a barrier of defence (Psa_125:2), and as heights of observation from which to watch for the messengers of peace (Isa_52:7; Nah_1:15).
“In the mountains did he feel his faith
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. . . . and there his spirit shaped
Her prospects.”—WORDSWORTH.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv1–8THE preceding psalm is one of complaint; the present,…
THE preceding psalm is one of complaint; the present, one of comfort and consolation. The pilgrim lifts up his eyes to the hills, and is satisfied that help is coming to him. He then proceeds to cheer himself with assurances of God"s sleepless care and protection. Metrically, the psalm falls into four stanzas of four lines each.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. The "holy hills," that stand round about Jerusalem, are intended. (Psa_87:1 Psa_125:2) There God had "promised his blessing, even life forevermore". (Psa_133:3) From whence cometh my help. Most modern critics regard this clause as interrogative, and translate, "Whence is it that my help shall come?" But "the question is only asked to give more effect to the answer" (Cheyne).
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Vers. 1-8. God our Guide: a New Year"s psalm.
In whatever special circumstances, or for whatever particular occasion, this psalm may have been written, it is certain that it is admirably suited to suggest New Year"s thoughts to our minds. We shall best appreciate it if we consider
I THE GREATNESS OF OUR NEED. We have sometimes to face the future, and then we confront:
2. Uncertainties; possibly some very great joy, or some overwhelming sorrow, or some very sore perplexity, or even the last experience of death.
II THE INSUFFICIENCY OF HUMAN HELP. We naturally and rightly look to our kindred and to our friends for sympathy and succor. But:
1. They do not remain with us; parents die; brothers and sisters are scattered far and wide; friends become estranged.
2. They cannot render us all the help we need. Oar wants go so far, and strike so deep, that human sympathy does not avail; it falls short; we need more than it can bring. We must not only look around, but above, must "lift up our eyes to the hills, from whence cometh our help," for our "help cometh from the Lord" (vers. 1, 2).
III OUR HELP IN GOD.
1. With him is all power. He who "made heaven and earth" (ver. 2) can do anything, everything, for us. There can come no difficulty, no entanglement, from which he cannot deliver us; there can come no sorrow in which he will not be able to support us.
2. We can count on the constancy of his care. He "will not slumber," etc. (vers. 3, 4). Not for one small moment will he forget us; day and night we shall be the objects of his watchful love.
3. He will be present to defend us everywhere. He will be our Keeper, our Shade upon our right hand (ver. 5). His gracious power will overshadow us at every step we take. We cannot think o, any place, however remote, or obscure, or humble, where he will not be with his defending, delivering hand.
4. He will guard us from all forms of evil. Evil takes many forms; it comes to us in every guise. Now it is prosperity, and now adversity; it may be an intoxicating approval and adulation, or it may be a crushing depreciation and desertion; it may be a strong and sudden assault on our integrity, or it may be the more perilous approach of that which very gradually undermines or disintegrates. But whatever be its form, our God can "keep" us true, pure, holy. The sun shall not smite by day, nor the moon by night; "the Lord will preserve us from all evil" (vers. 6, 7).
5. He will preserve us, ourselves; not only our home, our fortune, our credit, our reputation, but ourselves: "He shall preserve thy soul." He will "not suffer thy foot to be moved" (ver. 3); he will uphold us in the path of righteousness; and if we have to walk "in slippery places," yet his right hand will hold us, and our soul will not be stained with the sin which injures and defiles.
6. He will attend us to the close of life (ver. 8). "This God is our God forever and ever, he will be our guide even unto death". (Psa_48:14)
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY Vers. 1-8. Kept from all evil.
This is what the writer of this precious psalm looks for from God (see the first two verses), and this is what the psalm promises, and that with the utmost particularity. There shall not be even a slip of the foot, a thing so common in mountainous lands, and often so perilous, and the keeping shall be night and day alike, and close at hand (ver. 5). The Lord himself shall see to if, whether during the heat of the day or the chill of the night, it matters not. The Lord shall keep thee inwardly and outwardly soul and body alike, from all evil and in all thy ways. "But so ask not a few all that true? Are we so kept as this psalm promises not the mere godless crowd, but the company of God"s faithful ones: does the Lord keep them, as is here said, "from all evil"?" And then there are brought forward the long array of facts which seem to make against the truth of this word. Disease, accident, death, the overwhelming by earthquakes, lightning, flood, storm; by the ferocity or the folly of men, and by any of the ten thousand ills which flesh is heir to. As we contemplate the awful number of victims to such causes as we have named, and the yet worse ruin which comes from moral causes, it is not to be wondered at that some regard this psalm as rather a pious imagination than the declaration of actual fact. What are we to say? Are we to give up our faith in the blessed guardianship of God, and to consign to the category of credulity the trust which this psalm encourages? We will not do that, but we will reply
I THE PROMISE IS NOT FOR EVERY COMMUNITY, BUT FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD. The band of pilgrims who set out from Babylon to return to their native land and to re-establish the worship of God were a special and a holy company, and God did keep them as they journeyed on along the weary wilderness-ways. We must come within the circle of the covenanted people of God ere we can lay claim to the fulfillment of a psalm like this. It is not for the godless, but for the regenerated people of God. For them
II THE GENERAL RULE OF GOD"S PROVIDENTIAL CARE IS AS HERE SET FORTH. Not the universal, but the general rule. There have been and there are exceptions, but taking the history of God"s people in all ages, and looking at their average experience, may we not cry It is well with the righteous; the Lord is their Keeper? God"s people are, after all, the happiest people under the sun.
III OUR IDEA OF BEING KEPT AND GOD"S IDEA MAY BE VERY DIFFERENT.
1. We think so much of the keeping of the body, and of a man"s outward circumstances. But in comparison with the soul"s well-being, God counts these things as of no importance. Hence God may preserve a man"s soul when he lets his outward affairs go all to ruin; for the sake of his soul this may be needed. But if his soul has been kept, has not God been true to his word?
2. God takes eternity into view; we think only of the present. If, then, a man be eternally saved, does the fact that during a period unspeakably short in comparison with eternity the man"s outward life was full of trouble invalidate the promise of this psalm and prove it false?
3. Further, we see only the surface of things; God looks at the reality. If, then, what we call disaster, and think to be so, be really amongst "all things which work together for not merely precede, but produce the man"s good" as is so often the case, (see 2Co_4:17) then is God"s permission or sending of that disaster a falsifying of the promise of this psalm.
IV THE PROMISE MAY BE TRUE TO THE HEART WHEN ITS FULFILLMENT IS NOT APPARENT TO THE EYE. What is the value of all God"s providential mercies, his blessed keeping of us in health and external well-being what is the value of it except for the effect it has upon our minds? It is the inward happiness and peace and joy which these things impart which gives them their value. Otherwise they are of no good at all, any more than the strains of sweetest music are to the deaf, or the most beautiful scenery to the blind. But if God be able as he is to impart that same and even greater inward happiness, peace, and joy by other means, and does so, as, blessed be his Name! he so often does, then again we ask Has not God been true to his word? is not this psalm actual fact? Therefore we rest assured that the Lord will keep us flora all evil, he will keep our soul. S.C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Vers. 1, 2. Looking up.
"Shall I lift up mine eyes unto the hills? Whence should my help come?" The precise associations of the psalm cannot be fixed with any certainty. Perhaps it is best regarded as a psalm of the Exile. It might have been written by a Daniel, as he sat at his open window, and looked away over the broad, fiat plains of Babylon toward the distant mountain-land of Israel. The writer is oppressed with the burdens and sorrows of exile; he remembers Zion, and he sings his soul to quietness and peace by looking away from present cares to the high hills of God, and cheers his drooping spirit by remembering how, amid all the earth-changes, the everlasting hills abide. What a holy power upon us the mountains have! The grand, calm, strong, high things they seem to be so near God; they seem to be so full of God; they bring us so near him, and fill us so full of him. One thing about them is suggested by our text they make us look up. And is not that just what we need? Oh, to lose the downward look which has so grown upon us by the pressure of life-cares! The voice calls continually, "Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh!
I WORLD-DRAWN, WE LOOK DOWN, AND SO ARE WEAK. We are in the world in a thousand subtle ways we are kin with the world, subject to its influences, caught by its whirl of excitement, absorbed by its pressing claims, and easily we become of the world as well as in it. But everything the world presents to us is below us, beneath us; and it so keeps us looking down that the habit of down-looking grows upon us, and we are almost unable to look up. How powerfully we are all drawn by world-interests! Business man is world-absorbed. Domestic woman is world-absorbed. The influence of the world begets a downward look, a sort of set of the eyes and heart downwards. The world-thoughts abide with us, and even when the sabbath day brings God and heaven near, we find it very hard to get our eyes lifted up. Even in the sanctuary they drop on bills and stock and trade. To succeed in earthly things we must engage the whole heart and powers in them. It seems to be the one universal power that this sin-smitten world possesses over its creatures it bends their shoulders, it bows their heads, it gives, it keeps, the downward look. And what do we see when we look down? Much of self, of man, and of things. The hurry and bustle of thousands who are hasting to be rich. And the shadow of God"s curse on sin resting everywhere. It is this down-looking that makes us so weak.
II GOD-DRAWN, WE LOOK UP, AND SO GROW STRONG. For to men in this world God"s voice is ever calling. It sounds from the bright bands of the morning, from the high silver-tinted clouds of noonday, from the splendor and glory of the far-off sunset, from the lofty trees and the hill-tops, and the soaring birds of song, and the winds that roam free, and the "jewel-powdered skies" of night. Would we but stop and hush awhile, we might hear it always near us, saying, "Look up! Look up!" God has often refreshed his fainting servants with the sight of his everlasting hills. Moses was sent to feel the inspirations of Sinai. Elijah was calmed, and made himself again, by the soothing influences of Horeb, the mount of God. Our Lord sought seclusion among the hills of Eastern Galilee, and entered into the Divine glory on a spur of Hermon. And the mountains still soothe and calm God"s people. They teach us to look up.
1. Looking up, you find nothing of man"s it is all of God up above.
2. Looking up, you feel how pure God"s snow is, and think how much is in the promise, "They shall walk with me in white.
3. Looking up, you see how earth-clouds are glorified.
4. Looking up, listen; you may hear the voices of the hills saying, "Be still! Hush the life-fever! Wait! In silence God doth speak.
5. Look up and listen, and again the voices of the hills will say, "The mists and the storms are all outside us; they are not us." Look up, and grow strong. Look up; you will feel the heaven-breath upon your face. Look up; your brow will soon lose those wreathings of anxiety and care. Look up, and you shall prove how God "wipes away all tears from our eyes. R.T.
Vers. 1, 2. Not mountains, but God.
"From whence shall my help come?" This psalm is best taken as expressing the pious confidence of an individual believer, who addresses his inner self in words of comfort which are framed as if proceeding from another person. The psalmist is, as it were, holding a colloquy with himself. It is not that he expects help from the mountains his hope is fixed on him who made the mountains. This comes out plainly in Perowne"s rendering, "Whence should my help come? My help (cometh) from Jehovah, the Maker of heaven and earth.
I THE MOUNTAINS CANNOT GIVE US HELP AND SAFETY. Illustrate from the times of Lot. He fled to the mountains; but God preserved him, not the mountain. From the times of David"s persecution, he fled to the mountain country of Judaea and the south; but God preserved him, not the hills. Covenanters and others found safety in the rocks and mountains in days of religious persecution; but their God was their real defense. So let mountains stand for the supreme self-efforts a man may make in his times of distress; he must be brought to the assured conviction that they cannot bring him safety. Beyond them he must look. Only when he looks beyond them do they become his security; for then God makes them such. "Some trust in horses, and some in chariots," and some in mountains; "but we will trust in the Name of the Lord.
II THE MOUNTAINS CAN DIRECT US WHERE TO FIND HELP AND SAFETY. They appeal to both poetic and religious feeling. Buchanan, writing with the Cuchullin hills all about him, says"Lord, art thou here? Far from the busy crowd, Brooding in melancholy solitude?
Moses was helped to realize the power of Jehovah by the daily impressions of the huge, craggy, awful mountain forms of Sinai. In quite an instinctive way men in all ages and in every land have inclined to build their altars on high hills, as if thus they did get nearer God. And it is the fact for most thoughtfully disposed persons, that more help is gained for pious meditation from mountain districts than from the changeableness of the sea, or the varying but ever-gentle beauty of the landscapes. Mountains have a peculiar power to solemnize and to impress us all; and precisely what they bring to us is that sense of God which assures of his love, and help, and lead. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon1885 · Public DomainOn vv1–8This bears no other title than "A Song of…
This bears no other title than "A Song of degrees". It is several steps in advance of its predecessor, for it tells of the peace of God's house, and the guardian care of the Lord, while Psalm 120 bemoans the departure of peace from the good man's abode, and his exposure to the venomous assaults of slanderous tongues. In the first instance his eyes looked around with anguish, but here they look up with hope. From the constant recurrence of the word keep, we are led to name this song "a Psalm to the keeper of Israel". Were it not placed among the Pilgrim Psalms we should regard it as a martial hymn, fitted for the evensong of one who slept upon the tented field. It is a soldier's song as well as a traveller's hymn. There is an ascent in the psalm itself which rises to the greatest elevation of restful confidence.
Ver. 1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. It is wise to look to the strong for strength. Dwellers in valleys are subject to many disorders for which there is no cure but a sojourn in the uplands, and it is well when they shake off their lethargy and resolve upon a climb. Down below they are the prey of marauders, and to escape from them the surest method is to fly to the strongholds upon the mountains. Often before the actual ascent the sick and plundered people looked towards the hills and longed to be upon their summits. The holy man who here sings a choice sonnet looked away from the slanderers by whom he was tormented to the Lord who saw all from his high places, and was ready to pour down succour for his injured servant. Help comes to saints only from above, they look elsewhere in vain: let us lift up our eyes with hope, expectance, desire, and confidence. Satan will endeavour to keep our eyes upon our sorrows that we may be disquieted and discouraged; be it ours firmly to resolve that we will look out and look up, for there is good cheer for the eyes, and they that lift up their eyes to the eternal hills shall soon have their hearts lifted up also. The purposes of God; the divine attributes; the immutable promises; the covenant, ordered in all things and sure; the providence, predestination, and proved faithfulness of the Lordthese are the hills to which we must lift up our eyes, for from these our help must come. It is our resolve that we will not be bandaged and blindfolded, but will lift up our eyes.
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Or is the text in the interrogative? Does he ask, "Shall I lift up mine eyes to the hills?" Does he feel that the highest places of the earth can afford him no shelter? Or does he renounce the idea of recruits hastening to his standard from the hardy mountaineers? and hence does he again enquire, "Whence cometh my help?" If so, the next verse answers the question, and shows whence all help must come.
Title. "A Song of Degrees." It has been ingeniously pointed out that these "degrees" or "steps" consist in the reiteration of a word or thought occurring in one clause, verse, or stanza, which in the next verse or stanza is used, as it were, as a step (or degree) by which to ascend to another and higher truth. Thus in our psalm, the idea of "my help", expressed in Ps 121:1, is repeated in Ps 121:2. This has now become a step by which in Ps 121:3 we reach the higher truth or explanation of "nay help", as: "He that keepeth thee will not slumber, "the same idea being with slight modification reembodied in Ps 121:4. Another "degree" is then reached in Ps 121:5, when "He who slumbers not" is designated as Jehovah, the same idea once more enlarged upon being (the word occurring twice in Ps 121:5) in Ps 121:6. The last and highest degree of this song is attained in Ps 121:7, when the truth implied in the word Jehovah unfolds itself in its application to our preservation, which, with further enlargement, is once more repeated in Ps 121:8. Perhaps some internal connexion might be traced between all the fifteen Psalms of Degrees. At any rate, it will not be difficult to trace the same structure if each of the psalms "of Degrees", making allowance for occasional devotions and modifications. Alfred Edersheim, in "The Golden Diary", 1877.
Whole Psalm. According to Ps 121:1 this psalm was designed to be sung in view of the mountains of Jerusalem, and is manifestly an evening song for the sacred band of pilgrims, to be sung in the last night watch, the figures of which are also peculiarly suitable for a pilgrim song; and with Psalm 122, which, according to the express announcement in the introduction, was sung, when the sacred pilgrim trains had reached the gates of Jerusalem, and halted for the purpose of forming in order, for the solemn procession into the Sanctuary, Ps.
134...
The idea is a very probable one, that the psalm was the evening song of the sacred pilgrim band, sung on retiring to rest upon the last evening, when the long wished for termination of their wandering, the mountains of Jerusalem, had come into view in the distance. In this we obtain a suitable connection with the following psalm, which would be sung one station further on when the pilgrims were at the gates of Jerusalem. In this case we find an explanation of the fact, that in the middle point of the psalm there stands the Lord as the "keeper" of Israel, with reference to the declaration. "I keep thee", which was addressed to the patriarch as he slept on his pilgrimage: and in this case also "he neither slumbereth nor sleepeth" is seen in its true light. E.W. Hengstenberg.
It has been said Mr. Romaine read this psalm every day; and sure it is, that every word in it is calculated to encourage and strengthen our faith and hope in God. Samuel Eyles Pierce.
Ver. 1. I will lift up mine eyes, etc. Since we, being burdened with the effects of worldly pleasures, and also with other cares and troubles, can by no means ascend to thee that art on the top of so high a mountain, accompanied with so many legions of angels that still attend upon thee, we have no remedy, but with thy prophet David now to lift up the eyes of our hearts and minds towards thee, and to cry for help to come down from thee to us, thy poor and wretched servants. Sir Anthony Cope, in "Meditations on Twenty Select Psalms",
1547.
Ver. 1. I will lift up mine eyes, etc. In thy agony of a troubled conscience always look upwards unto a gracious God to keep thy soul steady; for looking downward on thyself thou shalt find nothing but what will increase thy fear, infinite sins, good deeds few, and imperfect: it is not thy faith, but God's faithfulness thou must rely upon; casting thine eyes downwards on thyself, to behold the great distance betwixt what you deserve and what thou desirest, is enough to make thee giddy, stagger, and reel into despair. Ever therefore lift up thine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh thy help, never viewing the deep dale of thy own unworthiness, but to abate thy pride when tempted to presumption. Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), in "The Cause and Cure of a Wounded
Conscience".
Ver. 1. The hills. There can be no doubt that in Palestine we are in the "Highlands" of Asia. This was the more remarkable in connection with the Israelites, because they were the only civilized nation then existing in the world, which dwelt in a mountainous country... The Hebrew people was raised above the other ancient states, equally in its moral and in its physical relations. From the Desert of Arabia to Hebron is a continual ascent, and from that ascent there is no descent of any importance, except to the pains of the Jordan, Esdraelon, and the coast. From a mountain sanctuary, as it were, Israel looked over the world... It was to the "mountains" of Israel that the exile lifted up his eyes, as the place from whence his help came. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.
Ver. 1. The hills, from whence cometh my help. See no riches but in grace, no health but in piety, no beauty but in holiness, no treasure but in heaven, no delight but in "the things above." Anthony Farindon.
Ver. 1. From whence cometh my help. The natives of India used to say that when Sir Henry Laurence looked twice to heaven and then to earth he knew what to do.
To Heaven I lift mine eye,
To Heaven, Jehovah's throne,
For there my Saviour sits on high,
And thence shall strength and aid supply
To all He calls His own.
He will not faint nor fail,
Nor cause thy feet to stray:
For him no weary hours assail,
Nor evening darkness spreads her veil
O'er his eternal day.
Beneath that light divine
Securely shalt thou move;
The sun with milder beams shall shine,
And eve's still queen her lamp incline
Benignant from above.
For he, thy God and Friend,
Shall keep thy soul from harm,
In each sad scene of doubt attend,
And guide thy life, and bless thy end,
With his almighty arm.
John Bowtiler, 1814.
Ver. 1,2. Faint at the close of life's journey, a Christian pilgrim repeated the line,
"Will he not his help afford?"
She quoted it several times, trying to recall the song in which it occurs, and asked that the once familiar hymn, part of the voice of which she caught, might be all fetched home to her mind again; and she was greatly refreshed and comforted when we read at her bedside Charles Wesley's spirited paraphrase, beginning,
"To the hills I lift mine eyes,
The everlasting hills;
Streaming thence in fresh supplies,
My soul the Spirit feels.
Will he not his help afford?
Help, while yet I ask, is given:
God comes down; the God and Lord
That made both earth and heaven."
Edward Jewitt Robinson, in "The Caravan and the Temple", 1878.
Ver. 1-3.
Look away to Jesus,
Look away from all!
Then we need not stumble,
Then we shall not fall.
From each snare that lures,
Foe or phantom grim.
Safety this ensures,
Look away to him!
Frances Ridley Havergal.
Ver. 1. The window opened towards Jerusalem.
1. The hills we look to.
2. The help we look for.
3. The eyes we look with.
Ver. 1. Whence cometh my help? A grave question; for,
1. I need it, greatly, in varied forms, constantly, and now.
2. In few directions can I look for it, for men are feeble, changeable, hostile, etc.
3. I must look above. To Providence, to Grace, to my God.
Psalms 121:2*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.
Psa_121:1-8
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.
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Guaranteed security
I. The godly mans need. Help. Can never outgrow this: dependence the characteristic of the creature: help must be had in the conflict or it will end in defeat, in the toil or it will issue in failure, in the pilgrim-march or we faint and fail by the way, etc.
II. The godly mans attitude: Looking for help--I will lift up my eyes, etc. He waits--he expects--he obtains. The truest vision is soul-vision. Looking up in solicitation, contemplation, expectation. Up, from the mud and mire of earth, and the sins and sorrows of self. The hills expressive of strength, the strength of the hills is His: of majesty--of stability, the everlasting hills: of veneration, the silence of the hills breathes veneration (Mrs. Hemans); striking and suitable emblem of Him to whom all might, and majesty, and duration, and reverence belong.
III. The godly mans confidence: My help cometh from the Lord, etc. He is assured that He who made the heavens and made the earth would rather let the sky fall and the earth perish from the want of His support, than that he should suffer injury from the withholding of His help. Help alone cometh from God: help does and ever will be vouchsafed, etc.
IV. The godly mans safety: He will not suffer, etc.
1. Safety guaranteed from the highest source: the Lord is thy Keeper (verse 5). His wisdom, power, love, all His attributes a royal battalion--bodyguard around him, unceasingly around him (verses 3, 4).
2. Safety guaranteed to the whole man, under all circumstances, through all time, from all evil (verses 7, 8). (J. O. Keen, D. D.)
The good in time of need
I. His attitude.
1. God is the only true help of the soul. He alone can raise it from its fallen condition, break its fetters, heal its wounds, energize its faculties, and set it on a course safe and prosperous.
2. To Him the godly soul instinctively looks in trial. The worldly man in trial looks to earthly things for succour and support, to social sympathies, to human friendships, to Church officers, but the good man turns at once to God, feels that from Him alone the necessary help can come.
II. His protector.
1. The universal Creator.
2. A sleepless Guardian.
3. The all-sufficient.
III. His confidence (verse 7). (Homilist.)
Looking to the hills
We see the exile, wearied with the monotony of the long-stretching, flat plains of Babylonia, summoning up before his mind the distant hills where his home was. We see him wondering how he will be able ever to reach that place where his desires are set; and we see him settling down, in hopeful assurance that his effort is not in vain, since his help comes from the Lord. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; away out yonder westwards, across the sands, lies the lofty summits of my fatherland that draws me to itself. Then comes a turn of thought, most natural to a mind passionately yearning after a great hope, the very greatness of which makes it hard to keep constant. For the second clause must be taken as a question: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help? How am I to get there? And then comes the final turn of thought: My help cometh from the Lord, etc.
I. The look of longing. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills--a resolution, and a resolution born of intense longing. It comes to be a very sharp question with us professing Christians, whether the horizon of our inward being is limited by, and coterminous with, the horizon of our senses, or whether, far beyond the narrow limits to which these can reach, our spirits desire stretches boundless. Are, to us, the things unseen the solid things, and the things visible the shadows and the phantoms? We see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the shadows. I will lift up my eyes from the mud-flats where I live to the hills that I cannot see, and, seeing them, I shall be blessed. Further, do we know anything of that longing that the psalmist had? He was perfectly comfortable in Babylon. There was abundance of everything that he wanted for his life. But for all that, fat, wealthy Babylon was not Palestine. So the psalmist longed for the mountains, though the mountains are often bare of green things, amidst the lush vegetation, the wealth of water and the fertile plains. Do we know anything of that longing which makes us that are in this tabernacle to groan, being burdened? Unless our Christianity throws us out of harmony and contentment with the present, it is worth very little. And unless we know something of that immortal longing to be nearer to God, and fuller of Christ, and emancipated from sense, and from the burdens and trivialities of life, we have yet to learn what the meaning of walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit really, is. Further, do we make any effort like that of this psalmist, who encourages and stimulates himself by that strong I will lift up my eyes? You will not do it unless you make a dead lift of effort.
II. The question of weakness. From whence cometh my help? The loftier our ideal, the more painful ought to be our conviction of incapacity to reach it. The Christian mans one security is in feeling his peril, and the condition of his strength is his acknowledgment and vivid consciousness always of his weakness. Blessed is the man that feareth always. Pride goeth before destruction. Remember the Franco-German war, and how the French Prime Minister said that they were going into it with a light heart, and how some of the troops went out of Paris in railway carriages labelled for Berlin; and when they reached the frontier they were doubled up and crushed in a month. Unless we, when we set ourselves to this warfare, feel the formidableness of the enemy and recognize the weakness of our own arms, there is nothing but defeat for us.
III. The assurance of faith. The psalmist asks himself: From whence cometh my help? and then the better self answers the questioning, timid self: My help cometh from the Lord, etc. There will be no reception of the Divine help unless there is a sense of the need of the Divine help. God cannot help me before I am brought to despair of any other help. If we conceit ourselves to be strong we are weak; if we know ourselves to be impotent, Omnipotence pours itself into us. We read once that Jesus Christ healed them that had need of healing. Why does the evangelist not say, without that periphrasis, healed the sick? Because he would emphasize, I suppose, amongst other things, the thought that only the sense of need fits for the reception of healing and help. If, then, we desire that God should be the strength of our hearts, and our portion for ever, the coming of His help must be wooed and won by our sense of our own impotence, and only they who say: We have no might against this great multitude that cometh against us, will ever hear from Him the blessed assurance: the Lord will fight for you. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Looking up
The text would be better rendered, Shall I lift up mine eyes unto the hills? Whence should my help come? It cometh from Jehovah, who is high up above the hills; even from the Maker of heaven and earth. Palestine is a mountain-land; and such a country exercises a strange fascination over its inhabitants. What a holy power the great mountains have over us all! They seem to be so near to God, so full of God, that they bring us near to Him, and they fill us full of Him. They make us look up. And that is precisely what we all need to have done for us.
I. World-drawn, we look down, and so are weak. We are in the world; in a thousand subtle ways we are kin with the world, we are subject to its influences, caught by its whirl of excitement, absorbed by its pressing claims, and easily we may become of the world as well as in it. But everything the world presents to us is below us, beneath us; and it so keeps us looking down, that at last the habit of down-looking grows upon us. How powerfully we are all drawn by world-interests! The influence of the world begets a downward look, a sort of set of the eyes and heart downwards. What do we see when we thus fix our gaze? Nothing elevating, inspiring, ennobling, much of self, of man, and of things. Much of conflict, and struggle, and loss, and pain, and change, and dissatisfaction. Much of man, and his things, that perish with the using. Much of man, and the fashion of this world that passeth away. Human grandeur, which, seen from above, is all of tinsel. Human successes, that are touched by the chill hand of death, and fade sooner than the summer cloud. What do we see when we look down? The hurry and bustle of thousands who, along with us, are hasting to be rich. The physicians, driving to homes that are full of pain, and grief, and fear. The mourners going about the streets. And the shadow of Gods curse on sin resting darkly everywhere. It is this downward, earthward looking that makes us so weak: so weak as those who, being made in the image of God, ought to be strong in the strength of God.
II. God-drawn, we look up, and so grow strong. God is ever calling. If we would stop and hush awhile, we might hear the voice of God in our souls, ever saying, Look up! Look up! Observe the gracious mission God has entrusted to the mountains.
1. Looking up, we find nothing of mans, it is all of God up above.
2. Looking up, we feel how pure Gods snow is.
3. Looking up, we find Gods clouds are glorified.
4. Looking up, we may hear the voices of the hills saying, The mists and the storms are all outside us; they are not us. We abide firm through all the changes. The mists pass swiftly about us, and pass away. The storms wildly rage about us, but the winds die down, the rains stream off, the thunder-voice is quieted, and we come forth again, only cleansed and purified. It is a message from God for us troubled, sorrow-stricken, storm-tossed men and women.
5. And the hills seem also to say, Up above is more sunshine than storm. Down below, mans smoke lies heavy over the towns, and Gods clouds seem dark; but it is almost always sunshine up here. These are the messages that seem to come from the hills. Look up! Look up morel (Robert Tuck, B. A.)
Excelsior! -
I. Who is it that ascends?--The Christian ascends.
II. Whither? Heavenwards: to the everlasting hills.
III. From whence? From this vale of tears.
IV. By what steps? By faith and repentance. (C. A. Fowler, M. A.)
The mountaineers psalm
I imagine the psalmist had either dwelt under the mountains, or had climbed some of their steep sides. Palestine, it is true, was not a mountainous country, like Switzerland; but still, it had its mountains, notably Hermon, which is over 9,000 feet above sea-level, and usually covered with a cap of snow. In a small way the psalmist might have been, probably was, a mountaineer, and so knew the unique feelings which come to one in lofty places. The special point I want to enforce is this--that what the mountains are to the lower, that God is to the higher life of man.
I. Invigoration comes from the mountains. Every one is conscious of this. In the valleys there is beat and the languor it produces. On the mountains there may be heat from the sunlight, but there is the tonic which comes from glacier or snow-field. In the valley the air is heavy and depressing. On the mountains the air is light and exhilarating. And so exertion which is impossible down below, is possible and easy higher up. And what the mountains are to the body God is to the soul. He is the true invigorator. In Him is our help found. Like the body, the soul needs invigoration, and that invigoration is found only in God. Immunity from evil comes only from an invigorated spiritual nature--and such a nature comes only from the sense of God.
II. There come from the mountains wide outlooks. Down in the valleys the outlooks are narrow. You can see the valley sides, and it may be you can catch the sight of some solitary peak shining with snow, but all is limited. You cannot look into the valleys near, or see the peaks that lie beyond. But move upward to the hills which frame in the valley, or, better still, climb some lofty peak, and the whole land lies before you--peak after peak, valley after valley, till you are almost overpowered with the sight. And it is so when we lift our eyes to God. With Him in our heart we get wide outlooks. Look at the world from the standpoint of God. Lord Salisbury once advised people who were talking ignorantly about foreign affairs, and who knew little of the geography of the world, to turn to large maps. I venture to bid those depressed at heart to take wider outlooks--to come up out of the valley where the little drama of the present is being enacted, and remember that there is still One who sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and who will guide the world, in spite of its aberrations, into the way of righteousness and peace.
III. The mountains may remind us of the lowliness of man and the greatness of God. Down in the cities of the world man seems the great factor. He is in evidence everywhere. His works face us at every turn. But up among the mountains man and his work fade from view, and God and His work alone are in evidence. God is nearer to us in flower and tree, valley and mountain, than in any buildings made with hands. And the voices which have gone deepest into the hearts of this generation are not the voices of men who dwelt amid the crowded haunts of men, but of those who in the quietness of the country heard the voice of God. Wordsworth amid the dales of Cumberland; Tennyson amid the heather-clad slopes of Surrey, or by the sea at Farringford; and, before and beyond all these, the Christ Himself, who said to His disciples, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile. (W. G. Horder.)
Looking up and lilting up
Hills have a fascination for those brought up among them. How Israel in Babylon sighed for their much-loved hills! How the Swiss away from their own country pine for the mountains of their native land! Jesus loved the hills. His chosen walks were among them. The hills were His sanctuary for prayer, His temple for worship; from the hills of Capernaum He preached; the crest of Tabor was the scene of His transfiguration; on the hill of Calvary He was crucified; from Olivet He ascended. There is an affinity between souls and hills. Especially for those who have become acquainted with their own solemn depths and sublime heights. The outward world tends to awaken the sympathy of the thoughtful for the true order which has been lost. It pictures to him both sides of his nature--his real and his ideal life, the life he lives, and the life of which he dreams, and for which he prays. The hills represent heights that he ought to attain--the deep places, depths of degradation into which he has fallen. Though imprisoned by a sinful darkness, and fettered by a chain of evil habits, the hills will not allow him wholly to forget his lost heights of freedom, peace, and blessedness, to which, now and again, he fain would, but feels he cannot return. The way of ascent is difficult. There is a broad and easy way, but it leads to deeper depths and heavier bonds. But ha the deepest depths, and under the heaviest burdens, he ever and again remembers the heights, though the corresponding life may, long since, have been transferred to his dreams. There are no heights like those to which the soul rises ha the exercise of faith--heights incredible to the senses. By faith, we finite creatures, with a sense-experience only of the finite, nevertheless apprehend the infinite; by faith, we creatures of flesh and blood, shut in by the material, discover our only true home to be in the spiritual; by faith, we mortals, in a world of mortality, anticipate immortality; by faith, we poor slaves of a manifold bondage look for perfect liberty; by faith, we, the offspring of earthly parentage, claim God for our Father, and Heaven for our home. These are some of the heights of which the hills are representative, and to which they point, hills of hope, and help for our original and eternal nature. From the hill of the Lord we receive help for the valley. If we look up we shall receive light for our way, and be led in a plain path. The hill of the Lord is to the pilgrim who looks up what the compass is to the mariner who finds his course by it through the troubled waters of the pathless sea. For those who look to Him, the Lord opens up a way in the desert, a path through the woods, and turns the sea into dry land. In the presence of their enemies He prepares them a table and causes them to lie down in peace, and goes before them in the way--a guardian, guiding Presence a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. In this short psalm the writer is so full of the protection and help of Jehovah that he cannot find terms enough in which to express the rich fulness of his icy and confidence, Fifteen times in eight verses he assures Israel of the help, keeping, and preservation of God--at all times; under all circumstances; for every one, with respect to his whole nature and history; for time and eternity. Oh, what hills of hope and help there are for the upward use of our eyes, altitudes of our own nature as seen in Jesus, which, like Alpine summits, far above every storm-swept height, look down in the mute eloquence and sublime repose of their eternal state invitingly on all below! The men who permanently bless the world are men who look up, and receive that which, travelling down the starry road of the Infinites abode, fills their eyes with reverence and a grand hope, and inspires their souls with a divine disdain of earthly goods and worldly honours, as being unworthy of mans chief end. This habit of looking up will teach us to understand the use of trouble in the valley. Let us learn to regard all that troubles and disturbs us in our health, our home, our circumstances as the means by which God calls upon us to look up,--to disengage ourselves from earthly entanglements,--to prepare to ascend. By the trouble to which we are born, He seeks to wean us from the love of earth, that He may woo us to the love of heavenly things and the spiritual life of our eternal home. (W. Pulsford, D. D.)
Lift up the eyes of the soul
This verse would be a suitable inscription for a church entrance. It is a scripture to be repeated when walking to the temple. If ever the eyes are strained towards heaven, it is by rose who go to the sanctuary, or long to do so. Yet it is possible to join the assembly of Gods saints, and not lift up our eyes to the hills. Some who make excursions seem to see all the meaning of their journey in what they take with them, others go chiefly to refresh themselves in the contemplation of Gods flowers and trees, rocks and rivers, valleys and hills. Of travellers climbing together to a mountain summit, there are those who, on reaching it, as if they had done all, lie down till the moment for returning; while their wiser companions, as if there were something for which they had been at the trouble of ascending, stand on the top, and look forth earnestly. They admire the prospect, and mark the direction of a more lofty mountain which they intend to gain, and how the road lies by which they will have to travel thither. Our feet are to visit the hill of the earthly Zion, that our hearts may get a better view of the mountain of the Lords house in the heavenly country. The object in attending the services of the sanctuary is to hear of heaven and learn the way. (E. J. Robinson.)
Hills
Hills make us look up. It is well they do so, for all that is necessary for our life here comes from above. An artist whose eyes have been much accustomed to look up, has painted some very beautiful pictures of sunset skies, which astonish many people who visit the Kensington Museum in London. They have never seen such gorgeous sunsets, and for the good reason that they have not looked for them. We lose much by fixing our eyes upon the things beneath and seldom looking up. A king once asked a duke if he had seen an eclipse of the sun on the previous day. No, sir, replied the nobleman, I have so much business on earth that I have no time to look up. By looking up the wise men of the East were led to the Saviour, who then lay an infant in Bethlehems manger. By looking up many a downcast heart has rejoiced to see the mornings sun rise, which seemed to speak to them of brighter days yet to come. But there is another kind of looking up that is necessary to give joy and true satisfaction to the soul. The high hills, the lovely skies, and the glowing sunsets should lead us to look higher up still--even to the Lord who made the heavens and the earth. This looking consists of real faith in God and in His promises. It is the soul looking beyond itself and all that is earthly to the Rock that is higher than we are. Looking unto Jesus is the secret of all true joy in the Christian life. It is as we look up with the eye of faith that the beauty of the Saviour is reflected upon us, and we are made like Him. But the hills have a few more lessons for us.
1. They give us a taste for what is beautiful. Some of the prettiest scenery in the world is amongst the hills. It is there we find flowery glens and mossy dells, where happy birds in song agree. It is there we behold the delightful waterfalls and other beauties of nature. We have read of a traveller who went to America to see the Falls of Niagara, and who, after a long, weary journey, was within a few miles of them, and inquired of a man if the rumbling noise he heard was that of the Falls. The man replied that perhaps it was, but he had never been there, although all his life he had lived so near them. But it is not always that people have the time and the means for travelling, and so they are to be excused. There is, however, no excuse for people being ignorant of the beauties of the Kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit opens the eyes of all who come to Christ to see spiritual sights which gladden the heart and prepare the soul for heaven. Travellers tell us of beauty in other lands far surpassing anything we have ever seen here. And there is also a heavenly land which is so fair that its glory can never be told us, as we have no language to express it or mind to conceive it.
2. The hills are very valuable to us. Their lofty summits cause the moisture of the air to descend rain or snow to refresh and make the earth fruitful. Then they give motion to the water, and thus keep it from growing stagnant or impure. Otherwise the water would have disease and death in it. Our souls, too, require heavenly rains to descend to refresh them, and to make them bear the fruits of the Spirit. We need the pure river of the water of life to flow through our souls to keep them in the love of God.
3. Hills praise God. They are commanded to do so in Scripture. One way by which they praise God is by producing holy desires in the hearts of men. They often cause people to think of the greatness and the glory of God. And they daily witness to His power and wisdom. We also are commanded to praise God, and we can do it consciously, which the hills are unable to do. We ought to praise God by the adoration of our hearts, the fruit of our lips, and the devotion of our lives.
4. The hills and the love of God are contrasted (Isa_54:10). How blessed it is to know that when the hills shall have passed away there is something that shall abide! Yes; the love of Jesus shall remain, and we shall dwell in the enjoyment of His glorious presence. His love was manifested upon a hill, which of all hills should never be forgotten--the hill at Calvary. This hill speaks of the amazing love of God in giving up His only Son to die for us, and of the matchless love of Christ in bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. (John Mitchell.)
The far-away look
In one of Dr. Millers helpful anecdotes we are told of a Christian woman, a busy editorial worker, whose eyes began to trouble her, until she was obliged to go to an oculist to see what was the matter with them. She told him she thought she needed a new pair of glasses. The oculist told her that what she needed was not new glasses, but rest for the eyes. That, she told him, was impossible. Her work compelled her to sit all day bending over a desk, reading and writing. The wise oculist asked her where she lived, and found it was in full sight of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghanies. Go home, he said, and do your work as usual, but every hour or so leave your desk, and go and stand on your porch and look at the mountains. The far-away look will rest your eyes after the long strain of reading manuscripts and proof-sheets. That is what Sabbaths are for--the far-away looks. We all need them--an hour or two on Sunday, if no more. Then--and here is the lesson for many a busy housemother who must prepare meals even on Sunday for her hungry children, who must often nurse the sick ones or stay at home with the little ones--if anything calls one away from the rest of soul and body, remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said that God wants mercy (kindness, goodness, helpfulness) even more than sacrifice.
From whence cometh my help.--
The help of the hills
Let me speak of the helpfulness of the mountains as a sign, not a measure, but an imperfect sign of the helpfulness of God. The most sheltered spots of earth are mountain guarded. When we rejoice in the valley, let us remember only the mountain made it possible. Is it protected from devastating storms such as involve the plains in their fury? It is because the mountain has guarded it. It has broken the hurricanes wing and the cyclones wheel. Is it alive with meadow streams that sing their gladsome song to the green grasses that bend over to listen? It is because the mountains sent the streamlets flashing down, pure as crystal and full of tonic for every living thing in the valley. Has there been an abundance of rain? The mountain nurtured the storm full of menace, but so full of blessing that when it saw the fields suffering for its baptism, it opened its veins of life with the lightnings lance, and became balm and benison to the blighted fields. Not only so, but the mountains give their fresh wealth to supply new soil to the valley. The storms that scar their old sides are ploughing up fresh soil for the cornfields and the valley. And the streams are the carriers that, plunging gaily from steep to steep, carry it down. The Alleghanies help to make the Ohio Valley. The Rockies enrich the Missouri, the mountains of Central Africa make the exhaustless granary of the Nile delta. Oh! the help there is in the stern hills Oh! the blessing God is to this low world! How He comes to shield from storms. How He sends upon us the living streams of His truth. Yes, how He bends Himself to be the nourishment and strength of His people! Consider the influence of the hills on the civilization of the world. They have been the nurseries of heroism, of physical and moral strength. The early Turanians, who displaced the stagnant barbarism of Asia with a rude vigour, descended for their work from the mountain ranges of Siberia. The Modes and Persians, who came down like messengers of Divine judgment on the effeminate luxury and showy splendour of Babylon, came from the hill country. The Spartans who filled the Thermopylae Pass were mountain men. The Waldenses, who held their own for liberty, held it in poverty and pain among the pinnacles of Piedmont--held it against all the cultured and disciplined power of the cities on the plains. Their natures were as rugged as the grey Alps around them. It is a grand preparation for heroism to be obliged to fight lifes battle under the stern conditions of the mountains. They do not smile on easy living. They are severe masters, but they enforce the lesson. He who has overcome the mountains has overcome many other things at the same time. But I do not believe that the chief value of mountains as promoters of heroism is of a physical sort. At last heroism has a moral base. Mountains make tough animals. They are the habitation of daring wild beasts, but they also work on those moral qualities which make great patriots. They affect mens thoughts. They appeal to a mans reverence. They overawe him with power. They work on his conscience. To face Mont Blanc is itself a sort of judgment day. It says God. There is absolutely no support for tired human spirits but in the idea of God, and that which that idea implies. To the mountain of Sinai you must look for the quickening of conscience; to the mountain of Calvary for salvation from sin. As the mountains lift themselves above the world in a stillness of perpetual benediction, so God rises to our faith and hope above these storm-driven plains of time. His Fatherhood overhangs us like a perpetual benediction. He helps us with a help that is quite sufficient, and that sustains us amid all circumstances; yea, with a help that makes us indifferent to circumstance. To men accustomed only to the light of reason and calculation it is difficult to present the spiritual help of the Lord. It cannot be explained. But it is the one profound fact that makes the difference between the submissive and meek-brewed; yea, the rejoicing saint and the complaining and rebellious sinner. I have often asked friends, What is the source of the contented lives the Swiss peasants live amid their secluding mountains? Contented and peaceful they undeniably are, and that, too, in poverty and toil from beginning to end. It seems as if the genii of the mountains from unseen sources beyond the storms brought unfailing peace and comfort as the streams that spring from the snows water their flocks and their pastures. The reservoir never fails. Now, Gods sustaining grace is like those streams of Alpine blessing. You cannot quite trace; you certainly cannot explain it. The child of God who perhaps has nothing but poverty and pain, misery and misfortune, as the world reckons, somehow holds a boundless peace, and the martyr who smiles in his agonies is not a more conspicuous example of this strange unseen help of God than is the quiet patient soul who, in ordinary ways of uneventful living, holds a steadfast faith and a happy hope in God. (C. L. Thompson, D. D.)
Help needed and provided
It, was help and only help, which he looked for from his God; and help is not that which dispenses with exertion on our part, but rather that which supposes such exertion. Helping a man is not the doing everything for him, and leaving him nothing to do for himself; but rather the assisting him in his efforts,--making those efforts effectual, when perhaps without aid they would be insufficient and frustrated. It is help, and nothing more than help, which is promised throughout the Scriptures. Help us, O God of our salvation, is the burden of the supplications of David; and St. Paul, when he would found an argument for boldness in approaching the mercy-seat, on the fact of our having an High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, does not apply it to the expecting more than mercy and help--That we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. There cannot be a more dangerous delusion than the supposing that the operations of Divine grace are such as to supersede the necessity for exertion, or such (so to speak) as will make us religious in spite of ourselves. The Spirit will not force us to pray; but if we yield to His impulse, and endeavour to pray, He will Help our infirmities, and enable us to pray effectually. He will not make it impossible for us to be overcome of temptation; but if we strive against it, He will so come to our assistance as to ensure us the victory. He will not bring to maturity the virtues implanted by Himself without requiring from us any of the processes of moral husbandry; whilst the showers and the sunshine are altogether His, the labour and the tillage must be ours. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible1887 · Public DomainOn v1Psalms 121
Psalms 121
How many timid, anxious hearts has this sweet outpouring of quiet trust braced and lifted to its own serene height of conscious safety! This psalmist is so absorbed in the thought of his Keeper that he barely names his dangers. With happy assurance of protection, he says over and over again the one word which is his amulet against foes and fears. Six times in these few verses does the thought recur that Jehovah is the Keeper of Israel or of the single soul. The quietness that comes of confidence is the singers strength. Whether he is an exile, looking across the plains of Mesopotamia towards the blue hills. which the eye cannot discern, or a pilgrim catching the first sight of the mountain on which Jehovah sits enshrined, is a question which cannot be decisively answered; but the power and beauty of this little breathing of peaceful trust are but slightly affected by any hypothesis as to the singers circumstances. Psa_121:1 and Psa_121:2 stand apart from the remainder, in so far as in them the psalmist speaks in the first person, while in the rest of the psalm he is spoken to in the second. But this does not necessarily involve the supposition of an antiphonal song. The two first verses may have been sung by a single voice, and the assurances of the following ones by a chorus or second singer. But it is quite as likely that, as in other psalms, the singer is in Psa_121:3-8 himself the speaker of the assurances which confirm his own faith.
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His first words describe the earnest look of longing. He will lift his eyes from all the coil of troubles and perils to the heights. Sursum corda expresses the true ascent which these psalms enjoin and exemplify. If the supposition that the psalmist is an exile on the monotonous levels of Babylon is correct, one feels the pathetic beauty of his wistful gaze across the dreary flats towards the point where he knows that the hills of his fatherland rise. To look beyond the low levels where we dwell, to the unseen heights where we have our home, is the condition of all noble living amid these lower ranges of engagement with the visible and transient. "Whence comes my help?" is a question which may be only put in order to make the assured answer more emphatic, but may also be an expression of momentary despondency, as the thought of the distance between the gazer and the mountains chills his aspirations. "It is easy to look, but hard to journey thither, How shall I reach that goal? I am weak; the way is long and beset with foes." The loftier the ideal, the more needful, if it is ever to be reached, that our consciousness of its height and of our own feebleness should drive us to recognise our need of help in order to attain it.
Whoever has thus high longings sobered by lowly estimates of self is ready to receive the assurance of Divine aid. That sense of impotence is the precursor of faith. We must distrust ourselves, if we are ever to confide in God. To know: that we need His aid is a condition of obtaining it. Bewildered despondency asks, "Whence comes my help?" and scans the low levels in vain. The eye that is lifted to the hills is sure to see Him coming to succour; for that question on the lips of one whose looks are directed thither is a prayer, rather than a question; and the assistance he needs sets out towards him from the throne, like a sunbeam from the sun, as soon as he looks up to the light.
The particle of negation in Psa_121:3 is not that used in Psa_121:4, but that which is employed in commands or wishes. The progress from subjective desire in Psa_121:3, to objective certainty of Divine help as expressed in Psa_121:4 and the remainder of the psalm, is best exhibited if the verbs in the former verse are translated as expressions of wish "May He not," etc. Whether the speaker is taken to be the psalmist or another makes little difference to the force of Psa_121:3 which lays hold in supplication of the truth just uttered in Psa_121:2, and thereby gains a more assured certainty that it is true, as the following verses go on to declare. It is no drop to a lower mood to pass from assertion of Gods help to prayer for it. Rather it is the natural progress of faith. Both clauses of Psa_121:2 become specially significant if this is a song for pilgrims. Their daily march and their nightly encampment will then be placed under the care of Jehovah, who will hold up their feet unwearied on the road and watch unslumbering over their repose. But such a reference is not necessary. The language is quite general. It covers the whole ground of toil and rest, and prays for strength for the one and quiet security in the other.
The remainder of the psalm expands the one thought of Jehovah the Keeper, with sweet reiteration, and yet comprehensive variation. First, the thought of the last clause of the preceding verse is caught up again. Jehovah is the keeper of the community, over which He watches with unslumbering care. He keeps Israel so long as Israel keeps His law; for the word so frequently used here is the same as is continually employed for observance of the commandments. He had seemed to slumber while Israel was in exile, and had been prayed to awake, in many a cry from the captives. Now they have learned that He never slumbers: His power is unwearied, and needs no recuperation; His watchfulness is never at fault. But universal as is His care it does not overlook the single defenceless suppliant. He is "thy Keeper," and will stand at thy right hand, where helpers stand, to shield thee from all dangers. Men lose sight of the individual in the multitude, and the wider their benevolence or beneficence, the less it takes account of units; but God loves all because He loves each, and the aggregate is kept because each member of it is. The light which floods the universe gently illumines every eye. The two conceptions of defence and impartation of power are smelted together in the pregnant phrase of Psa_121:5 b, " thy shade at thy right hand."
The notion of shelter from evils predominates in the remainder of the psalm. It is applied in Psa_121:6 to possible perils from physical causes: the fierce sunlight beat down on the pilgrim band, and the moon was believed, and apparently with correctness, to shed malignant influences on sleepers. The same antithesis of day and night, work and rest, which is found in Psa_121:3 appears again here. The promise is widened out in Psa_121:7 so as to be all-inclusive. "All evil" will be averted from him who has Jehovah for his keeper; therefore, if any so called Evil comes, he may be sure that it is Good with a veil on. We should apply the assurances of the psalm to the interpretation of life, as well as take them for the antidote of fearful anticipations.
Equally comprehensive is the designation of that which is to be kept. It is "thy soul," the life or personal being. Whatever may be shorn away by the sharp shears of loss, that will be safe; and if it is, nothing else matters very much. The individual soul is of large account in Gods sight: He keeps it as a deposit entrusted to Him by faith. Much may go; but His hand closes round us when we commit ourselves into it, and none is able to pluck us thence.
In the final verse, the psalmist recurs to his favourite antithesis of external toil and repose in the home, the two halves of the pilgrim life for every man; and while thus, in the first clause of the verse, he includes all varieties of circumstance, in the second he looks on into a future of which he does not see the bounds, and triumphs over all possible foes that may lurk in its dim recesses, in the assurance that, however far it may extend, and whatever strange conditions it may hide, the Keeper will be there, and all will be well. Whether or not he looked to the last "going out," our exodus from earth, {Luk_9:31; 2Pe_1:15} or to that abundant entrance {2Pe_1:11} into the true home which crowns the pilgrimage here; we cannot but read into his indefinite words their largest meaning, and rejoice that we have One who "is able to keep that which we have committed to Him against that day."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary1892 · Public DomainOn v1This “Song of the Ascents”—a title slightly varying from…
INTRODUCTION
This “Song of the Ascents”—a title slightly varying from that of each of the other Gradual Psalms—is as suitable as any for the Israelite’s use when not leaving his home for the earthly Jerusalem, but only meditating on the circumstances and prospects of his spiritual progress, especially when life is drawing to a close; but its beauties are more apparent if we regard it as bursting from the lips of the pilgrims as after their long, weary, and dangerous march, in spite of Mesech and Kedar, though not yet beyond their reach, they come at last in sight of the mountain range of Moriah and Zion. O joyful! Yonder is Jerusalem! There is the sheen of the Temple! Our journey is nearly over! Jehovah is appealed to by the Church or saint in the first three verses, and in the remainder answers and confirms His believing people.—The Caravan and Temple.
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JEHOVAH THE REFUGE OF THE DISTRESSED
(Psa_121:1-4)
Wherever the devout Hebrew wandered, and whatever might be his condition, his eyes turned towards the mountain heights of his native Judea. In the distance those heights assumed the appearance of one vast mountain, on which there was a particular eminence that arrested the gaze of the eager worshipper, as if held by the spell of an irresistible fascination. This was Mount Zion, the consecrated hill of the Lord—the foundation on which He had built His Church, and the symbol of its permanency—the charmed circle of divinest manifestation—the central fountain from which streams of blessing have issued for the healing of the nations. As the mountaineer, pressed and worsted in the conflict, fled to his native hills for refuge and defence, so the suffering Israelite sought comfort and protection from Him “whose righteousness is like the great mountains.”
Note.—
I. That the soul is often placed in circumstances of distress.
Suffering is the commonest, yet most mysterious, feature of our human life. None are exempted. Heaven has no dispensations to grant to special favourites. Whatever differences there may be in mental endowments, wealth, or social position, there is, among all the descendants of Adam, an unavoidable, all-levelling communism in suffering. Apparent and numerous as may be the physical sufferings of mankind, there is a depth of mental distress of which the outer world knoweth not, and with which a stranger may not intermeddle. The hope deferred that maketh the heart sick; the collapse of undertakings that have cost days and nights of anxious thought and devoted labour; the wounds inflicted by unjust and mean insinuations, or by words barbed with envy and dipped in the venom of a heartless cruelty; the nameless pang of disappointment occasioned by the faithlessness of one we trusted, and to whom we knew not how far we had surrendered our heart till he flung it from him a pierced and bleeding thing—all these, and infinitely more, are hidden from the great world outside; they are beyond its power to assuage, or even to appreciate.
II. That in every time of distress Jehovah is an ever-available Refuge.
1. His power is unbounded. “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” The Creator of all can succour and defend all. The great forces of both worlds are under His control. He restrains their malignant, and multiplies their beneficent, ministries. However complicated our straits and pungent our grief, His power is all-sufficient. With such a refuge despair would be madness.
2. His defence is invincible. “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” The sliding of the foot is an emblem of misfortune frequently used, and a very natural and suggestive one to the dweller in the Hebrew mountains, where a single slip of the foot was often attended with great danger (Psa_38:16; Psa_66:9). The foundation on which the believer rests—the Divine power and goodness—is immovable, and while fixed on this basis his foot shall not be moved. The giddy whirl of pleasure; the artful devices of the tempter; the sombre tempest of calamities will, alike, be powerless to harm while he is circled by the Divine defence.
3. His vigilance is unwearied. “He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” Sleep is necessary to repair the waste occasioned by toil. It is an indication of weakness and limitation. All mundane creatures sleep. God never sleeps. He knows no weariness. To Him there is no night; the darkness and the light are both alike to Him. Nothing can escape His eye. No enemy can secrete himself unnoticed; no ambush can surprise Him. The sentinel may slumber at his post; the steersman at the helm; the mother by the sick-bed; but God never slumbers. He is never exhausted; never inattentive to the condition of His people, or the wants of the universe.
III. That the most signal manifestations of Divine help are realised in the sanctuary.
“The hills from whence cometh my help.” On those hills the Temple stood—the pride of the Hebrew, the marvel of the ages. There Jehovah localised His presence; there the ineffable glory hovered; there the people held sublime communion with their God; there were witnessed the brightest visions of His face; there were realised the strongest consolations of His love. The fondest, dearest memories of life cluster around the experiences of the sanctuary. The sad heart has there lost its burden; joy has been raised into a purer passion; the holy resolution been confirmed; and the future lit up with the kindling radiancy of hope. Who can estimate the loss to the worshipper of a single careless neglect of the service of the sanctuary!
IV. That the soul is delivered from its distress only as it turns to Jehovah.
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.” Help is not to be found in man. We cannot look to idols, or to the mighty, who, like hills, fill the earth, and raise their heads towards heaven. Truly, in vain is salvation hoped for from these hills (Jer_3:23). When all human help fails, with God nothing is impossible. To brood over our distress is to increase it. Our greatest distress comes when we wander farthest from God, and vanishes when we turn again to Him with a sincere heart.
LESSONS:—
1. Distress is never far to seek.
2. The Divine Refuge is open for all.
3. To receive timely help be always in your place in the sanctuary.
DIVINE PROTECTION
(Psa_121:5-8)
A celebrated traveller—after an absence of three years, during which he had walked across the continent of Africa from east to west, through vast regions never before trodden by the foot of the white man—recently received an enthusiastic welcome home. As he approached the quiet Kentish village where he had spent his boyish days, his first act, before entering his much-loved home, was to pass through the portals of the church where his aged father ministered, and, humbly kneeling, offer his devout thanksgiving to that God who had watched over and preserved him in all his wanderings. Among other appropriate Scriptures, this Psalm was read. It was a touching scene! Many hearts heaved with emotion, and many tears were shed, as the reader, in trembling accents, uttered the words, “The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coining in from this time forth, and even for evermore.” It was a graceful and fitting acknowledgment of that Divine Goodness which had safely conducted the weary, sun-burnt traveller through all the perils of his great and adventurous journey. We should be ever ready to acknowledge and adore the Gracious Power that shelters and protects us every moment. Observe—
I. The Divine protection is ample and efficient.
I. It is ample. “The Lord is thy shade.” He surrounds His people, and guards them at every point of attack. Without His encompassing shadow they are exposed to the fierce onslaught of numberless enemies, and must become an easy prey to their violence. Where the danger is greatest, there the Divine shade is thickest. The foe must be able to pierce the invulnerable, and conquer the invincible, before he can touch the feeblest saint who is sheltered by the wings of God.
2. It is efficient. “Upon thy right hand.” The right hand is the organ of action, either in aggression or defence. If that is paralysed, man is shorn of his main strength. As the enemies of God’s people are ever standing at their right hand to frustrate all their efforts in well-doing, so Jehovah is at their right hand to encourage and sustain those efforts, and restrain their enemies. At the point where the forces of evil most thickly concentrate, there the Divine protection operates most powerfully.
II. The Divine protection shields from the most open assaults. “The sun shall not smite thee by day.” To the inhabitants of the East, where the fierce rays of the sun are sometimes fatal in their effects upon the incautious traveller, these words would have a special significance. They also indicate figuratively the open dangers which threaten God’s people every day, and the flagrant, cruel, persecuting hatred of their most furious enemies. “Dangers stand thick through all the ground;” but God is present to defend. The worker in the dismal mine, the traveller by road, or rail, or sea, the toiler surrounded by the most destructive materials, is alike under the shadow of the Divine protection.
III. The Divine protection guards from the effects of the most secret treachery. “Nor the moon by night.” The moon is the ruler of the night; and everything belongs to it which happens during its reign, so that it is not necessary to trace all the evils of the night directly to the influence of the moon. The Lord will protect from all the subtle and invisible attacks of the wicked, though they come upon His people as silently and unseen as the penetrating cold of the moonlight night. He sees the approach of the least suspected danger, estimates the force of the subtlest influence, smiles at the treachery of His enemies, and disconcerts their cleverest combinations. The Divine Sentinel never slumbers. He can never be outwitted by the cunning of the most malicious.
IV. The Divine protection is a defence against every evil. “The Lord shall preserve thee from evil: He shall preserve thy soul.” He protects from the evil of sin and of suffering. He turns away the evil that is feared, and alleviates and sanctifies the evil He permits. He will preserve the life (the soul) of His saints in war or peace—when the weapons of destruction hurtle through the air, or when disease silently sheds around its noxious poison. He will keep the soul from doing evil, cleanse it from all pollution, and invest it with a purity immaculate and fadeless.
V. The Divine protection is realised amid the active duties of life.
“The Lord shall preserve thy going out.” The good man is directed in the beginning of his undertakings, and shielded by the Divine presence during their active prosecution (Deu_28:3-6). He is safe wherever his duties carry him—in the workshop, the street, the busy mart, on the restless sea, or in strange and distant countries.
“In foreign realms and lands remote,
Supported by Thy care,
Through burning climes they pass unhurt,
And breathe in tainted air.
When on the dreadful tempest borne,
High on the broken wave,
They know Thou art not slow to hear,
Nor impotent to save.”
—Addison.
A moment comes when there shall be the last going out—the ebb of life when the soul shall go out with the tide, to return no more! Then shall it be enfolded with the Divine protection, and preserved in endless bliss.
VI. The Divine protection overshadows the rest and quietness of home. “And thy coming in.” Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof. The Divine protection is not less exercised in the conclusion of any undertaking than in its commencement. Evening brings all home; and the weary one, after the toils and dangers of the day, enjoys the peace and rest of his home all the more because he knows he is encircled by the Divine guardianship. And when the shadows of life’s eventide gather round him, he fears not. The Lord will preserve his coming in—his tranquil entrance into the heavenly home!
VII. The Divine protection is unremitting. “From this time forth and even for evermore.” He is the continual portion and defence of all who trust in Him, in all places, at all times, in all actions, in life, in prosperity, in adversity, in death, in time, in eternity. No evil shall befall them to endanger their present and ultimate good. The safety of the Church and of every individual member is insured.
LESSONS:—
1. Offer grateful praise for the protection of the past.
2. Fear not the most furious assaults of the enemy.
3. Put all your confidence in the Divine Protector.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible1900 · Public DomainOn v1In these first words of one of the greatest…
Psa 121:1
In these first words of one of the greatest Psalms of David, the nobleness which we immediately feel seems to lie in this, that David will seek help only from the highest source. Nothing less than God’s help can really meet his needs. He will not peer into the valleys, he will not turn to fellow-men, to nature, to work, to pleasure, as if they had the relief he needed. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth." It is the duty of every man to seek help from the Highest in every department of his life.
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I. Take, first, the everlasting struggle with temptation. How perfectly clear it is that any man who undertakes that struggle may look either to the valleys or to the hills for help, may call the lower or the higher powers to his aid. The fear of pain, the fear of disgrace, the fear of discomfort, and the shame that comes with the loftiest companionship—we may have to appeal to them all in the hours, which come so often in our lives, when we are very weak. But, after all, the appeal to these helpers is not the final cry of the soul. Obedience to God is the only final and infallible help of the soul in its struggle with temptation.
II. Not merely in temptation, but in sorrow, a man may seek the assistance of the Highest or of some other power which is far lower. The real relief, the only final comfort, is God; and He relieves the soul always in its suffering, not from its suffering; nay, He relieves the soul by its suffering, by the new knowledge and possession of Himself which would come only through that atmosphere of pain.
III. Our truth is nowhere more true than in the region of doubt and perplexity of mind.
IV. The text is true with reference to man’s escape from sin. The best spiritual ambition seeks directly holiness. It seeks pardon as a means to holiness. So it lifts its eyes up at once to the very highest hills.
Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, p. 270.
Reference: Psa 121:1.— C. A. Fowler, Parochial Sermons, p. 223.
Psa 121:1-2
To the mind of the Jewish poet the everlasting hills of his native land were as shadows of the Infinite. The security which these mountain-ranges afforded to Palestine, forming as they did so remarkable a barrier to the land on every side except towards the sea, suggested to the writer of the Psalm an emblem of the Divine protection.
I. Here we have the grand distinction between the faith of the Jew and that of the heathen. The Jew knew that "the gods of the heathen are but idols, but it is the Lord that made the heavens." The whole Bible is merely the unfolding of that truth with which its first chapter so simply yet so sublimely opens.
II. This belief in God as the Creator and Preserver of all things applies in particular to man as the chiefest and best of God’s works (Psalm viii.).
III. This faith in God as man’s Creator and Preserver led the writers of these Psalms to trust their souls to Him as well as their bodies; led them to look to Him as their Saviour, not only from earthly troubles and dangers, but also from those spiritual troubles which are man’s heaviest trials.
IV. There is yet a further growth which we can trace from this faith in God as the Creator and Preserver—I mean the belief of the psalmists in a life beyond the grave.
G. Forbes, The Voice of God in the Psalms, p. 94.
Reference: Psa 121:1, Psa 121:2.—R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 154.
Psa 121:2
This expression of dependence upon God is not merely a formal act of piety, but the utterance of a truth which is seen to be more profoundly true for all of us the more we think of it.
I. It is plain that in all man’s great discoveries he only observes the energies of nature, which are not his own, but are really the energies of God; and in his inventions he follows up hints which are given him by nature itself, so that he is bound to acknowledge God in every step of his advancement. The law of man’s development is an ever-closer union of the finite with the Infinite, and this is its true glory. It is, in a lower sense, the ever-advancing incarnation of the Word of His power and the "taking of manhood into God."
II. That which is true of outward and material things is also the law of our salvation from sin and death. Man works out his salvation by union with God, who "worketh in him to will and to do of His good pleasure." The finite gains the victory only by closest union with the infinite Spirit. The one all-embracing condition of salvation is faith in Christ; that is, union of heart, and soul, and mind with the Power which alone can, and which certainly will, carry us from this world of sin and death to everlasting life.
III. If you have taken hold of this Power, remember that it has also taken hold of you, and will hold you in its grasp for ever as it holds the stars in their places. It is a Power which can transform you into something Divine. It is the Power which converts carbon into the diamond, a little earth and gas into the cedar of Lebanon, an invisible germ into the most perfect form of beauty. And it is set on converting us into something far more glorious than these things: into sharers of His own glory for ever in the person of Christ.
E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 149.
Psa 121:3
There are times of every man’s life, moods of every man’s mind, in which nothing is more acceptable than the remembrance of some of those fundamental truths of religion from which we often turn aside as elementary or commonplace. Such a truth, so certain, so fundamental, so comforting, is that of the never-failing providence of God, a truth, or rather a fact, which has been the unceasing support of all God’s servants in every age, and on the belief of which depend all our happiness in life, all our hope in danger and difficulty, all our strength and consolation in times of suffering and distress.
I. The providence of God must be either minute and universal or nominal and nugatory. If God does anything, He must do all things. The very greatness of God, the difference between Him and His creatures in point of knowledge and power, is shown in nothing more infallibly than in this, that He is able to combine universal dominion with particular superintendence, the irresistible control of empires and of worlds with the most minute direction of individual interests, the tenderest concern for individual feeling. What then does this teach us? How shall we avail ourselves of the truth thus disclosed?
II. Let each one say to himself—it is not the language of self-exaltation—God careth for me. The Lord thinketh upon me. I am of value in the sight of God, not for what I am without Him, but for that of which He has made me capable, and for the sake of Him who bought me with His most precious blood. It was not by chance, but by the will and operation of God, that the time, and the place, and the circumstances of my being were all ordained.
III. Recollect that from the watchful eye of that Providence which orders all things we cannot escape if we would. Either in love and tender compassion, or else (according to the fearful words of the prophet) with fury poured out, God must rule over us. It is not a matter of choice whether we will be under Him or whether we will be our own masters. His we are. "Whither shall I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then from Thy presence?"
C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons, 2nd series, p. 164.
Psa 121:8
I. It was help, and only help, which the speaker looked for from God. And help is not that which dispenses with exertion on our part, but rather that which supposes such exertion. Helping a man is not doing everything for him and leaving him nothing to do for himself, but rather the assisting him in his efforts, making those efforts effectual when perhaps without that aid they would be insufficient and frustrated.
II. "Who made heaven and earth." This is turning creation to account. There is not an impress of power in the visible universe but is a message to the Christian, telling him not to be afraid.
III. "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved." In the first verse we have the psalmist leaning or waiting upon God; in the third we have his strength renewed through fresh assurance of Divine favour and support. Were there no more watchful eye upon our path than our own, we should often be in such slippery places that no effort might avail to keep ourselves from falling; but there is an eye upon us that is never closed.
IV. "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." Then there is a blessed company who share with me this unwearied protection, "partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."
V. "The Lord is thy Keeper." This indicates, indeed, the presence and activity of enemies, who, like wolves, may prowl about the flock, but indicates also the security of those within the fold. If we refuse to stay in the fold, and wilfully wander into the wilderness, we must expect to be harassed and torn; but God will never fail to keep us so long as we fail not to strive to keep ourselves.
VI. The last verse is a promise that we shall be kept in all our ways; that in all our business, in all our movements, amid all the changes and chances of our mortal life, we shall evermore be defended by that ready help which issues from an eye that cannot close and an arm that cannot fail.
"Even for evermore." There is a "going out" from this world; there is a "coming in" to the next world. Our "going out" through the dark valley shall be under the guidance of that blessed Shepherd whose rod and whose staff shall never fail to comfort the believer; our "coming in" to the heavenly city shall be as heirs with that glorious Redeemer who must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2241.
Psalm 121
There is an affinity between souls and hills, especially for those who have become acquainted with their own solemn depths and sublime heights. In man’s earthly estate wonderful heights are laid low. He has descended from the eternal hills. Being away from his home and half a stranger to himself, the broken conformations of the outward world, the deep, dark, mist-shrouded valleys, the bold, aspiring, light-seeking mountains, deeply affect him. Man in trouble instinctively looks to the hills; he feels the attraction of the Fatherland, and knows there is help for him there.
I. "I will lift up mine eyes." Our eyes travel where our feet cannot climb, lay hold of what our hands cannot reach; but the eyes that the. psalmist speaks of are the eyes of the soul, and the hills to which he looks are the hills of help for the soul.
II. The help of the hills is representative of the help of other heights. They receive whatever help they furnish. They stand for the "hill of the Lord," for the "Maker of heaven and earth." The Maker only can help that which is made.
III. From the hill of the Lord we receive help for the valley. The hill of the Lord is to the pilgrim who looks up what the compass is to the mariner, who finds his course by it through the troubled waters of the pathless sea.
IV. "Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." The clouds may shut out the light of the sky even by day, and under a cloudless sky the sun early leaves the valleys; and though over the hill-tops the light long lingers, and the day seems loath to depart, the night closes in: but from Mount Zion the light is never withdrawn.
V. The habit of looking up will teach us: (1) to understand the use of trouble in this valley; (2) that we are to be withdrawn from the earthly valley.
W. Pulsford, Trinity Church Sermons, p. 50.
References: Psalm 121—S. Cox, The Pilgrim Psalms, p. 24; M. R. Vincent, Gates into the Psalm Country, p. 265; Expository Sermons and Outlines on the Old Testament, p. 242.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant1903 · Public DomainOn v1The Preserver.
The Preserver.
A song of the ascents.
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But the next psalm shows itself to be indeed "a song of ascents." Although not the full blessing,which the psalm following is to bring, yet the soul has found its help and its Preserver, -found it where alone help is, in the living God.
The first part of the first verse is not, as some would make it, a question. For an Israelite the presence of God naturally connects itself with Zion; the place of His rest, but where as yet He is not found. The psalmist looks there, but as yet only questioningly. But not questionable, nevertheless, is the source of his help: it is found in Him whose is not merely Zion; but heaven and earth. His refuge is in His unslumbering care, keeping the feet of him who is still a pilgrim. He is Israel’s Keeper: so faith, even from afar off, claims Him; -Jehovah, the faithful covenant-keeping God. The Pillar of Cloud by day again appears in the shade upon the right hand which forbids the scorching sun of the desert to smite the people of God, or the moon by night: (for the moon can affect both eyes and brain). But this is only an illustration of wider and perfect protection: Jehovah shall keep thee from all evil: He shall keep thy soul."
The last verse answers, in its number attached, to what is expressed definitely in it: "Jehovah shall keep thy going out and coming in; from henceforth even for ever." Eternity shall have its blessed activities, realized in as blessed dependence on the unfailing God.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v1Psa 121:1 - Psa 121:2.
Psalms
LOOKING TO THE HILLS
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Psa 121:1 - Psa 121:2.
The so-called ‘Songs of Degrees,’ of which this psalm is one, are usually, and with great probability, attributed to the times of the Exile. If that be so, we get an appropriate background and setting for the expressions and emotions of this psalm. We see the exile, wearied with the monotony of the long-stretching, flat plains of Babylonia, summoning up before his mind the distant hills where his home was. We see him wondering how he will be able ever to reach that place where his desires are set; and we see him settling down, in hopeful assurance that his effort is not in vain, since his help comes from the Lord. ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills’; away out yonder westwards, across the sands, lie the lofty summits of my fatherland that draws me to itself. Then comes a turn of thought, most natural to a mind passionately yearning after a great hope, the very greatness of which makes it hard to keep constant. For the second clause of my text cannot possibly be, as it is translated in our Authorised Version, an affirmation, but must be taken as the Revised Version correctly gives it, a question: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help?’ How am I to get there? And then comes the final turn of thought: ‘My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.’
So then, there are three things here-the look of longing, the question of weakness, the assurance of faith.
I. The look of longing.
‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills’-a resolution, and a resolution born of intense longing. Now the hills that the Psalmist is thinking about were visible from no part of that long-extended plain where he dwelt; and he might have looked till he wore his eyes out, ere he could have seen them on the horizon of sense. But although they were unseen, they were visible to the heart that longed for them. He directs his desires further than the vision of his eyeballs can go. Just as his possible contemporary, Daniel, when he prayed, opened his window towards the Jerusalem that was so far away; and just as Mohammedans still, in every part of the world, when they pray, turn their faces to the Kaabah at Mecca, the sacred place to which their prayers are directed; and just as many Jews still, north, east, south or west though they be, face Jerusalem when they offer their supplications-so this psalmist in Babylon, wearied and sick of the low levels that stretched endlessly and monotonously round about him, says, ‘I will look at the things that I cannot see, and lift up my eyes above these lownesses about me, to the loftinesses that sense cannot behold, but which I know to be lying serene and solid beyond the narrowing horizon before me.’
There was the look of longing, and the longing which made non-vision into a look; and there was the effort to divert his attention from the things around him to the things afar off; and there was the realisation, by reason of the effort, of these distant but most certain realities.
Now this Psalmist’s home-sickness, if I may so call it, had nothing at all religious about it. It was simply that he wanted to get to his own country-his own, though he had been born in exile; and there was nothing more devout or spiritual or refining about his longing than there is about the wish to return to his native country that any foreigner in a distant land feels. But when we take these words, as we all ought to do, as the motto of our lives, we must necessarily attach the loftiest religious meaning to them. And here start up the plain, simple, but tight-gripping and stimulating questions, ‘Do I see the Unseen? Does that far-off, dim land assume substance and reality to me? Do I walk in the light of it raying out to me through earth’s darkness? Do I dwell contented with never a glimpse of it?’ It comes to be a very sharp question with us professing Christians, whether the horizon of our inward being is limited by, and coterminous with, the horizon of our senses, or whether, far beyond the narrow limits to which these can reach, our spirits’ desire stretches boundless. Are, to us, the things unseen the solid things, and the things visible the shadows and the phantoms? The Apocalyptic seer, in his rocky Patmos, was told that he was to be shown ‘the things which are’; and what was it that he saw? A set of what people call unreal and symbolic visions. ‘The things which are,’ the world would have said, ‘are the rocks that you are standing on, and the sea that is dashing upon them, and all the solid-seeming Roman world, and the power that has got you in its grip. These are the realities, and these things that you think you see, these are the dreams.’ But it is exactly the other way. The world and all that is about us, Manchester and its hubbub, warehouses crammed with cloth, and mills full of jennies and throstles-these are the shadows; and the things that only the believing eye beholds, that are wrapped in the invisibility of their own greatness, these, and these only, are the realities. We see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the shadows. ‘I will lift up my eyes’ from the mud-flats where I live to the hills that I cannot see, and, seeing them, I shall be blessed.
Further, do we know anything of that longing that the Psalmist had? He was perfectly comfortable in Babylon. There was abundance of everything that he wanted for his life. The Jews there were materially quite as well off, and many of them a great deal better off, than ever they had been in their narrow little strip of mountain land, shut in between the desert and the sea. But for all that, fat, wealthy Babylon was not Palestine. So amidst the lush vegetation, the wealth of water and the fertile plains, the Psalmist longed for the mountains, though the mountains are often bare of green things. It was that longing that led to his looking to the hills. Do we know anything of that longing which makes us ‘that are in this tabernacle to groan, being burdened’? ‘Absent from the Lord,’ and ‘present in the body,’ we should not be at ease, nor at home. Unless our Christianity throws us out of harmony and contentment with the present, it is worth very little. And unless we know something of that immortal longing to be nearer to God, and fuller of Christ, and emancipated from sense, and from the burdens and trivialities of life, we have yet to learn what the meaning of ‘walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit’ really is.
Further, do we make any effort like that of this Psalmist, who encourages and stimulates himself by that strong ‘I will lift up my eyes’? You will not do it unless you make a dead lift of effort. It is a great deal easier for a man to look at what is at his feet than to crane his neck gazing at the stars.
And so, unless we take up and persevere in maintaining a habitual attitude of stirring up and lifting up ourselves, gravitation will be too much for us, and down will go the head, and down the eyes; and down will go the desires, and we shall be like men that live in some mountainous country, who never lift their gaze to the solemn white summits that travellers come across half Europe to see. Christian men and women too often walk beneath the very peaks of the mountains of God, and rarely lift their vision there. They perhaps do so for an hour and a half on a Sunday morning, or an hour on a Wednesday evening, when there is no other engagement, or for a minute or two in the morning before they hurry down to breakfast, or a minute or two at night when they are dead beat and unfit for anything. For the rest of the time, there are the mountains and here is the saint, and he seldom or never turns his head to look at them! Is that the sort of Christianity that is likely to be a power in the world, or a blessing to its possessor?
II Further, notice the question of weakness.
‘From whence cometh my help?’ The loftier our ideal, the more painful ought to be our conviction of incapacity to reach it. The Christian man’s one security is in feeling his peril, and the condition of his strength is his acknowledgment and vivid consciousness always of his weakness. The exile in Babylon had a dreary desert, peopled by wild Arab tribes hostile to him, stretching between his present home and that where he desired to be, and it would be difficult for him to get away from the dominion that held him captive, unless by consent of the power of whom he was the vassal. So the more the thought of the mountains of Israel drew the Psalmist, the more there came into his mind the thought, ‘How am I to be made able to reach that blessed soil?’ And surely, if we saw, with anything like a worthy apprehension and vision, the greatness of that blessedness that lies yonder for Christian souls, we should feel far more deeply than we do the impossibility, as far as we are concerned, of our ever reaching it. The sense of our own weakness and the consciousness of the perils upon the path ought ever to be present with us all.
Brethren! if, on the one hand, we have to cultivate, for a healthy, vital Christianity, a vision of the mountains of God, on the other hand we have to try to deepen in ourselves the wholesome sense of our own impotence, and the conviction that the dangers on the road are far too great for us to deal with. ‘Blessed is the man that feareth always.’ ‘Pride goeth before destruction.’ Remember the Franco-German war, and how the French Prime Minister said that they were going into it ‘with a light heart,’ and how some of the troops went out of Paris in railway carriages labelled ‘for Berlin’; and when they reached the frontier they were doubled up and crushed in a month. Unless we, when we set ourselves to this warfare, feel the formidableness of the enemy and recognise the weakness of our own arms, there is nothing but defeat for us.
III. Finally, notice the assurance of faith.
The Psalmist asks himself, ‘From whence cometh my help?’ and then the better self answers the questioning, timid self: ‘My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.’ There will be no reception of the divine help unless there is a sense of the need of the divine help. God cannot help me before I am brought to despair of any other help. It is only when a man says, ‘There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God!’ that God comes to help.
There is a story in the Book of Chronicles, about one battle in which Judah engaged, of a very singular kind. The first step in the campaign was that the king of Judah gathered all his people together, and prayed to God, and said, ‘We know not what we shall do. We have no strength against this great multitude that cometh against us, but our eyes are unto Thee.’ Then a prophet came and assured him of victory, and next day they arrayed the battle. It was set in this strange fashion: in the forefront were put the priests and Levites, with their instruments of music, and not soldiers with spears and bows, and they marched out to battle with this song, ‘The Lord is gracious and merciful. His mercy endureth for ever.’ Then, without the stroke of sword or thrust of spear, God fought for them and scattered their foes.
‘Which things are an allegory.’ If we recognise our helplessness, God is our help. If we conceit ourselves to be strong, we are weak; if we know ourselves to be impotent, Omnipotence pours itself into us. We read once that Jesus Christ healed ‘them that had need of healing.’ Why does the Evangelist not say, without that periphrasis, ‘healed the sick’? Because he would emphasise, I suppose, amongst other things, the thought that only the sense of need fits for the reception of healing and help.
If, then, we desire that God should be ‘the Strength of our hearts, and our Portion for ever,’ the coming of His help must be wooed and won by our sense of our own impotence, and only they who say, ‘We have no might against this great multitude that cometh against us,’ will ever hear from Him the blessed assurance, ‘The Lord will fight for you.’ ‘Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord!’ So, brethren! the assurance of faith follows the consciousness of weakness, and both together will lead, and nothing else will lead, to the realisation of the vision of faith, and bring us at last, weak as we are, to the hills where the weary and foot-sore flock ‘shall lie down in a good fold, and on fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow1909 · Public DomainOn v1The song of the traveller, whose guide is Jehovah.
The song of the traveller, whose guide is Jehovah.
1. Hills] RV 'mountains.' The mountains suggest strength, and the Psalmist asks a question, 'Whence shall my help come?' The answer is given in Psa_121:2 : 'from Him who made the mountains and all else.' If this Ps. were sung going up to Jerusalem then the 'mountains' may be the hills around Jerusalem, or those on which that city is built.
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5. Shade] i.e. shelter for defence.
6. A belief in the injurious influence of the moon is an almost universal superstition. If e.g. the moon shines on the face of a sleeper he may become blind: cp. 'moonstruck.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn v1A Song of degrees
A Song of degrees
Literally, "of ascents." Perhaps chanted by the people as they went up to Jerusalem to the feasts. Psa 122:1; Psa 122:2.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann1924 · Public DomainOn v1The Guardian Care of the Lord.
The Guardian Care of the Lord.
A song of degrees, full of believing fervor due to the consciousness of the fellowship of God with His children on earth.
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v. 1. I will lift up mine eyes, in anxious, yet trustful desire and longing, unto the hills, regarded as the throne of Jehovah, from whence cometh my help, or, in the form of a question, "From whence will come my help?" a most emphatic declaration of trust in the almighty power of God and in His willingness to help His children.
v. 2. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth, His creative power being a pledge of His ability to rescue those who trust in Him from all dangers. In order to strengthen this trust still more, the psalmist now addresses his own soul.
v. 3. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved, to stagger with weakness; He that keepeth thee will not slumber, His watchful care never ceases, is never diminished.
v. 4. Behold, an exclamation expressing and inducing further assurance, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber, in an occasional short nap, nor sleep, in total forgetfulness of His children. His is a sleepless vigilance, as the history of Israel abundantly shows. The assurance of the believers is therefore expressed in a series of positive statements setting forth the fatherly care of the Lord.
v. 5. The Lord is thy Keeper; the Lord is thy Shade upon thy right hand, literally, "over the hand of thy right side," said of a complete overshadowing and protecting.
v. 6. The sun shall not smite thee by day, its withering heat producing illness or even death, nor the moon by night, for in the case of many people, and in a number of countries, the effect of the moon’s rays on the uncovered head is similar to that of the direct light of the sun. The injurious influences proceeding from sun and moon are representative of all dangers by day and night, against all of which the ever-watchful eye of God grants protection.
v. 7. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil, no matter of what kind it may be and from which side it may threaten; He shall preserve thy soul, the life of the soul being the believer’s highest possession.
v. 8. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, the believer’s whole life, with all its occupations and undertakings, from this time forth and even forevermore, in time and eternity; for no danger can harm him who rests in the shadow of the eternal love of the heavenly Father, relying on the merciful promises of His Word.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Parallelism is common in Hebrew poetry. (See: Poetry and Parallelism)
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A song of ascents
Possible meanings are 1) "song people sang while going up to Jerusalem for a celebration" or 2) "song people sang while going up the steps into the temple" or 3) "song whose words are like steps." See how you translated this in Psalms 120:1.
lift up my eyes
This expression means "look at" or "focus my attention on." (See: Metonymy)
From where will my help come?
The writer uses this question to focus attention on the source of his help. This rhetorical question can be translated as a statement. AT: "I will tell you from where my help comes." (See: Rhetorical Question)
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv1, 4Ps 121 The leader of the group of pilgrims…
Ps 121 The leader of the group of pilgrims uses word pictures to assure the group of the Lord’s presence during the journey.
121:1 The mountains were known for their idolatrous worship (Deut 12:2), and Israel was enticed to the hilltop shrines (Hos 4:13). This verse can be understood as a rhetorical question expecting a negative answer: The gods of the hilltop shrines cannot rescue anyone. Others understand the mountains to be a symbol of the Lord’s strength (Ps 95:4). In that case, the question would be interpreted literally (Where does my help come from?), with the answer given in the next verse
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 8 l I will lift up my eyes to the…
l I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. The inspired writer, whoever he was, seems, in the opening of the Psalm, to speak in the person of an unbelieving man. As God prevents his believing people with his blessings, and meets them of his own accord, so they, on their part, immediately cast their eyes directly upon him. What then is the meaning of this unsettled looking of the Prophet, who casts his eyes now on this side and now on that, as if faith directed him not to God? I answer, that the thoughts of the godly are never so stayed upon the word of God as not to be carried away at the first impulse to some allurements; and especially when dangers disquiet us, or when we are assailed with sore temptations, it is scarcely possible for us, from our being so inclined to the earth, not to be moved by the enticements presented to us, until our minds put a bridle upon themselves, and turn them back to God. The sentence, however, may be explained as if expressed in a conditional form. Whatever we may think, would the Prophet say, all the hopes which draw us away from God are vain and delusive. If we take it in this sense, he is not to be understood as relating how he reasoned with himself, or what he intended to do, but only as declaring, that those lose their pains who, disregarding God, gaze to a distance all around them, and make long and devious circuits in quest of remedies to their troubles. It is indeed certain, that in thus speaking of himself, he exhibits to us a malady with which all mankind are afflicted; but still, it will not be unsuitable to suppose, that he was prompted to speak in this manner from his own experience; for such is the inconstancy natural to us, that so soon as we are smitten with any fear, we turn our eyes in every direction, until faith, drawing us back from all these erratic wanderings, direct us exclusively to God. All the difference between believers and unbelievers in this respect is, that although all are prone to be deceived, and easily cheated by impostures, yet Satan bewitches unbelievers by his enchantments; whereas, in regard to believers, God corrects the vice of their nature, and does not permit them to persevere in going astray. The meaning of the Prophet is abundantly obvious, which is, that although all the helps of the world, even the mightiest, should offer themselves to us, yet we ought not to seek safety anywhere but in God; yea, rather, that when men shall have long wearied themselves in hunting after remedies, now in one quarter and now in another, they will at length find from experience, that there is no assured help but in God alone. By the mountains, the Prophet means whatever is great or excellent in the world; and the lesson he teaches is, that we ought to account all such favor as nothing.
Farther, these two verses ought to be read connectedly, bringing out this sense: When I shall have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, then I will at length experience that I have fallen into a rash and unprofitable mistake, until I direct them to God alone, and keep them fixed upon him. It is at the same time to be observed, that God in this place is not in vain honored with the title of Creator of heaven and earth; it being intended hereby tacitly to rebuke the ingratitude of men, when they cannot rest contented with his power. Did they in good earnest acknowledge him as Creator, they would also be persuaded, that as he holds the whole world in his hand, and governs it as seemeth good in his sight, he is possessed of infinite power. But when, hurried away by the blind impetuosity of their passions, they have recourse to other objects besides him, they defraud him of his right and empire. In this way ought we to apply this title of God to the case in hand. The amount is, that whilst we are naturally more anxious than is needful in seeking alleviation and redress to our calamities, especially when any imminent danger threatens us, yet we act a foolish and mistaken part in running up and down through tortuous mazes: and that therefore we ought to impose a restraint upon our understandings, that they may not apply themselves to any other but God alone. Nor is the opinion of those unsuitable, who think that the Hebrew word אל, el, which we translate to, namely, to the mountains, is put for על, al, which signifies above, giving this sense, That men, however high they may look, will find no true salvation except in God.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 6, 8 Or, about the mountains: meaning, that there is nothing…
Or, about the mountains: meaning, that there is nothing so high in this world, wherein he can trust, but only in God.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–8 Psa 121:1 « A Song of degrees. » I…
Psa 121:1 « A Song of degrees. » I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
A Song of degrees] On, of ascensions, in singing whereof there should be ascensions in our hearts. See Psa 120:1.
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Ver. 1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills] Not to your mountains, Psa 11:1, human helps and carnal combinations, Jer 3:23, much less to those mountains, in quibus gentes idola collocant et colunt, wherein the heathens set and serve their idols, Deu 12:2, but to Zion and Moriah, where God’s sanctuary is, Psa 87:1, or rather to heaven, Psa 18:9, with 2Sa 22:10; 2Sa 22:14, where God himself is; and so it followeth.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 Unto the hills; either to Zion and Moriah, which…
Unto the hills; either to Zion and Moriah, which are called the holy mountains, Psa 87:1; or rather,
2. To the hills in general, whereof there were many in the land of Canaan, and upon which the forces, which he hoped would come to his aid, might be seen at a great distance.
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Cometh; or, may come; Heb. will come.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 This psalm teaches us,
This psalm teaches us,
I. To stay ourselves upon God as a God of power and a God all-sufficient for us. David did so and found the benefit of it. 1. We must not rely upon creatures, upon men and means, instruments and second causes, nor make flesh our arm: "Shall I lift up my eyes to the hills?" - so some read it. "Does my help come thence? Shall I depend upon the powers of the earth, upon the strength of the hills, upon princes and great men, who, like hills, fill the earth, and hold up their heads towards heaven? No; in vain is salvation hoped for from hills and mountains, Jer 3:23. I never expect help to come from them; my confidence is in God only." We must lift up our eyes above the hills (so some read it); we must look beyond instruments to God, who makes them that to us which they are. 2. We must see all our help laid up in God, in his power and goodness, his providence and grace; and from him we must expect it to come: "My help comes from the Lord; the help I desire is what he sends, and from him I expect it in his own way and time. If he do not help, no creature can help; if he do, no creature can hinder, can hurt." 3. We must fetch in help from God, by faith in his promises, and a due regard to all his institutions: "I will lift up my eyes to the hills" (probably he meant the hills on which the temple was built, Mount Moriah, and the holy hill of Zion, where the ark of the covenant, the oracle, and the altars were); "I will have an eye to the special presence of God in his church, and with his people (his presence by promise) and not only to his common presence." When he was at a distance he would look towards the sanctuary (Psa 28:2; Psa 42:6); thence comes our help, from the word and prayer, from the secret of his tabernacle. My help cometh from the Lord (so the word is, Psa 121:2), from before the Lord, or from the sight and presence of the Lord. "This (says Dr. Hammond) may refer to Christ incarnate, with whose humanity the Deity being inseparably united, God is always present with him, and, through him, with us, for whom, sitting at God's right hand, he constantly maketh intercession." Christ is called the angel of his presence, that saved his people, Isa 63:9. 4. We must encourage our confidence in God with this that he made heaven and earth, and he who did that can do any thing. He made the world out of nothing, himself alone, by a word's speaking, in a little time, and all very good, very excellent and beautiful; and therefore, how great soever our straits and difficulties are, he has power sufficient for our succour and relief. He that made heaven and earth is sovereign Lord of all the hosts of both, and can make use of them as he pleases for the help of his people, and restrain them when he pleases from hurting his people.
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II. To comfort ourselves in God when our difficulties and dangers are greatest. It is here promised that if we put our trust in God, and keep in the way of our duty, we shall be safe under his protection, so that no real evil, no mere evil, shall happen to us, nor any affliction but what God sees good for us and will do us good by. 1. God himself has undertaken to be our protector: The Lord is thy keeper, Psa 121:5. Whatever charge he gives his angels to keep his people, he has not thereby discharged himself, so that, whether every particular saint has an angel for his guardian or no, we are sure he has God himself for his guardian. It is infinite wisdom that contrives, and infinite power that works, the safety of those that have put themselves under God's protection. Those must needs be well kept that have the Lord for their keeper. If, by affliction, they be made his prisoners, yet still he is their keeper. 2. The same that is the protector of the church in general is engaged for the preservation of every particular believer, the same wisdom, the same power, the same promises. He that keepeth Israel (Psa 121:4) is thy keeper, Psa 121:5. The shepherd of the flock is the shepherd of every sheep, and will take care that not one, even of the little ones, shall perish. 3. He is a wakeful watchful keeper: "He that keepeth Israel, that keepeth thee, O Israelite! shall neither slumber nor sleep; he never did, nor ever will, for he is never weary; he not only does not sleep, but he does not so much as slumber; he has not the least inclination to sleep." 4. He not only protects those whom he is the keeper of, but he refreshes them: He is their shade. The comparison has a great deal of gracious condescension in it; the eternal Being who is infinite substance is what he is in order that he may speak sensible comfort to his people, promises to be their umbra - their shadow, to keep as close to them as the shadow does to the body, and to shelter them from the scorching heat, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, Isa 32:2. Under this shadow they may sit with delight and assurance, Sol 2:3. 5. He is always near to his people for their protection and refreshment, and never at a distance; he is their keeper and shade on their right hand; so that he is never far to seek. The right hand is the working hand; let them but turn themselves dexterously to their duty, and they shall find God ready to them, to assist them and give them success, Psa 16:8. 6. He is not only at their right hand, but he will also keep the feet of his saints, Sa1 2:9. He will have an eye upon them in their motions: He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. God will provide that his people shall not be tempted above what they are able, shall not fall into sin, though they may be very near it (Psa 73:2, Psa 73:23), shall not fall into trouble, though there be many endeavouring to undermine them by fraud or over throw them by force. He will keep them from being frightened, as we are when we slip or stumble and are ready to fall. 7. He will protect them from all the malignant influences of the heavenly bodies (Psa 121:6): The sun shall not smite thee with his heat by day nor the moon with her cold and moisture by night. The sun and moon are great blessings to mankind, and yet (such a sad change has sin made in the creation) even the sun and moon, though worshipped by a great part of mankind, are often instruments of hurt and distemper to human bodies; God by them often smites us; but his favour shall interpose so that they shall not damage his people. He will keep them night and day (Isa 27:3), as he kept Israel in the wilderness by a pillar of cloud by day, which screened them from the heat of the sun, and of fire by night, which probably diffused a genial warmth over the whole camp, that they might not be prejudiced by the cold and damp of the night, their father Jacob having complained (Gen 31:40) that by day the drought consumed him and the frost by night. It may be understood figuratively: "Thou shalt not be hurt either by the open assaults of thy enemies, which are as visible as the scorching beams of the sun, or by their secret treacherous attempts, which are like the insensible insinuations of the cold by night." 8. His protection will make them safe in every respect: "The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil, the evil of sin and the evil of trouble. He shall prevent the evil thou fearest, and shall sanctify, remove, or lighten, the evil thou feelest. He will keep thee from doing evil (Co2 13:7), and so far from suffering evil that whatever affliction happens to thee there shall be no evil in it. Even that which kills shall not hurt." 9. It is the spiritual life, especially, that God will take under his protection: He shall preserve thy soul. All souls are his; and the soul is the man, and therefore he will with a peculiar care preserve them, that they be not defiled by sin and disturbed by affliction. He will keep them by keeping us in the possession of them; and he will preserve them from perishing eternally. 10. He will keep us in all our ways: "He shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in. Thou shalt be under his protection in all thy journeys and voyages, outward-bound or homeward-bound, as he kept Israel in the wilderness, in their removes and rests. He will prosper thee in all thy affairs at home and abroad, in the beginning and in the conclusion of them. He will keep thee in life and death, thy going out and going on while thou livest and thy coming in when thou diest, going out to thy labour in the morning of thy days and coming home to thy rest when the evening of old age calls thee in," Psa 104:23. 11. He will continue his care over us from this time forth and even for evermore. It is a protection for life, never out of date. "He will be thy guide even unto death, and will then hide thee in the grave, hide thee in heaven. He will preserve thee in his heavenly kingdom." God will protect his church and his saints always, even to the end of the world. The Spirit, who is their preserver and comforter, shall abide with them for ever.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–7 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,....…
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,.... Not to the hills and mountains in Judea, looking about to see if the inhabitants of them, or any bodies of men, appeared upon them to his help in distress; rather to the hills of Moriah and Zion, where the ark of God, the symbol of his presence, was, and to whom he looked for assistance and deliverance: or to heaven, the holy hill of the Lord, and to him that dwelleth there; see Psa 3:2. The lifting up of the eyes is a prayer gesture, Joh 11:41; and is expressive of boldness and confidence in prayer, and of hope and expectation of help and salvation, Job 11:15; when, on the contrary, persons abashed and ashamed, hopeless and helpless, cannot look up, or lift up their eyes or face to God, Ezr 9:6. Some read the words, "I will lift up mine eyes upon the hills" (f); standing there and looking up to the heavens, and God in the heavens; who is the most High over all the earth, higher than the highest, and above all gods. Others render them interrogatively, "shall I lift up mine eyes to the hills?" (g) to the idols worshipped on hills and mountains, and pray unto them, and expect help from them? No, I will not; salvation is not to be had from them, Jer 3:23; or to the kings of the nations, as R. Obadiah interprets it; and to powerful kingdoms and states he was in alliance with, comparable to mountains and hills, Psa 46:2? No, I will not; "it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes", Psa 118:9. And so the following clause may be read,
from whence shall my help come? (h) not from hills and mountains; not from men, for vain is the help of man; not from kings and princes, the great men of the earth, nor from the most powerful nations; but from the Lord, as in Psa 121:2, which may be an answer to this.
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(f) "super montes", Vatablus, Amama; so Kimchi. (g) "attollerem oculos meos ad illos montes?" Junius & Tremellius; "attollamne", &c. Piscator; so Gejerus and Ainsworth. (h) So Musculus, Cocceius, Gejerus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Michaelis.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 6 David assures himself of help from God, ver. 1,…
David assures himself of help from God, ver. 1, 2. He assures others of it, ver. 3-8. A song of degrees.
Hills - To Sion and Moriah, which are called the holy mountains.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 The resolution of a godly man, 1, 2.
PSALM CXXI
The resolution of a godly man, 1, 2.
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The safety and prosperity of such, as they and theirs shall
be under the continual protection of God, 3-8.
NOTES ON PSALM CXXI
This appears to be a prayer of the Jews in their captivity, who are solicitous for their restoration. It is in the form of a dialogue.
Ver. 1, 2. The person who worships God speaks the two first verses, "I will lift up mine eyes - my help cometh," - Ps 121:1-2.
Ver. 3. The ministering priest answers him, "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved." "He that keepeth thee will not slumber," Ps 121:3.
To which the worshipper answers, that he knows that "he who keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep," Ps 121:4; but he seems to express a doubt whether he shall be an object of the Divine attention.
Ver. 5, c. The priest resumes and, to the conclusion of the Psalm, gives him the most positive assurances of God's favour and protection.
Verse 1. Unto the hills] Jerusalem was built upon a mountain; and Judea was a mountainous country; and the Jews, in their several dispersions, turned towards Jerusalem when they offered up their prayers to God.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Psa 121:1-2. I will lift up mine eyes unto…
Psa 121:1-2. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills — To Zion and Moriah, called the holy mountains, Psa 87:1, the hills on which the tabernacle or temple stood, where were the ark of the covenant, the oracle, and the altars. I will have an eye to the special presence of God in his church, and with his people, and from thence I will expect help. My help cometh from the Lord — From God alone, and therefore to him alone will I turn mine eyes; which made heaven and earth — And therefore how great soever my straits and difficulties may be, he has power sufficient for my succour and relief.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–8 I will lift up mine eyes - Margin, “Shall…
I will lift up mine eyes - Margin, “Shall I lift up mine eyes to the hills? Whence should my help come?” The expression would properly denote a condition where there was danger; when no help or aid was visible; and when the eyes were turned to the quarter from which help might be expected to come. What the danger was cannot now be ascertained.
Unto the hills - Hebrew, the mountains. To the quarter from where I look for assistance. This (as has been shown in the Introduction) may refer
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(1) to the mountains from where one in danger expected help; or
(2) to heaven, considered as high, and as the abode of God; or
(3) to the hills on which Jerusalem was built, as the place where God dwelt, and from where aid was expected.
The third of these is the most probable. The first would be applicable to a state of war only, and the second is forced and unnatural. Adopting the third interpretation, the language is natural, and makes it proper to be used at all times, since it indicates a proper looking to God as he manifests himself to people, particularly in the church.
From whence cometh my help - A more literal rendering would be, “Whence cometh my help?” This accords best with the usage of the Hebrew word, and agrees well with the connection. It indicates a troubled and anxious state of mind - a mind that asks, Where shall I look for help? The answer is found in the following verse.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Psalms 121
Psalms 121
A Song of degrees
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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 slumber.
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.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
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.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Contents and Composition.—The Poet lifts his eyes to the mountains, upon which is Jehovah’s seat, with the assurance, that from thence protection from all that can imperil body and soul, and help in every situation of life, will be vouchsafed him by the almighty and eternal God, who is not only the Creator of the world, but the Keeper of Israel, and who never grows weary in His activity and care. The change of persons is probably to be regarded as a poetical figure. A responsive song between a single voice (Psa_121:1; Psa_121:3), and the believing Church (Psa_121:2; Psa_121:4), with the words of the Priest in (Psa_121:5-8), in support of such trust (Olsh.), is not definitely indicated. The confidence of trust is expressed already in Psa_121:1 b, without the need of taking the sentence relatively (the German, English and Dutch Bibles) against the prevailing usage of מֵאַיִן (yet comp. Jos_2:4).
The question is not one of uncertainty or doubt, but is a figure of speech.
The particular situation of the Poet cannot be discovered. It is not even to be assumed with certainty that he was in exile, or on a festival journey. For the mountains to which he lifts his eyes are not any high places whatever in the world (Calvin et al.), from which help was expected, or the mountains within his present range of vision (Amyrald, Geier, J. H. Mich.), or those of Palestine, which the homesick exile beholds in fancy (De Wette), but those of Jerusalem, or of Zion (Psa_87:1; Psa_125:2; Psa_133:3) as the dwelling-place of God and the place whence help proceeds (Psa_3:5; Psa_14:7). But there is nothing to show whether the Poet was in Jerusalem itself, or in its vicinity, or at a distance. The conjecture of an allusion to Samaria, in the sixfold repetition of the catchword שׁמר (Hengstenberg, Hitzig), is too bold, since the guardianship of Jehovah is the fundamental thought.
Psa_121:1-4. [The second member of Psa_121:1, Should be an interrogative sentence as explained above.—J. F. M.]. It is by no means admissible to obliterate (Rosenm., De Wette) the distinction between the subjective negative אל ver 3, and the objective לֹא, Psa_121:4. [Perowne: “The Psalmist turns to address himself. First he utters the wish that God’s watchful care may be extended to him, and then the conviction that the Keeper of Israel, He who has been the God of his fathers, who has led the nation through all its eventful history, doth not, will not, cannot, slumber or sleep, comp. Psa_132:4, 1Ki_18:27; Isa_5:27; Job_7:20.”—J. F. M.]. By the exclamation: behold! (Psa_121:4), the assurance, that the Keeper of Israel cannot sleep, is still further supported. As the seed of Abraham, Israel could appropriate to itself the promise of Gen_28:15, so much the more confidently. No climax, however, is to be sought (Calv. Geier, J. H. Mich.), in the two verbs. On the contrary the former is the stronger, meaning literally: to snore. (Hupfeld). The strengthening of the expression is effected by the accumulation of synonyms.
Psa_121:5-6. The shade is an image of protection (Num_14:9; Psa_91:1); and this figure has something peculiarly attractive to the Oriental, even when not a traveller. It occurs here as preparing the way for the mention of the Sun, which immediately follows, but has not a physical and local meaning=over thy right hand (Luther) or: lying towards thy right hand, that is, towards the south, or protecting on the sunny side (J. D. Mich., Muntinghe). This is plain, if we consider that the injurious influences proceeding from the sun and moon are introduced only as representative of dangers by day and night, against which the ever-watchful God grants protection. But a real phenomenon of nature lies at the foundation of the figure. Recent travellers of scientific culture report expressly, that hurtful influences upon the human frame are not only everywhere ascribed to the moon by popular belief, but that effects similar to those manifested in sun-stroke, are produced by the moonbeams. There is no reference, therefore, to coldness by night as contrasted with the heat of the day, Gen_31:40; Jer_36:30 (Hengst., after Aben Ezra, Kimchi, Calvin, Geier, et al.), nor is the moon introduced for the sake of the poetic parallelism (Hupfeld) הִכִּהto smite, of the destructive beating of the sun (Is. 49:40), upon plants, causing them to wither (Psa_102:6), and upon the head (Jon_4:8), resulting (Del.) in the symptoms of sunstroke (2Ki_4:19, Jdt_8:2 f.). [Delitzsch: “Many years ago I heard a clergyman elucidate this passage from his own experience. While he was ascending a peak of the Riesengebirge, the moonbeams smote upon him so strongly, that he was compelled to shield his eyes with leafy twigs. And not long since I heard from Texas, that sleeping in the open air when the moon shines was in that country frequently followed by dizziness, mental aberration, and even death.” Other accounts from Batavia are given by De Wette and from the East generally by Ewald. Many expositors, however, understand by the smiting of the moon, the cold that is felt during the night, as being contrasted with the heat of the sun, comp. Gen_31:39; Jer_36:30 (Hengst. et al.) De Sacy remarks: “they say sometimes of intense cold, as of intense heat that it is burning.” “The Arab also says of snow and cold as of fire, jahrik, it burns.” (Delitzsch). The same usage was noticed by Defoe, who, in Robinson Crusoe, makes Friday utter the same exclamation during his first experience of snow.—J. F. M.].
Psa_121:8. The going out and the coming in do not denote specially going abroad and returning home, in the beginning and completion of any undertaking (Hengst.). but the whole life, and its occupations (Hupfeld, et al.). This is proved by the usage of the expression in many passages [Perowne: “Comp. Deu_28:6; Deu_31:2; 1Sa_29:6, etc. The threefold expression: ‘shall keep thee... thy soul... thy going out and thy coming in,’ marks the completeness of the protection vouchsafed, extending to all that the man is, and that he does. Comp. 1Th_5:23.”—J. F. M.].
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Men have not only to expect confidently help from God, they must also pray for it, and are permitted to resort trustingly to Him.—What consolation is contained in the reflection, that the Creator of the world is not only the God of revelation, but also the eternal Keeper of His Church, and of each of its members!—God neither confines His help to time and place, nor is limited in it by any creature whatever, nor directs it to any exclusive sphere of bodily or spiritual need.—God is our Keeper in everything; but do we at all times place ourselves rightly under His protection?
Starke: In time of need, our ruined nature is sorely inclined to seek help in those objects which can render none.—As mountains are a natural stronghold, so are God’s protection and assistance our more than natural mountain and fortress.—Thou troubled child of God, dost thou doubt that thou shalt be preserved? If God preserves the heavens and the earth which He has made, should He not also preserve thee?—God has a watchful but loving and merciful eye upon His children, He sees from afar all misfortune, and can avert it in time.—If the soul is lost, all is lost; Satan is continually laying his snares for it; do thou then pray the more fervently; O Lord! keep my soul!—The most important changes of a man’s life, are his entrance into the world and his departure from it; in both the Divine preservation is indispensable.—Thou hast God’s promise, so do thou, O fellow Christian! appropriate it believingly to thyself in every undertaking.—Frisch: Distress teaches us men to look around for help. But it is to be lamented that the timid heart does not know how to compose itself and seek it in the right place.—Help does not come to men from the place whither the flesh looked for it, but whither the soul of David turned to receive it.—Umbreit: All the acts of the pious are performed under God’s protection, whether abroad or at home.—Guenther: The departure from life, and the entrance into the eternal abodes of safety, are the goal of life, the first of all cares, and the highest of all joys.—O Lord! we are all travellers through life; we would also be true pilgrims.—Taube: The guardianship of God over the whole life, over time and eternity.—Huyssen: The hope of the Christian in the dangers of war.—Diedrich: God’s Church is exhausted here and encompassed by dangers; our comfort is, that God will guard us His inheritance, and lead us home to Himself.
[Matt. Henry: It is infinite wisdom that contrives, and infinite wisdom that works the safety of those, that have put themselves under God’s protection.—Those must needs be well kept, that have the Lord for their Keeper. If by affliction they be made His prisoners, yet, still He is their Keeper.—He shall prevent the evil thou fearest, and sanctify, remove, or lighten the evil thou feelest. He shall keep thee from doing evil, 1Co_13:7, and so far from suffering evil, as that whatever afflictions happen to thee, there shall be no evil in them. Even that which kills shall not hurt.—He will keep thee in life and death, thy going out and thy going on while thou livest, and thy coming in when thou diest, going out to thy labor in the morning of thy days, and coming home to thy rest, when the evening of old age calls thee in. Psa_104:20.—J. F. M.].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–8 1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the…
1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills—Not to the hills of Palestine in general, but to those of Jerusalem and its environs. See on Psa_125:2. Mount Zion, in David’s time, and Moriah afterward, were particularly holy mountains, the abode of Jehovah. Psa_14:7; Psa_20:2; Psa_48:2; Psa_48:11-12. The lifting up of the eyes here implies devotional trust and desire, or the lifting up of the soul, as in Psa_123:1; Psa_143:8.
From whence cometh—The compound particle, meayin, is an interrogative, and should read, “From whence shall my help come?” The question is abrupt, but gives a dramatic effect, and prepares for the answer which immediately follows.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the…
1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains:
From whence shall my help come? (R.V.)
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The mountains are not the “mountains of Israel” (Eze_6:2 and often), to which the exile turns his longing eyes, but the mountains upon which Zion is built (Psa_87:1; Psa_125:1-2; Psa_133:3), the seat of Jehovah’s throne (Psa_78:68), from which He sends help to His people (Psa_3:4; Psa_20:2; Psa_134:3). The question of the second line (which cannot be taken as a relative clause) is not one of doubt or despondency, but is simply asked to introduce the answer which follows in Psa_121:2. That answer gives a deeper turn to the thought of the question. It is not from the mountains of Zion, but from Jehovah Who has fixed His earthly dwelling-place there that help comes.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–8 (1) Whence.—Our version is certainly incorrect in following the…
(1) Whence.—Our version is certainly incorrect in following the LXX. and Vulg. in making whence a relative. The Hebrew word is always interrogative; even in Jos_2:4 it is indirectly interrogative. But the margin is hardly right in making the whole verse interrogative. Render, I will lift up mine eyes to the hills. Whence comes my help? The hills are those on which Jerusalem is built, the plural being understood, as in Psa_87:1. (See Note.) This gaze of hope does not absolutely decide the standpoint of the poet. He might have been like Ezekiel (Eze_6:2) when bidden to turn “towards the mountains of Israel” in the distant plain of Mesopotamia; or he may have been close on the end of the pilgrim journey, and actually under the sacred hills. But wherever he stands, this question is not one of doubt; he knows, as in Psa_3:4; Psa_14:7, that help will come from God’s holy hill “out of Zion.” He puts the question for the sake of the emphatic answer in the next verse. Possibly, as suggested by the marginal rendering and reference, the poet may in his mind have been contrasting the confidence with which a worshipper of Jehovah might look up to the sacred city on the crest of the holy hill with that superstition and idolatry which was associated with so many hills and high places in Canaan. If this is so, the best commentary, both on the poetry and the religion of the psalm, is to be found in Mr. Ruskin’s fascinating discourses on mountains in “Modern Painters,” their influence on the ancient, mediaeval, and modern mind, and the part they have played alike in the mythology of the pagan times and the religion of the Christian world. There must also be added, in connection with the feeling of the Jew, the part his mountains played as a barrier of defence (Psa_125:2), and as heights of observation from which to watch for the messengers of peace (Isa_52:7; Nah_1:15).
“In the mountains did he feel his faith
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. . . . and there his spirit shaped
Her prospects.”—WORDSWORTH.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–8 THE preceding psalm is one of complaint; the present,…
THE preceding psalm is one of complaint; the present, one of comfort and consolation. The pilgrim lifts up his eyes to the hills, and is satisfied that help is coming to him. He then proceeds to cheer himself with assurances of God"s sleepless care and protection. Metrically, the psalm falls into four stanzas of four lines each.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. The "holy hills," that stand round about Jerusalem, are intended. (Psa_87:1 Psa_125:2) There God had "promised his blessing, even life forevermore". (Psa_133:3) From whence cometh my help. Most modern critics regard this clause as interrogative, and translate, "Whence is it that my help shall come?" But "the question is only asked to give more effect to the answer" (Cheyne).
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Vers. 1-8. God our Guide: a New Year"s psalm.
In whatever special circumstances, or for whatever particular occasion, this psalm may have been written, it is certain that it is admirably suited to suggest New Year"s thoughts to our minds. We shall best appreciate it if we consider
I THE GREATNESS OF OUR NEED. We have sometimes to face the future, and then we confront:
1. Certainties; duties, difficulties, vexations, trials, temptations, opportunities.
2. Uncertainties; possibly some very great joy, or some overwhelming sorrow, or some very sore perplexity, or even the last experience of death.
II THE INSUFFICIENCY OF HUMAN HELP. We naturally and rightly look to our kindred and to our friends for sympathy and succor. But:
1. They do not remain with us; parents die; brothers and sisters are scattered far and wide; friends become estranged.
2. They cannot render us all the help we need. Oar wants go so far, and strike so deep, that human sympathy does not avail; it falls short; we need more than it can bring. We must not only look around, but above, must "lift up our eyes to the hills, from whence cometh our help," for our "help cometh from the Lord" (vers. 1, 2).
III OUR HELP IN GOD.
1. With him is all power. He who "made heaven and earth" (ver. 2) can do anything, everything, for us. There can come no difficulty, no entanglement, from which he cannot deliver us; there can come no sorrow in which he will not be able to support us.
2. We can count on the constancy of his care. He "will not slumber," etc. (vers. 3, 4). Not for one small moment will he forget us; day and night we shall be the objects of his watchful love.
3. He will be present to defend us everywhere. He will be our Keeper, our Shade upon our right hand (ver. 5). His gracious power will overshadow us at every step we take. We cannot think o, any place, however remote, or obscure, or humble, where he will not be with his defending, delivering hand.
4. He will guard us from all forms of evil. Evil takes many forms; it comes to us in every guise. Now it is prosperity, and now adversity; it may be an intoxicating approval and adulation, or it may be a crushing depreciation and desertion; it may be a strong and sudden assault on our integrity, or it may be the more perilous approach of that which very gradually undermines or disintegrates. But whatever be its form, our God can "keep" us true, pure, holy. The sun shall not smite by day, nor the moon by night; "the Lord will preserve us from all evil" (vers. 6, 7).
5. He will preserve us, ourselves; not only our home, our fortune, our credit, our reputation, but ourselves: "He shall preserve thy soul." He will "not suffer thy foot to be moved" (ver. 3); he will uphold us in the path of righteousness; and if we have to walk "in slippery places," yet his right hand will hold us, and our soul will not be stained with the sin which injures and defiles.
6. He will attend us to the close of life (ver. 8). "This God is our God forever and ever, he will be our guide even unto death". (Psa_48:14)
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY Vers. 1-8. Kept from all evil.
This is what the writer of this precious psalm looks for from God (see the first two verses), and this is what the psalm promises, and that with the utmost particularity. There shall not be even a slip of the foot, a thing so common in mountainous lands, and often so perilous, and the keeping shall be night and day alike, and close at hand (ver. 5). The Lord himself shall see to if, whether during the heat of the day or the chill of the night, it matters not. The Lord shall keep thee inwardly and outwardly soul and body alike, from all evil and in all thy ways. "But so ask not a few all that true? Are we so kept as this psalm promises not the mere godless crowd, but the company of God"s faithful ones: does the Lord keep them, as is here said, "from all evil"?" And then there are brought forward the long array of facts which seem to make against the truth of this word. Disease, accident, death, the overwhelming by earthquakes, lightning, flood, storm; by the ferocity or the folly of men, and by any of the ten thousand ills which flesh is heir to. As we contemplate the awful number of victims to such causes as we have named, and the yet worse ruin which comes from moral causes, it is not to be wondered at that some regard this psalm as rather a pious imagination than the declaration of actual fact. What are we to say? Are we to give up our faith in the blessed guardianship of God, and to consign to the category of credulity the trust which this psalm encourages? We will not do that, but we will reply
I THE PROMISE IS NOT FOR EVERY COMMUNITY, BUT FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD. The band of pilgrims who set out from Babylon to return to their native land and to re-establish the worship of God were a special and a holy company, and God did keep them as they journeyed on along the weary wilderness-ways. We must come within the circle of the covenanted people of God ere we can lay claim to the fulfillment of a psalm like this. It is not for the godless, but for the regenerated people of God. For them
II THE GENERAL RULE OF GOD"S PROVIDENTIAL CARE IS AS HERE SET FORTH. Not the universal, but the general rule. There have been and there are exceptions, but taking the history of God"s people in all ages, and looking at their average experience, may we not cry It is well with the righteous; the Lord is their Keeper? God"s people are, after all, the happiest people under the sun.
III OUR IDEA OF BEING KEPT AND GOD"S IDEA MAY BE VERY DIFFERENT.
1. We think so much of the keeping of the body, and of a man"s outward circumstances. But in comparison with the soul"s well-being, God counts these things as of no importance. Hence God may preserve a man"s soul when he lets his outward affairs go all to ruin; for the sake of his soul this may be needed. But if his soul has been kept, has not God been true to his word?
2. God takes eternity into view; we think only of the present. If, then, a man be eternally saved, does the fact that during a period unspeakably short in comparison with eternity the man"s outward life was full of trouble invalidate the promise of this psalm and prove it false?
3. Further, we see only the surface of things; God looks at the reality. If, then, what we call disaster, and think to be so, be really amongst "all things which work together for not merely precede, but produce the man"s good" as is so often the case, (see 2Co_4:17) then is God"s permission or sending of that disaster a falsifying of the promise of this psalm.
IV THE PROMISE MAY BE TRUE TO THE HEART WHEN ITS FULFILLMENT IS NOT APPARENT TO THE EYE. What is the value of all God"s providential mercies, his blessed keeping of us in health and external well-being what is the value of it except for the effect it has upon our minds? It is the inward happiness and peace and joy which these things impart which gives them their value. Otherwise they are of no good at all, any more than the strains of sweetest music are to the deaf, or the most beautiful scenery to the blind. But if God be able as he is to impart that same and even greater inward happiness, peace, and joy by other means, and does so, as, blessed be his Name! he so often does, then again we ask Has not God been true to his word? is not this psalm actual fact? Therefore we rest assured that the Lord will keep us flora all evil, he will keep our soul. S.C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK Vers. 1, 2. Looking up.
"Shall I lift up mine eyes unto the hills? Whence should my help come?" The precise associations of the psalm cannot be fixed with any certainty. Perhaps it is best regarded as a psalm of the Exile. It might have been written by a Daniel, as he sat at his open window, and looked away over the broad, fiat plains of Babylon toward the distant mountain-land of Israel. The writer is oppressed with the burdens and sorrows of exile; he remembers Zion, and he sings his soul to quietness and peace by looking away from present cares to the high hills of God, and cheers his drooping spirit by remembering how, amid all the earth-changes, the everlasting hills abide. What a holy power upon us the mountains have! The grand, calm, strong, high things they seem to be so near God; they seem to be so full of God; they bring us so near him, and fill us so full of him. One thing about them is suggested by our text they make us look up. And is not that just what we need? Oh, to lose the downward look which has so grown upon us by the pressure of life-cares! The voice calls continually, "Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh!
I WORLD-DRAWN, WE LOOK DOWN, AND SO ARE WEAK. We are in the world in a thousand subtle ways we are kin with the world, subject to its influences, caught by its whirl of excitement, absorbed by its pressing claims, and easily we become of the world as well as in it. But everything the world presents to us is below us, beneath us; and it so keeps us looking down that the habit of down-looking grows upon us, and we are almost unable to look up. How powerfully we are all drawn by world-interests! Business man is world-absorbed. Domestic woman is world-absorbed. The influence of the world begets a downward look, a sort of set of the eyes and heart downwards. The world-thoughts abide with us, and even when the sabbath day brings God and heaven near, we find it very hard to get our eyes lifted up. Even in the sanctuary they drop on bills and stock and trade. To succeed in earthly things we must engage the whole heart and powers in them. It seems to be the one universal power that this sin-smitten world possesses over its creatures it bends their shoulders, it bows their heads, it gives, it keeps, the downward look. And what do we see when we look down? Much of self, of man, and of things. The hurry and bustle of thousands who are hasting to be rich. And the shadow of God"s curse on sin resting everywhere. It is this down-looking that makes us so weak.
II GOD-DRAWN, WE LOOK UP, AND SO GROW STRONG. For to men in this world God"s voice is ever calling. It sounds from the bright bands of the morning, from the high silver-tinted clouds of noonday, from the splendor and glory of the far-off sunset, from the lofty trees and the hill-tops, and the soaring birds of song, and the winds that roam free, and the "jewel-powdered skies" of night. Would we but stop and hush awhile, we might hear it always near us, saying, "Look up! Look up!" God has often refreshed his fainting servants with the sight of his everlasting hills. Moses was sent to feel the inspirations of Sinai. Elijah was calmed, and made himself again, by the soothing influences of Horeb, the mount of God. Our Lord sought seclusion among the hills of Eastern Galilee, and entered into the Divine glory on a spur of Hermon. And the mountains still soothe and calm God"s people. They teach us to look up.
1. Looking up, you find nothing of man"s it is all of God up above.
2. Looking up, you feel how pure God"s snow is, and think how much is in the promise, "They shall walk with me in white.
3. Looking up, you see how earth-clouds are glorified.
4. Looking up, listen; you may hear the voices of the hills saying, "Be still! Hush the life-fever! Wait! In silence God doth speak.
5. Look up and listen, and again the voices of the hills will say, "The mists and the storms are all outside us; they are not us." Look up, and grow strong. Look up; you will feel the heaven-breath upon your face. Look up; your brow will soon lose those wreathings of anxiety and care. Look up, and you shall prove how God "wipes away all tears from our eyes. R.T.
Vers. 1, 2. Not mountains, but God.
"From whence shall my help come?" This psalm is best taken as expressing the pious confidence of an individual believer, who addresses his inner self in words of comfort which are framed as if proceeding from another person. The psalmist is, as it were, holding a colloquy with himself. It is not that he expects help from the mountains his hope is fixed on him who made the mountains. This comes out plainly in Perowne"s rendering, "Whence should my help come? My help (cometh) from Jehovah, the Maker of heaven and earth.
I THE MOUNTAINS CANNOT GIVE US HELP AND SAFETY. Illustrate from the times of Lot. He fled to the mountains; but God preserved him, not the mountain. From the times of David"s persecution, he fled to the mountain country of Judaea and the south; but God preserved him, not the hills. Covenanters and others found safety in the rocks and mountains in days of religious persecution; but their God was their real defense. So let mountains stand for the supreme self-efforts a man may make in his times of distress; he must be brought to the assured conviction that they cannot bring him safety. Beyond them he must look. Only when he looks beyond them do they become his security; for then God makes them such. "Some trust in horses, and some in chariots," and some in mountains; "but we will trust in the Name of the Lord.
II THE MOUNTAINS CAN DIRECT US WHERE TO FIND HELP AND SAFETY. They appeal to both poetic and religious feeling. Buchanan, writing with the Cuchullin hills all about him, says"Lord, art thou here? Far from the busy crowd, Brooding in melancholy solitude?
Moses was helped to realize the power of Jehovah by the daily impressions of the huge, craggy, awful mountain forms of Sinai. In quite an instinctive way men in all ages and in every land have inclined to build their altars on high hills, as if thus they did get nearer God. And it is the fact for most thoughtfully disposed persons, that more help is gained for pious meditation from mountain districts than from the changeableness of the sea, or the varying but ever-gentle beauty of the landscapes. Mountains have a peculiar power to solemnize and to impress us all; and precisely what they bring to us is that sense of God which assures of his love, and help, and lead. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Charles H. Spurgeon 1885 · Public Domain On vv1–8 This bears no other title than "A Song of…
This bears no other title than "A Song of degrees". It is several steps in advance of its predecessor, for it tells of the peace of God's house, and the guardian care of the Lord, while Psalm 120 bemoans the departure of peace from the good man's abode, and his exposure to the venomous assaults of slanderous tongues. In the first instance his eyes looked around with anguish, but here they look up with hope. From the constant recurrence of the word keep, we are led to name this song "a Psalm to the keeper of Israel". Were it not placed among the Pilgrim Psalms we should regard it as a martial hymn, fitted for the evensong of one who slept upon the tented field. It is a soldier's song as well as a traveller's hymn. There is an ascent in the psalm itself which rises to the greatest elevation of restful confidence.
Ver. 1. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. It is wise to look to the strong for strength. Dwellers in valleys are subject to many disorders for which there is no cure but a sojourn in the uplands, and it is well when they shake off their lethargy and resolve upon a climb. Down below they are the prey of marauders, and to escape from them the surest method is to fly to the strongholds upon the mountains. Often before the actual ascent the sick and plundered people looked towards the hills and longed to be upon their summits. The holy man who here sings a choice sonnet looked away from the slanderers by whom he was tormented to the Lord who saw all from his high places, and was ready to pour down succour for his injured servant. Help comes to saints only from above, they look elsewhere in vain: let us lift up our eyes with hope, expectance, desire, and confidence. Satan will endeavour to keep our eyes upon our sorrows that we may be disquieted and discouraged; be it ours firmly to resolve that we will look out and look up, for there is good cheer for the eyes, and they that lift up their eyes to the eternal hills shall soon have their hearts lifted up also. The purposes of God; the divine attributes; the immutable promises; the covenant, ordered in all things and sure; the providence, predestination, and proved faithfulness of the Lordthese are the hills to which we must lift up our eyes, for from these our help must come. It is our resolve that we will not be bandaged and blindfolded, but will lift up our eyes.
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Or is the text in the interrogative? Does he ask, "Shall I lift up mine eyes to the hills?" Does he feel that the highest places of the earth can afford him no shelter? Or does he renounce the idea of recruits hastening to his standard from the hardy mountaineers? and hence does he again enquire, "Whence cometh my help?" If so, the next verse answers the question, and shows whence all help must come.
Title. "A Song of Degrees." It has been ingeniously pointed out that these "degrees" or "steps" consist in the reiteration of a word or thought occurring in one clause, verse, or stanza, which in the next verse or stanza is used, as it were, as a step (or degree) by which to ascend to another and higher truth. Thus in our psalm, the idea of "my help", expressed in Ps 121:1, is repeated in Ps 121:2. This has now become a step by which in Ps 121:3 we reach the higher truth or explanation of "nay help", as: "He that keepeth thee will not slumber, "the same idea being with slight modification reembodied in Ps 121:4. Another "degree" is then reached in Ps 121:5, when "He who slumbers not" is designated as Jehovah, the same idea once more enlarged upon being (the word occurring twice in Ps 121:5) in Ps 121:6. The last and highest degree of this song is attained in Ps 121:7, when the truth implied in the word Jehovah unfolds itself in its application to our preservation, which, with further enlargement, is once more repeated in Ps 121:8. Perhaps some internal connexion might be traced between all the fifteen Psalms of Degrees. At any rate, it will not be difficult to trace the same structure if each of the psalms "of Degrees", making allowance for occasional devotions and modifications. Alfred Edersheim, in "The Golden Diary", 1877.
Whole Psalm. According to Ps 121:1 this psalm was designed to be sung in view of the mountains of Jerusalem, and is manifestly an evening song for the sacred band of pilgrims, to be sung in the last night watch, the figures of which are also peculiarly suitable for a pilgrim song; and with Psalm 122, which, according to the express announcement in the introduction, was sung, when the sacred pilgrim trains had reached the gates of Jerusalem, and halted for the purpose of forming in order, for the solemn procession into the Sanctuary, Ps.
134...
The idea is a very probable one, that the psalm was the evening song of the sacred pilgrim band, sung on retiring to rest upon the last evening, when the long wished for termination of their wandering, the mountains of Jerusalem, had come into view in the distance. In this we obtain a suitable connection with the following psalm, which would be sung one station further on when the pilgrims were at the gates of Jerusalem. In this case we find an explanation of the fact, that in the middle point of the psalm there stands the Lord as the "keeper" of Israel, with reference to the declaration. "I keep thee", which was addressed to the patriarch as he slept on his pilgrimage: and in this case also "he neither slumbereth nor sleepeth" is seen in its true light. E.W. Hengstenberg.
It has been said Mr. Romaine read this psalm every day; and sure it is, that every word in it is calculated to encourage and strengthen our faith and hope in God. Samuel Eyles Pierce.
Ver. 1. I will lift up mine eyes, etc. Since we, being burdened with the effects of worldly pleasures, and also with other cares and troubles, can by no means ascend to thee that art on the top of so high a mountain, accompanied with so many legions of angels that still attend upon thee, we have no remedy, but with thy prophet David now to lift up the eyes of our hearts and minds towards thee, and to cry for help to come down from thee to us, thy poor and wretched servants. Sir Anthony Cope, in "Meditations on Twenty Select Psalms",
1547.
Ver. 1. I will lift up mine eyes, etc. In thy agony of a troubled conscience always look upwards unto a gracious God to keep thy soul steady; for looking downward on thyself thou shalt find nothing but what will increase thy fear, infinite sins, good deeds few, and imperfect: it is not thy faith, but God's faithfulness thou must rely upon; casting thine eyes downwards on thyself, to behold the great distance betwixt what you deserve and what thou desirest, is enough to make thee giddy, stagger, and reel into despair. Ever therefore lift up thine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh thy help, never viewing the deep dale of thy own unworthiness, but to abate thy pride when tempted to presumption. Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), in "The Cause and Cure of a Wounded
Conscience".
Ver. 1. The hills. There can be no doubt that in Palestine we are in the "Highlands" of Asia. This was the more remarkable in connection with the Israelites, because they were the only civilized nation then existing in the world, which dwelt in a mountainous country... The Hebrew people was raised above the other ancient states, equally in its moral and in its physical relations. From the Desert of Arabia to Hebron is a continual ascent, and from that ascent there is no descent of any importance, except to the pains of the Jordan, Esdraelon, and the coast. From a mountain sanctuary, as it were, Israel looked over the world... It was to the "mountains" of Israel that the exile lifted up his eyes, as the place from whence his help came. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.
Ver. 1. The hills, from whence cometh my help. See no riches but in grace, no health but in piety, no beauty but in holiness, no treasure but in heaven, no delight but in "the things above." Anthony Farindon.
Ver. 1. From whence cometh my help. The natives of India used to say that when Sir Henry Laurence looked twice to heaven and then to earth he knew what to do.
To Heaven I lift mine eye,
To Heaven, Jehovah's throne,
For there my Saviour sits on high,
And thence shall strength and aid supply
To all He calls His own.
He will not faint nor fail,
Nor cause thy feet to stray:
For him no weary hours assail,
Nor evening darkness spreads her veil
O'er his eternal day.
Beneath that light divine
Securely shalt thou move;
The sun with milder beams shall shine,
And eve's still queen her lamp incline
Benignant from above.
For he, thy God and Friend,
Shall keep thy soul from harm,
In each sad scene of doubt attend,
And guide thy life, and bless thy end,
With his almighty arm.
John Bowtiler, 1814.
Ver. 1,2. Faint at the close of life's journey, a Christian pilgrim repeated the line,
"Will he not his help afford?"
She quoted it several times, trying to recall the song in which it occurs, and asked that the once familiar hymn, part of the voice of which she caught, might be all fetched home to her mind again; and she was greatly refreshed and comforted when we read at her bedside Charles Wesley's spirited paraphrase, beginning,
"To the hills I lift mine eyes,
The everlasting hills;
Streaming thence in fresh supplies,
My soul the Spirit feels.
Will he not his help afford?
Help, while yet I ask, is given:
God comes down; the God and Lord
That made both earth and heaven."
Edward Jewitt Robinson, in "The Caravan and the Temple", 1878.
Ver. 1-3.
Look away to Jesus,
Look away from all!
Then we need not stumble,
Then we shall not fall.
From each snare that lures,
Foe or phantom grim.
Safety this ensures,
Look away to him!
Frances Ridley Havergal.
Ver. 1. The window opened towards Jerusalem.
1. The hills we look to.
2. The help we look for.
3. The eyes we look with.
Ver. 1. Whence cometh my help? A grave question; for,
1. I need it, greatly, in varied forms, constantly, and now.
2. In few directions can I look for it, for men are feeble, changeable, hostile, etc.
3. I must look above. To Providence, to Grace, to my God.
Psalms 121:2*
Charles H. Spurgeon's The Treasury of David (1869–1885) — public domain. Psalms only. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.
Psa_121:1-8
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.
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Guaranteed security
I. The godly mans need. Help. Can never outgrow this: dependence the characteristic of the creature: help must be had in the conflict or it will end in defeat, in the toil or it will issue in failure, in the pilgrim-march or we faint and fail by the way, etc.
II. The godly mans attitude: Looking for help--I will lift up my eyes, etc. He waits--he expects--he obtains. The truest vision is soul-vision. Looking up in solicitation, contemplation, expectation. Up, from the mud and mire of earth, and the sins and sorrows of self. The hills expressive of strength, the strength of the hills is His: of majesty--of stability, the everlasting hills: of veneration, the silence of the hills breathes veneration (Mrs. Hemans); striking and suitable emblem of Him to whom all might, and majesty, and duration, and reverence belong.
III. The godly mans confidence: My help cometh from the Lord, etc. He is assured that He who made the heavens and made the earth would rather let the sky fall and the earth perish from the want of His support, than that he should suffer injury from the withholding of His help. Help alone cometh from God: help does and ever will be vouchsafed, etc.
IV. The godly mans safety: He will not suffer, etc.
1. Safety guaranteed from the highest source: the Lord is thy Keeper (verse 5). His wisdom, power, love, all His attributes a royal battalion--bodyguard around him, unceasingly around him (verses 3, 4).
2. Safety guaranteed to the whole man, under all circumstances, through all time, from all evil (verses 7, 8). (J. O. Keen, D. D.)
The good in time of need
I. His attitude.
1. God is the only true help of the soul. He alone can raise it from its fallen condition, break its fetters, heal its wounds, energize its faculties, and set it on a course safe and prosperous.
2. To Him the godly soul instinctively looks in trial. The worldly man in trial looks to earthly things for succour and support, to social sympathies, to human friendships, to Church officers, but the good man turns at once to God, feels that from Him alone the necessary help can come.
II. His protector.
1. The universal Creator.
2. A sleepless Guardian.
3. The all-sufficient.
III. His confidence (verse 7). (Homilist.)
Looking to the hills
We see the exile, wearied with the monotony of the long-stretching, flat plains of Babylonia, summoning up before his mind the distant hills where his home was. We see him wondering how he will be able ever to reach that place where his desires are set; and we see him settling down, in hopeful assurance that his effort is not in vain, since his help comes from the Lord. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; away out yonder westwards, across the sands, lies the lofty summits of my fatherland that draws me to itself. Then comes a turn of thought, most natural to a mind passionately yearning after a great hope, the very greatness of which makes it hard to keep constant. For the second clause must be taken as a question: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help? How am I to get there? And then comes the final turn of thought: My help cometh from the Lord, etc.
I. The look of longing. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills--a resolution, and a resolution born of intense longing. It comes to be a very sharp question with us professing Christians, whether the horizon of our inward being is limited by, and coterminous with, the horizon of our senses, or whether, far beyond the narrow limits to which these can reach, our spirits desire stretches boundless. Are, to us, the things unseen the solid things, and the things visible the shadows and the phantoms? We see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the shadows. I will lift up my eyes from the mud-flats where I live to the hills that I cannot see, and, seeing them, I shall be blessed. Further, do we know anything of that longing that the psalmist had? He was perfectly comfortable in Babylon. There was abundance of everything that he wanted for his life. But for all that, fat, wealthy Babylon was not Palestine. So the psalmist longed for the mountains, though the mountains are often bare of green things, amidst the lush vegetation, the wealth of water and the fertile plains. Do we know anything of that longing which makes us that are in this tabernacle to groan, being burdened? Unless our Christianity throws us out of harmony and contentment with the present, it is worth very little. And unless we know something of that immortal longing to be nearer to God, and fuller of Christ, and emancipated from sense, and from the burdens and trivialities of life, we have yet to learn what the meaning of walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit really, is. Further, do we make any effort like that of this psalmist, who encourages and stimulates himself by that strong I will lift up my eyes? You will not do it unless you make a dead lift of effort.
II. The question of weakness. From whence cometh my help? The loftier our ideal, the more painful ought to be our conviction of incapacity to reach it. The Christian mans one security is in feeling his peril, and the condition of his strength is his acknowledgment and vivid consciousness always of his weakness. Blessed is the man that feareth always. Pride goeth before destruction. Remember the Franco-German war, and how the French Prime Minister said that they were going into it with a light heart, and how some of the troops went out of Paris in railway carriages labelled for Berlin; and when they reached the frontier they were doubled up and crushed in a month. Unless we, when we set ourselves to this warfare, feel the formidableness of the enemy and recognize the weakness of our own arms, there is nothing but defeat for us.
III. The assurance of faith. The psalmist asks himself: From whence cometh my help? and then the better self answers the questioning, timid self: My help cometh from the Lord, etc. There will be no reception of the Divine help unless there is a sense of the need of the Divine help. God cannot help me before I am brought to despair of any other help. If we conceit ourselves to be strong we are weak; if we know ourselves to be impotent, Omnipotence pours itself into us. We read once that Jesus Christ healed them that had need of healing. Why does the evangelist not say, without that periphrasis, healed the sick? Because he would emphasize, I suppose, amongst other things, the thought that only the sense of need fits for the reception of healing and help. If, then, we desire that God should be the strength of our hearts, and our portion for ever, the coming of His help must be wooed and won by our sense of our own impotence, and only they who say: We have no might against this great multitude that cometh against us, will ever hear from Him the blessed assurance: the Lord will fight for you. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Looking up
The text would be better rendered, Shall I lift up mine eyes unto the hills? Whence should my help come? It cometh from Jehovah, who is high up above the hills; even from the Maker of heaven and earth. Palestine is a mountain-land; and such a country exercises a strange fascination over its inhabitants. What a holy power the great mountains have over us all! They seem to be so near to God, so full of God, that they bring us near to Him, and they fill us full of Him. They make us look up. And that is precisely what we all need to have done for us.
I. World-drawn, we look down, and so are weak. We are in the world; in a thousand subtle ways we are kin with the world, we are subject to its influences, caught by its whirl of excitement, absorbed by its pressing claims, and easily we may become of the world as well as in it. But everything the world presents to us is below us, beneath us; and it so keeps us looking down, that at last the habit of down-looking grows upon us. How powerfully we are all drawn by world-interests! The influence of the world begets a downward look, a sort of set of the eyes and heart downwards. What do we see when we thus fix our gaze? Nothing elevating, inspiring, ennobling, much of self, of man, and of things. Much of conflict, and struggle, and loss, and pain, and change, and dissatisfaction. Much of man, and his things, that perish with the using. Much of man, and the fashion of this world that passeth away. Human grandeur, which, seen from above, is all of tinsel. Human successes, that are touched by the chill hand of death, and fade sooner than the summer cloud. What do we see when we look down? The hurry and bustle of thousands who, along with us, are hasting to be rich. The physicians, driving to homes that are full of pain, and grief, and fear. The mourners going about the streets. And the shadow of Gods curse on sin resting darkly everywhere. It is this downward, earthward looking that makes us so weak: so weak as those who, being made in the image of God, ought to be strong in the strength of God.
II. God-drawn, we look up, and so grow strong. God is ever calling. If we would stop and hush awhile, we might hear the voice of God in our souls, ever saying, Look up! Look up! Observe the gracious mission God has entrusted to the mountains.
1. Looking up, we find nothing of mans, it is all of God up above.
2. Looking up, we feel how pure Gods snow is.
3. Looking up, we find Gods clouds are glorified.
4. Looking up, we may hear the voices of the hills saying, The mists and the storms are all outside us; they are not us. We abide firm through all the changes. The mists pass swiftly about us, and pass away. The storms wildly rage about us, but the winds die down, the rains stream off, the thunder-voice is quieted, and we come forth again, only cleansed and purified. It is a message from God for us troubled, sorrow-stricken, storm-tossed men and women.
5. And the hills seem also to say, Up above is more sunshine than storm. Down below, mans smoke lies heavy over the towns, and Gods clouds seem dark; but it is almost always sunshine up here. These are the messages that seem to come from the hills. Look up! Look up morel (Robert Tuck, B. A.)
Excelsior! -
I. Who is it that ascends?--The Christian ascends.
II. Whither? Heavenwards: to the everlasting hills.
III. From whence? From this vale of tears.
IV. By what steps? By faith and repentance. (C. A. Fowler, M. A.)
The mountaineers psalm
I imagine the psalmist had either dwelt under the mountains, or had climbed some of their steep sides. Palestine, it is true, was not a mountainous country, like Switzerland; but still, it had its mountains, notably Hermon, which is over 9,000 feet above sea-level, and usually covered with a cap of snow. In a small way the psalmist might have been, probably was, a mountaineer, and so knew the unique feelings which come to one in lofty places. The special point I want to enforce is this--that what the mountains are to the lower, that God is to the higher life of man.
I. Invigoration comes from the mountains. Every one is conscious of this. In the valleys there is beat and the languor it produces. On the mountains there may be heat from the sunlight, but there is the tonic which comes from glacier or snow-field. In the valley the air is heavy and depressing. On the mountains the air is light and exhilarating. And so exertion which is impossible down below, is possible and easy higher up. And what the mountains are to the body God is to the soul. He is the true invigorator. In Him is our help found. Like the body, the soul needs invigoration, and that invigoration is found only in God. Immunity from evil comes only from an invigorated spiritual nature--and such a nature comes only from the sense of God.
II. There come from the mountains wide outlooks. Down in the valleys the outlooks are narrow. You can see the valley sides, and it may be you can catch the sight of some solitary peak shining with snow, but all is limited. You cannot look into the valleys near, or see the peaks that lie beyond. But move upward to the hills which frame in the valley, or, better still, climb some lofty peak, and the whole land lies before you--peak after peak, valley after valley, till you are almost overpowered with the sight. And it is so when we lift our eyes to God. With Him in our heart we get wide outlooks. Look at the world from the standpoint of God. Lord Salisbury once advised people who were talking ignorantly about foreign affairs, and who knew little of the geography of the world, to turn to large maps. I venture to bid those depressed at heart to take wider outlooks--to come up out of the valley where the little drama of the present is being enacted, and remember that there is still One who sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and who will guide the world, in spite of its aberrations, into the way of righteousness and peace.
III. The mountains may remind us of the lowliness of man and the greatness of God. Down in the cities of the world man seems the great factor. He is in evidence everywhere. His works face us at every turn. But up among the mountains man and his work fade from view, and God and His work alone are in evidence. God is nearer to us in flower and tree, valley and mountain, than in any buildings made with hands. And the voices which have gone deepest into the hearts of this generation are not the voices of men who dwelt amid the crowded haunts of men, but of those who in the quietness of the country heard the voice of God. Wordsworth amid the dales of Cumberland; Tennyson amid the heather-clad slopes of Surrey, or by the sea at Farringford; and, before and beyond all these, the Christ Himself, who said to His disciples, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile. (W. G. Horder.)
Looking up and lilting up
Hills have a fascination for those brought up among them. How Israel in Babylon sighed for their much-loved hills! How the Swiss away from their own country pine for the mountains of their native land! Jesus loved the hills. His chosen walks were among them. The hills were His sanctuary for prayer, His temple for worship; from the hills of Capernaum He preached; the crest of Tabor was the scene of His transfiguration; on the hill of Calvary He was crucified; from Olivet He ascended. There is an affinity between souls and hills. Especially for those who have become acquainted with their own solemn depths and sublime heights. The outward world tends to awaken the sympathy of the thoughtful for the true order which has been lost. It pictures to him both sides of his nature--his real and his ideal life, the life he lives, and the life of which he dreams, and for which he prays. The hills represent heights that he ought to attain--the deep places, depths of degradation into which he has fallen. Though imprisoned by a sinful darkness, and fettered by a chain of evil habits, the hills will not allow him wholly to forget his lost heights of freedom, peace, and blessedness, to which, now and again, he fain would, but feels he cannot return. The way of ascent is difficult. There is a broad and easy way, but it leads to deeper depths and heavier bonds. But ha the deepest depths, and under the heaviest burdens, he ever and again remembers the heights, though the corresponding life may, long since, have been transferred to his dreams. There are no heights like those to which the soul rises ha the exercise of faith--heights incredible to the senses. By faith, we finite creatures, with a sense-experience only of the finite, nevertheless apprehend the infinite; by faith, we creatures of flesh and blood, shut in by the material, discover our only true home to be in the spiritual; by faith, we mortals, in a world of mortality, anticipate immortality; by faith, we poor slaves of a manifold bondage look for perfect liberty; by faith, we, the offspring of earthly parentage, claim God for our Father, and Heaven for our home. These are some of the heights of which the hills are representative, and to which they point, hills of hope, and help for our original and eternal nature. From the hill of the Lord we receive help for the valley. If we look up we shall receive light for our way, and be led in a plain path. The hill of the Lord is to the pilgrim who looks up what the compass is to the mariner who finds his course by it through the troubled waters of the pathless sea. For those who look to Him, the Lord opens up a way in the desert, a path through the woods, and turns the sea into dry land. In the presence of their enemies He prepares them a table and causes them to lie down in peace, and goes before them in the way--a guardian, guiding Presence a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. In this short psalm the writer is so full of the protection and help of Jehovah that he cannot find terms enough in which to express the rich fulness of his icy and confidence, Fifteen times in eight verses he assures Israel of the help, keeping, and preservation of God--at all times; under all circumstances; for every one, with respect to his whole nature and history; for time and eternity. Oh, what hills of hope and help there are for the upward use of our eyes, altitudes of our own nature as seen in Jesus, which, like Alpine summits, far above every storm-swept height, look down in the mute eloquence and sublime repose of their eternal state invitingly on all below! The men who permanently bless the world are men who look up, and receive that which, travelling down the starry road of the Infinites abode, fills their eyes with reverence and a grand hope, and inspires their souls with a divine disdain of earthly goods and worldly honours, as being unworthy of mans chief end. This habit of looking up will teach us to understand the use of trouble in the valley. Let us learn to regard all that troubles and disturbs us in our health, our home, our circumstances as the means by which God calls upon us to look up,--to disengage ourselves from earthly entanglements,--to prepare to ascend. By the trouble to which we are born, He seeks to wean us from the love of earth, that He may woo us to the love of heavenly things and the spiritual life of our eternal home. (W. Pulsford, D. D.)
Lift up the eyes of the soul
This verse would be a suitable inscription for a church entrance. It is a scripture to be repeated when walking to the temple. If ever the eyes are strained towards heaven, it is by rose who go to the sanctuary, or long to do so. Yet it is possible to join the assembly of Gods saints, and not lift up our eyes to the hills. Some who make excursions seem to see all the meaning of their journey in what they take with them, others go chiefly to refresh themselves in the contemplation of Gods flowers and trees, rocks and rivers, valleys and hills. Of travellers climbing together to a mountain summit, there are those who, on reaching it, as if they had done all, lie down till the moment for returning; while their wiser companions, as if there were something for which they had been at the trouble of ascending, stand on the top, and look forth earnestly. They admire the prospect, and mark the direction of a more lofty mountain which they intend to gain, and how the road lies by which they will have to travel thither. Our feet are to visit the hill of the earthly Zion, that our hearts may get a better view of the mountain of the Lords house in the heavenly country. The object in attending the services of the sanctuary is to hear of heaven and learn the way. (E. J. Robinson.)
Hills
Hills make us look up. It is well they do so, for all that is necessary for our life here comes from above. An artist whose eyes have been much accustomed to look up, has painted some very beautiful pictures of sunset skies, which astonish many people who visit the Kensington Museum in London. They have never seen such gorgeous sunsets, and for the good reason that they have not looked for them. We lose much by fixing our eyes upon the things beneath and seldom looking up. A king once asked a duke if he had seen an eclipse of the sun on the previous day. No, sir, replied the nobleman, I have so much business on earth that I have no time to look up. By looking up the wise men of the East were led to the Saviour, who then lay an infant in Bethlehems manger. By looking up many a downcast heart has rejoiced to see the mornings sun rise, which seemed to speak to them of brighter days yet to come. But there is another kind of looking up that is necessary to give joy and true satisfaction to the soul. The high hills, the lovely skies, and the glowing sunsets should lead us to look higher up still--even to the Lord who made the heavens and the earth. This looking consists of real faith in God and in His promises. It is the soul looking beyond itself and all that is earthly to the Rock that is higher than we are. Looking unto Jesus is the secret of all true joy in the Christian life. It is as we look up with the eye of faith that the beauty of the Saviour is reflected upon us, and we are made like Him. But the hills have a few more lessons for us.
1. They give us a taste for what is beautiful. Some of the prettiest scenery in the world is amongst the hills. It is there we find flowery glens and mossy dells, where happy birds in song agree. It is there we behold the delightful waterfalls and other beauties of nature. We have read of a traveller who went to America to see the Falls of Niagara, and who, after a long, weary journey, was within a few miles of them, and inquired of a man if the rumbling noise he heard was that of the Falls. The man replied that perhaps it was, but he had never been there, although all his life he had lived so near them. But it is not always that people have the time and the means for travelling, and so they are to be excused. There is, however, no excuse for people being ignorant of the beauties of the Kingdom of God. The Holy Spirit opens the eyes of all who come to Christ to see spiritual sights which gladden the heart and prepare the soul for heaven. Travellers tell us of beauty in other lands far surpassing anything we have ever seen here. And there is also a heavenly land which is so fair that its glory can never be told us, as we have no language to express it or mind to conceive it.
2. The hills are very valuable to us. Their lofty summits cause the moisture of the air to descend rain or snow to refresh and make the earth fruitful. Then they give motion to the water, and thus keep it from growing stagnant or impure. Otherwise the water would have disease and death in it. Our souls, too, require heavenly rains to descend to refresh them, and to make them bear the fruits of the Spirit. We need the pure river of the water of life to flow through our souls to keep them in the love of God.
3. Hills praise God. They are commanded to do so in Scripture. One way by which they praise God is by producing holy desires in the hearts of men. They often cause people to think of the greatness and the glory of God. And they daily witness to His power and wisdom. We also are commanded to praise God, and we can do it consciously, which the hills are unable to do. We ought to praise God by the adoration of our hearts, the fruit of our lips, and the devotion of our lives.
4. The hills and the love of God are contrasted (Isa_54:10). How blessed it is to know that when the hills shall have passed away there is something that shall abide! Yes; the love of Jesus shall remain, and we shall dwell in the enjoyment of His glorious presence. His love was manifested upon a hill, which of all hills should never be forgotten--the hill at Calvary. This hill speaks of the amazing love of God in giving up His only Son to die for us, and of the matchless love of Christ in bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. (John Mitchell.)
The far-away look
In one of Dr. Millers helpful anecdotes we are told of a Christian woman, a busy editorial worker, whose eyes began to trouble her, until she was obliged to go to an oculist to see what was the matter with them. She told him she thought she needed a new pair of glasses. The oculist told her that what she needed was not new glasses, but rest for the eyes. That, she told him, was impossible. Her work compelled her to sit all day bending over a desk, reading and writing. The wise oculist asked her where she lived, and found it was in full sight of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghanies. Go home, he said, and do your work as usual, but every hour or so leave your desk, and go and stand on your porch and look at the mountains. The far-away look will rest your eyes after the long strain of reading manuscripts and proof-sheets. That is what Sabbaths are for--the far-away looks. We all need them--an hour or two on Sunday, if no more. Then--and here is the lesson for many a busy housemother who must prepare meals even on Sunday for her hungry children, who must often nurse the sick ones or stay at home with the little ones--if anything calls one away from the rest of soul and body, remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said that God wants mercy (kindness, goodness, helpfulness) even more than sacrifice.
From whence cometh my help.--
The help of the hills
Let me speak of the helpfulness of the mountains as a sign, not a measure, but an imperfect sign of the helpfulness of God. The most sheltered spots of earth are mountain guarded. When we rejoice in the valley, let us remember only the mountain made it possible. Is it protected from devastating storms such as involve the plains in their fury? It is because the mountain has guarded it. It has broken the hurricanes wing and the cyclones wheel. Is it alive with meadow streams that sing their gladsome song to the green grasses that bend over to listen? It is because the mountains sent the streamlets flashing down, pure as crystal and full of tonic for every living thing in the valley. Has there been an abundance of rain? The mountain nurtured the storm full of menace, but so full of blessing that when it saw the fields suffering for its baptism, it opened its veins of life with the lightnings lance, and became balm and benison to the blighted fields. Not only so, but the mountains give their fresh wealth to supply new soil to the valley. The storms that scar their old sides are ploughing up fresh soil for the cornfields and the valley. And the streams are the carriers that, plunging gaily from steep to steep, carry it down. The Alleghanies help to make the Ohio Valley. The Rockies enrich the Missouri, the mountains of Central Africa make the exhaustless granary of the Nile delta. Oh! the help there is in the stern hills Oh! the blessing God is to this low world! How He comes to shield from storms. How He sends upon us the living streams of His truth. Yes, how He bends Himself to be the nourishment and strength of His people! Consider the influence of the hills on the civilization of the world. They have been the nurseries of heroism, of physical and moral strength. The early Turanians, who displaced the stagnant barbarism of Asia with a rude vigour, descended for their work from the mountain ranges of Siberia. The Modes and Persians, who came down like messengers of Divine judgment on the effeminate luxury and showy splendour of Babylon, came from the hill country. The Spartans who filled the Thermopylae Pass were mountain men. The Waldenses, who held their own for liberty, held it in poverty and pain among the pinnacles of Piedmont--held it against all the cultured and disciplined power of the cities on the plains. Their natures were as rugged as the grey Alps around them. It is a grand preparation for heroism to be obliged to fight lifes battle under the stern conditions of the mountains. They do not smile on easy living. They are severe masters, but they enforce the lesson. He who has overcome the mountains has overcome many other things at the same time. But I do not believe that the chief value of mountains as promoters of heroism is of a physical sort. At last heroism has a moral base. Mountains make tough animals. They are the habitation of daring wild beasts, but they also work on those moral qualities which make great patriots. They affect mens thoughts. They appeal to a mans reverence. They overawe him with power. They work on his conscience. To face Mont Blanc is itself a sort of judgment day. It says God. There is absolutely no support for tired human spirits but in the idea of God, and that which that idea implies. To the mountain of Sinai you must look for the quickening of conscience; to the mountain of Calvary for salvation from sin. As the mountains lift themselves above the world in a stillness of perpetual benediction, so God rises to our faith and hope above these storm-driven plains of time. His Fatherhood overhangs us like a perpetual benediction. He helps us with a help that is quite sufficient, and that sustains us amid all circumstances; yea, with a help that makes us indifferent to circumstance. To men accustomed only to the light of reason and calculation it is difficult to present the spiritual help of the Lord. It cannot be explained. But it is the one profound fact that makes the difference between the submissive and meek-brewed; yea, the rejoicing saint and the complaining and rebellious sinner. I have often asked friends, What is the source of the contented lives the Swiss peasants live amid their secluding mountains? Contented and peaceful they undeniably are, and that, too, in poverty and toil from beginning to end. It seems as if the genii of the mountains from unseen sources beyond the storms brought unfailing peace and comfort as the streams that spring from the snows water their flocks and their pastures. The reservoir never fails. Now, Gods sustaining grace is like those streams of Alpine blessing. You cannot quite trace; you certainly cannot explain it. The child of God who perhaps has nothing but poverty and pain, misery and misfortune, as the world reckons, somehow holds a boundless peace, and the martyr who smiles in his agonies is not a more conspicuous example of this strange unseen help of God than is the quiet patient soul who, in ordinary ways of uneventful living, holds a steadfast faith and a happy hope in God. (C. L. Thompson, D. D.)
Help needed and provided
It, was help and only help, which he looked for from his God; and help is not that which dispenses with exertion on our part, but rather that which supposes such exertion. Helping a man is not the doing everything for him, and leaving him nothing to do for himself; but rather the assisting him in his efforts,--making those efforts effectual, when perhaps without aid they would be insufficient and frustrated. It is help, and nothing more than help, which is promised throughout the Scriptures. Help us, O God of our salvation, is the burden of the supplications of David; and St. Paul, when he would found an argument for boldness in approaching the mercy-seat, on the fact of our having an High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, does not apply it to the expecting more than mercy and help--That we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. There cannot be a more dangerous delusion than the supposing that the operations of Divine grace are such as to supersede the necessity for exertion, or such (so to speak) as will make us religious in spite of ourselves. The Spirit will not force us to pray; but if we yield to His impulse, and endeavour to pray, He will Help our infirmities, and enable us to pray effectually. He will not make it impossible for us to be overcome of temptation; but if we strive against it, He will so come to our assistance as to ensure us the victory. He will not bring to maturity the virtues implanted by Himself without requiring from us any of the processes of moral husbandry; whilst the showers and the sunshine are altogether His, the labour and the tillage must be ours. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Psalms 121
Psalms 121
How many timid, anxious hearts has this sweet outpouring of quiet trust braced and lifted to its own serene height of conscious safety! This psalmist is so absorbed in the thought of his Keeper that he barely names his dangers. With happy assurance of protection, he says over and over again the one word which is his amulet against foes and fears. Six times in these few verses does the thought recur that Jehovah is the Keeper of Israel or of the single soul. The quietness that comes of confidence is the singers strength. Whether he is an exile, looking across the plains of Mesopotamia towards the blue hills. which the eye cannot discern, or a pilgrim catching the first sight of the mountain on which Jehovah sits enshrined, is a question which cannot be decisively answered; but the power and beauty of this little breathing of peaceful trust are but slightly affected by any hypothesis as to the singers circumstances. Psa_121:1 and Psa_121:2 stand apart from the remainder, in so far as in them the psalmist speaks in the first person, while in the rest of the psalm he is spoken to in the second. But this does not necessarily involve the supposition of an antiphonal song. The two first verses may have been sung by a single voice, and the assurances of the following ones by a chorus or second singer. But it is quite as likely that, as in other psalms, the singer is in Psa_121:3-8 himself the speaker of the assurances which confirm his own faith.
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His first words describe the earnest look of longing. He will lift his eyes from all the coil of troubles and perils to the heights. Sursum corda expresses the true ascent which these psalms enjoin and exemplify. If the supposition that the psalmist is an exile on the monotonous levels of Babylon is correct, one feels the pathetic beauty of his wistful gaze across the dreary flats towards the point where he knows that the hills of his fatherland rise. To look beyond the low levels where we dwell, to the unseen heights where we have our home, is the condition of all noble living amid these lower ranges of engagement with the visible and transient. "Whence comes my help?" is a question which may be only put in order to make the assured answer more emphatic, but may also be an expression of momentary despondency, as the thought of the distance between the gazer and the mountains chills his aspirations. "It is easy to look, but hard to journey thither, How shall I reach that goal? I am weak; the way is long and beset with foes." The loftier the ideal, the more needful, if it is ever to be reached, that our consciousness of its height and of our own feebleness should drive us to recognise our need of help in order to attain it.
Whoever has thus high longings sobered by lowly estimates of self is ready to receive the assurance of Divine aid. That sense of impotence is the precursor of faith. We must distrust ourselves, if we are ever to confide in God. To know: that we need His aid is a condition of obtaining it. Bewildered despondency asks, "Whence comes my help?" and scans the low levels in vain. The eye that is lifted to the hills is sure to see Him coming to succour; for that question on the lips of one whose looks are directed thither is a prayer, rather than a question; and the assistance he needs sets out towards him from the throne, like a sunbeam from the sun, as soon as he looks up to the light.
The particle of negation in Psa_121:3 is not that used in Psa_121:4, but that which is employed in commands or wishes. The progress from subjective desire in Psa_121:3, to objective certainty of Divine help as expressed in Psa_121:4 and the remainder of the psalm, is best exhibited if the verbs in the former verse are translated as expressions of wish "May He not," etc. Whether the speaker is taken to be the psalmist or another makes little difference to the force of Psa_121:3 which lays hold in supplication of the truth just uttered in Psa_121:2, and thereby gains a more assured certainty that it is true, as the following verses go on to declare. It is no drop to a lower mood to pass from assertion of Gods help to prayer for it. Rather it is the natural progress of faith. Both clauses of Psa_121:2 become specially significant if this is a song for pilgrims. Their daily march and their nightly encampment will then be placed under the care of Jehovah, who will hold up their feet unwearied on the road and watch unslumbering over their repose. But such a reference is not necessary. The language is quite general. It covers the whole ground of toil and rest, and prays for strength for the one and quiet security in the other.
The remainder of the psalm expands the one thought of Jehovah the Keeper, with sweet reiteration, and yet comprehensive variation. First, the thought of the last clause of the preceding verse is caught up again. Jehovah is the keeper of the community, over which He watches with unslumbering care. He keeps Israel so long as Israel keeps His law; for the word so frequently used here is the same as is continually employed for observance of the commandments. He had seemed to slumber while Israel was in exile, and had been prayed to awake, in many a cry from the captives. Now they have learned that He never slumbers: His power is unwearied, and needs no recuperation; His watchfulness is never at fault. But universal as is His care it does not overlook the single defenceless suppliant. He is "thy Keeper," and will stand at thy right hand, where helpers stand, to shield thee from all dangers. Men lose sight of the individual in the multitude, and the wider their benevolence or beneficence, the less it takes account of units; but God loves all because He loves each, and the aggregate is kept because each member of it is. The light which floods the universe gently illumines every eye. The two conceptions of defence and impartation of power are smelted together in the pregnant phrase of Psa_121:5 b, " thy shade at thy right hand."
The notion of shelter from evils predominates in the remainder of the psalm. It is applied in Psa_121:6 to possible perils from physical causes: the fierce sunlight beat down on the pilgrim band, and the moon was believed, and apparently with correctness, to shed malignant influences on sleepers. The same antithesis of day and night, work and rest, which is found in Psa_121:3 appears again here. The promise is widened out in Psa_121:7 so as to be all-inclusive. "All evil" will be averted from him who has Jehovah for his keeper; therefore, if any so called Evil comes, he may be sure that it is Good with a veil on. We should apply the assurances of the psalm to the interpretation of life, as well as take them for the antidote of fearful anticipations.
Equally comprehensive is the designation of that which is to be kept. It is "thy soul," the life or personal being. Whatever may be shorn away by the sharp shears of loss, that will be safe; and if it is, nothing else matters very much. The individual soul is of large account in Gods sight: He keeps it as a deposit entrusted to Him by faith. Much may go; but His hand closes round us when we commit ourselves into it, and none is able to pluck us thence.
In the final verse, the psalmist recurs to his favourite antithesis of external toil and repose in the home, the two halves of the pilgrim life for every man; and while thus, in the first clause of the verse, he includes all varieties of circumstance, in the second he looks on into a future of which he does not see the bounds, and triumphs over all possible foes that may lurk in its dim recesses, in the assurance that, however far it may extend, and whatever strange conditions it may hide, the Keeper will be there, and all will be well. Whether or not he looked to the last "going out," our exodus from earth, {Luk_9:31; 2Pe_1:15} or to that abundant entrance {2Pe_1:11} into the true home which crowns the pilgrimage here; we cannot but read into his indefinite words their largest meaning, and rejoice that we have One who "is able to keep that which we have committed to Him against that day."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 This “Song of the Ascents”—a title slightly varying from…
INTRODUCTION
This “Song of the Ascents”—a title slightly varying from that of each of the other Gradual Psalms—is as suitable as any for the Israelite’s use when not leaving his home for the earthly Jerusalem, but only meditating on the circumstances and prospects of his spiritual progress, especially when life is drawing to a close; but its beauties are more apparent if we regard it as bursting from the lips of the pilgrims as after their long, weary, and dangerous march, in spite of Mesech and Kedar, though not yet beyond their reach, they come at last in sight of the mountain range of Moriah and Zion. O joyful! Yonder is Jerusalem! There is the sheen of the Temple! Our journey is nearly over! Jehovah is appealed to by the Church or saint in the first three verses, and in the remainder answers and confirms His believing people.—The Caravan and Temple.
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JEHOVAH THE REFUGE OF THE DISTRESSED
(Psa_121:1-4)
Wherever the devout Hebrew wandered, and whatever might be his condition, his eyes turned towards the mountain heights of his native Judea. In the distance those heights assumed the appearance of one vast mountain, on which there was a particular eminence that arrested the gaze of the eager worshipper, as if held by the spell of an irresistible fascination. This was Mount Zion, the consecrated hill of the Lord—the foundation on which He had built His Church, and the symbol of its permanency—the charmed circle of divinest manifestation—the central fountain from which streams of blessing have issued for the healing of the nations. As the mountaineer, pressed and worsted in the conflict, fled to his native hills for refuge and defence, so the suffering Israelite sought comfort and protection from Him “whose righteousness is like the great mountains.”
Note.—
I. That the soul is often placed in circumstances of distress.
Suffering is the commonest, yet most mysterious, feature of our human life. None are exempted. Heaven has no dispensations to grant to special favourites. Whatever differences there may be in mental endowments, wealth, or social position, there is, among all the descendants of Adam, an unavoidable, all-levelling communism in suffering. Apparent and numerous as may be the physical sufferings of mankind, there is a depth of mental distress of which the outer world knoweth not, and with which a stranger may not intermeddle. The hope deferred that maketh the heart sick; the collapse of undertakings that have cost days and nights of anxious thought and devoted labour; the wounds inflicted by unjust and mean insinuations, or by words barbed with envy and dipped in the venom of a heartless cruelty; the nameless pang of disappointment occasioned by the faithlessness of one we trusted, and to whom we knew not how far we had surrendered our heart till he flung it from him a pierced and bleeding thing—all these, and infinitely more, are hidden from the great world outside; they are beyond its power to assuage, or even to appreciate.
II. That in every time of distress Jehovah is an ever-available Refuge.
1. His power is unbounded. “My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” The Creator of all can succour and defend all. The great forces of both worlds are under His control. He restrains their malignant, and multiplies their beneficent, ministries. However complicated our straits and pungent our grief, His power is all-sufficient. With such a refuge despair would be madness.
2. His defence is invincible. “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” The sliding of the foot is an emblem of misfortune frequently used, and a very natural and suggestive one to the dweller in the Hebrew mountains, where a single slip of the foot was often attended with great danger (Psa_38:16; Psa_66:9). The foundation on which the believer rests—the Divine power and goodness—is immovable, and while fixed on this basis his foot shall not be moved. The giddy whirl of pleasure; the artful devices of the tempter; the sombre tempest of calamities will, alike, be powerless to harm while he is circled by the Divine defence.
3. His vigilance is unwearied. “He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” Sleep is necessary to repair the waste occasioned by toil. It is an indication of weakness and limitation. All mundane creatures sleep. God never sleeps. He knows no weariness. To Him there is no night; the darkness and the light are both alike to Him. Nothing can escape His eye. No enemy can secrete himself unnoticed; no ambush can surprise Him. The sentinel may slumber at his post; the steersman at the helm; the mother by the sick-bed; but God never slumbers. He is never exhausted; never inattentive to the condition of His people, or the wants of the universe.
III. That the most signal manifestations of Divine help are realised in the sanctuary.
“The hills from whence cometh my help.” On those hills the Temple stood—the pride of the Hebrew, the marvel of the ages. There Jehovah localised His presence; there the ineffable glory hovered; there the people held sublime communion with their God; there were witnessed the brightest visions of His face; there were realised the strongest consolations of His love. The fondest, dearest memories of life cluster around the experiences of the sanctuary. The sad heart has there lost its burden; joy has been raised into a purer passion; the holy resolution been confirmed; and the future lit up with the kindling radiancy of hope. Who can estimate the loss to the worshipper of a single careless neglect of the service of the sanctuary!
IV. That the soul is delivered from its distress only as it turns to Jehovah.
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.” Help is not to be found in man. We cannot look to idols, or to the mighty, who, like hills, fill the earth, and raise their heads towards heaven. Truly, in vain is salvation hoped for from these hills (Jer_3:23). When all human help fails, with God nothing is impossible. To brood over our distress is to increase it. Our greatest distress comes when we wander farthest from God, and vanishes when we turn again to Him with a sincere heart.
LESSONS:—
1. Distress is never far to seek.
2. The Divine Refuge is open for all.
3. To receive timely help be always in your place in the sanctuary.
DIVINE PROTECTION
(Psa_121:5-8)
A celebrated traveller—after an absence of three years, during which he had walked across the continent of Africa from east to west, through vast regions never before trodden by the foot of the white man—recently received an enthusiastic welcome home. As he approached the quiet Kentish village where he had spent his boyish days, his first act, before entering his much-loved home, was to pass through the portals of the church where his aged father ministered, and, humbly kneeling, offer his devout thanksgiving to that God who had watched over and preserved him in all his wanderings. Among other appropriate Scriptures, this Psalm was read. It was a touching scene! Many hearts heaved with emotion, and many tears were shed, as the reader, in trembling accents, uttered the words, “The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coining in from this time forth, and even for evermore.” It was a graceful and fitting acknowledgment of that Divine Goodness which had safely conducted the weary, sun-burnt traveller through all the perils of his great and adventurous journey. We should be ever ready to acknowledge and adore the Gracious Power that shelters and protects us every moment. Observe—
I. The Divine protection is ample and efficient.
I. It is ample. “The Lord is thy shade.” He surrounds His people, and guards them at every point of attack. Without His encompassing shadow they are exposed to the fierce onslaught of numberless enemies, and must become an easy prey to their violence. Where the danger is greatest, there the Divine shade is thickest. The foe must be able to pierce the invulnerable, and conquer the invincible, before he can touch the feeblest saint who is sheltered by the wings of God.
2. It is efficient. “Upon thy right hand.” The right hand is the organ of action, either in aggression or defence. If that is paralysed, man is shorn of his main strength. As the enemies of God’s people are ever standing at their right hand to frustrate all their efforts in well-doing, so Jehovah is at their right hand to encourage and sustain those efforts, and restrain their enemies. At the point where the forces of evil most thickly concentrate, there the Divine protection operates most powerfully.
II. The Divine protection shields from the most open assaults. “The sun shall not smite thee by day.” To the inhabitants of the East, where the fierce rays of the sun are sometimes fatal in their effects upon the incautious traveller, these words would have a special significance. They also indicate figuratively the open dangers which threaten God’s people every day, and the flagrant, cruel, persecuting hatred of their most furious enemies. “Dangers stand thick through all the ground;” but God is present to defend. The worker in the dismal mine, the traveller by road, or rail, or sea, the toiler surrounded by the most destructive materials, is alike under the shadow of the Divine protection.
III. The Divine protection guards from the effects of the most secret treachery. “Nor the moon by night.” The moon is the ruler of the night; and everything belongs to it which happens during its reign, so that it is not necessary to trace all the evils of the night directly to the influence of the moon. The Lord will protect from all the subtle and invisible attacks of the wicked, though they come upon His people as silently and unseen as the penetrating cold of the moonlight night. He sees the approach of the least suspected danger, estimates the force of the subtlest influence, smiles at the treachery of His enemies, and disconcerts their cleverest combinations. The Divine Sentinel never slumbers. He can never be outwitted by the cunning of the most malicious.
IV. The Divine protection is a defence against every evil. “The Lord shall preserve thee from evil: He shall preserve thy soul.” He protects from the evil of sin and of suffering. He turns away the evil that is feared, and alleviates and sanctifies the evil He permits. He will preserve the life (the soul) of His saints in war or peace—when the weapons of destruction hurtle through the air, or when disease silently sheds around its noxious poison. He will keep the soul from doing evil, cleanse it from all pollution, and invest it with a purity immaculate and fadeless.
V. The Divine protection is realised amid the active duties of life.
“The Lord shall preserve thy going out.” The good man is directed in the beginning of his undertakings, and shielded by the Divine presence during their active prosecution (Deu_28:3-6). He is safe wherever his duties carry him—in the workshop, the street, the busy mart, on the restless sea, or in strange and distant countries.
“In foreign realms and lands remote,
Supported by Thy care,
Through burning climes they pass unhurt,
And breathe in tainted air.
When on the dreadful tempest borne,
High on the broken wave,
They know Thou art not slow to hear,
Nor impotent to save.”
—Addison.
A moment comes when there shall be the last going out—the ebb of life when the soul shall go out with the tide, to return no more! Then shall it be enfolded with the Divine protection, and preserved in endless bliss.
VI. The Divine protection overshadows the rest and quietness of home. “And thy coming in.” Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof. The Divine protection is not less exercised in the conclusion of any undertaking than in its commencement. Evening brings all home; and the weary one, after the toils and dangers of the day, enjoys the peace and rest of his home all the more because he knows he is encircled by the Divine guardianship. And when the shadows of life’s eventide gather round him, he fears not. The Lord will preserve his coming in—his tranquil entrance into the heavenly home!
VII. The Divine protection is unremitting. “From this time forth and even for evermore.” He is the continual portion and defence of all who trust in Him, in all places, at all times, in all actions, in life, in prosperity, in adversity, in death, in time, in eternity. No evil shall befall them to endanger their present and ultimate good. The safety of the Church and of every individual member is insured.
LESSONS:—
1. Offer grateful praise for the protection of the past.
2. Fear not the most furious assaults of the enemy.
3. Put all your confidence in the Divine Protector.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 In these first words of one of the greatest…
Psa 121:1
In these first words of one of the greatest Psalms of David, the nobleness which we immediately feel seems to lie in this, that David will seek help only from the highest source. Nothing less than God’s help can really meet his needs. He will not peer into the valleys, he will not turn to fellow-men, to nature, to work, to pleasure, as if they had the relief he needed. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth." It is the duty of every man to seek help from the Highest in every department of his life.
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I. Take, first, the everlasting struggle with temptation. How perfectly clear it is that any man who undertakes that struggle may look either to the valleys or to the hills for help, may call the lower or the higher powers to his aid. The fear of pain, the fear of disgrace, the fear of discomfort, and the shame that comes with the loftiest companionship—we may have to appeal to them all in the hours, which come so often in our lives, when we are very weak. But, after all, the appeal to these helpers is not the final cry of the soul. Obedience to God is the only final and infallible help of the soul in its struggle with temptation.
II. Not merely in temptation, but in sorrow, a man may seek the assistance of the Highest or of some other power which is far lower. The real relief, the only final comfort, is God; and He relieves the soul always in its suffering, not from its suffering; nay, He relieves the soul by its suffering, by the new knowledge and possession of Himself which would come only through that atmosphere of pain.
III. Our truth is nowhere more true than in the region of doubt and perplexity of mind.
IV. The text is true with reference to man’s escape from sin. The best spiritual ambition seeks directly holiness. It seeks pardon as a means to holiness. So it lifts its eyes up at once to the very highest hills.
Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, p. 270.
Reference: Psa 121:1.— C. A. Fowler, Parochial Sermons, p. 223.
Psa 121:1-2
To the mind of the Jewish poet the everlasting hills of his native land were as shadows of the Infinite. The security which these mountain-ranges afforded to Palestine, forming as they did so remarkable a barrier to the land on every side except towards the sea, suggested to the writer of the Psalm an emblem of the Divine protection.
I. Here we have the grand distinction between the faith of the Jew and that of the heathen. The Jew knew that "the gods of the heathen are but idols, but it is the Lord that made the heavens." The whole Bible is merely the unfolding of that truth with which its first chapter so simply yet so sublimely opens.
II. This belief in God as the Creator and Preserver of all things applies in particular to man as the chiefest and best of God’s works (Psalm viii.).
III. This faith in God as man’s Creator and Preserver led the writers of these Psalms to trust their souls to Him as well as their bodies; led them to look to Him as their Saviour, not only from earthly troubles and dangers, but also from those spiritual troubles which are man’s heaviest trials.
IV. There is yet a further growth which we can trace from this faith in God as the Creator and Preserver—I mean the belief of the psalmists in a life beyond the grave.
G. Forbes, The Voice of God in the Psalms, p. 94.
Reference: Psa 121:1, Psa 121:2.—R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 154.
Psa 121:2
This expression of dependence upon God is not merely a formal act of piety, but the utterance of a truth which is seen to be more profoundly true for all of us the more we think of it.
I. It is plain that in all man’s great discoveries he only observes the energies of nature, which are not his own, but are really the energies of God; and in his inventions he follows up hints which are given him by nature itself, so that he is bound to acknowledge God in every step of his advancement. The law of man’s development is an ever-closer union of the finite with the Infinite, and this is its true glory. It is, in a lower sense, the ever-advancing incarnation of the Word of His power and the "taking of manhood into God."
II. That which is true of outward and material things is also the law of our salvation from sin and death. Man works out his salvation by union with God, who "worketh in him to will and to do of His good pleasure." The finite gains the victory only by closest union with the infinite Spirit. The one all-embracing condition of salvation is faith in Christ; that is, union of heart, and soul, and mind with the Power which alone can, and which certainly will, carry us from this world of sin and death to everlasting life.
III. If you have taken hold of this Power, remember that it has also taken hold of you, and will hold you in its grasp for ever as it holds the stars in their places. It is a Power which can transform you into something Divine. It is the Power which converts carbon into the diamond, a little earth and gas into the cedar of Lebanon, an invisible germ into the most perfect form of beauty. And it is set on converting us into something far more glorious than these things: into sharers of His own glory for ever in the person of Christ.
E. White, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxx., p. 149.
Psa 121:3
There are times of every man’s life, moods of every man’s mind, in which nothing is more acceptable than the remembrance of some of those fundamental truths of religion from which we often turn aside as elementary or commonplace. Such a truth, so certain, so fundamental, so comforting, is that of the never-failing providence of God, a truth, or rather a fact, which has been the unceasing support of all God’s servants in every age, and on the belief of which depend all our happiness in life, all our hope in danger and difficulty, all our strength and consolation in times of suffering and distress.
I. The providence of God must be either minute and universal or nominal and nugatory. If God does anything, He must do all things. The very greatness of God, the difference between Him and His creatures in point of knowledge and power, is shown in nothing more infallibly than in this, that He is able to combine universal dominion with particular superintendence, the irresistible control of empires and of worlds with the most minute direction of individual interests, the tenderest concern for individual feeling. What then does this teach us? How shall we avail ourselves of the truth thus disclosed?
II. Let each one say to himself—it is not the language of self-exaltation—God careth for me. The Lord thinketh upon me. I am of value in the sight of God, not for what I am without Him, but for that of which He has made me capable, and for the sake of Him who bought me with His most precious blood. It was not by chance, but by the will and operation of God, that the time, and the place, and the circumstances of my being were all ordained.
III. Recollect that from the watchful eye of that Providence which orders all things we cannot escape if we would. Either in love and tender compassion, or else (according to the fearful words of the prophet) with fury poured out, God must rule over us. It is not a matter of choice whether we will be under Him or whether we will be our own masters. His we are. "Whither shall I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then from Thy presence?"
C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons, 2nd series, p. 164.
Psa 121:8
I. It was help, and only help, which the speaker looked for from God. And help is not that which dispenses with exertion on our part, but rather that which supposes such exertion. Helping a man is not doing everything for him and leaving him nothing to do for himself, but rather the assisting him in his efforts, making those efforts effectual when perhaps without that aid they would be insufficient and frustrated.
II. "Who made heaven and earth." This is turning creation to account. There is not an impress of power in the visible universe but is a message to the Christian, telling him not to be afraid.
III. "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved." In the first verse we have the psalmist leaning or waiting upon God; in the third we have his strength renewed through fresh assurance of Divine favour and support. Were there no more watchful eye upon our path than our own, we should often be in such slippery places that no effort might avail to keep ourselves from falling; but there is an eye upon us that is never closed.
IV. "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." Then there is a blessed company who share with me this unwearied protection, "partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light."
V. "The Lord is thy Keeper." This indicates, indeed, the presence and activity of enemies, who, like wolves, may prowl about the flock, but indicates also the security of those within the fold. If we refuse to stay in the fold, and wilfully wander into the wilderness, we must expect to be harassed and torn; but God will never fail to keep us so long as we fail not to strive to keep ourselves.
VI. The last verse is a promise that we shall be kept in all our ways; that in all our business, in all our movements, amid all the changes and chances of our mortal life, we shall evermore be defended by that ready help which issues from an eye that cannot close and an arm that cannot fail.
"Even for evermore." There is a "going out" from this world; there is a "coming in" to the next world. Our "going out" through the dark valley shall be under the guidance of that blessed Shepherd whose rod and whose staff shall never fail to comfort the believer; our "coming in" to the heavenly city shall be as heirs with that glorious Redeemer who must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2241.
Psalm 121
There is an affinity between souls and hills, especially for those who have become acquainted with their own solemn depths and sublime heights. In man’s earthly estate wonderful heights are laid low. He has descended from the eternal hills. Being away from his home and half a stranger to himself, the broken conformations of the outward world, the deep, dark, mist-shrouded valleys, the bold, aspiring, light-seeking mountains, deeply affect him. Man in trouble instinctively looks to the hills; he feels the attraction of the Fatherland, and knows there is help for him there.
I. "I will lift up mine eyes." Our eyes travel where our feet cannot climb, lay hold of what our hands cannot reach; but the eyes that the. psalmist speaks of are the eyes of the soul, and the hills to which he looks are the hills of help for the soul.
II. The help of the hills is representative of the help of other heights. They receive whatever help they furnish. They stand for the "hill of the Lord," for the "Maker of heaven and earth." The Maker only can help that which is made.
III. From the hill of the Lord we receive help for the valley. The hill of the Lord is to the pilgrim who looks up what the compass is to the mariner, who finds his course by it through the troubled waters of the pathless sea.
IV. "Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." The clouds may shut out the light of the sky even by day, and under a cloudless sky the sun early leaves the valleys; and though over the hill-tops the light long lingers, and the day seems loath to depart, the night closes in: but from Mount Zion the light is never withdrawn.
V. The habit of looking up will teach us: (1) to understand the use of trouble in this valley; (2) that we are to be withdrawn from the earthly valley.
W. Pulsford, Trinity Church Sermons, p. 50.
References: Psalm 121—S. Cox, The Pilgrim Psalms, p. 24; M. R. Vincent, Gates into the Psalm Country, p. 265; Expository Sermons and Outlines on the Old Testament, p. 242.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 The Preserver.
The Preserver.
A song of the ascents.
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But the next psalm shows itself to be indeed "a song of ascents." Although not the full blessing,which the psalm following is to bring, yet the soul has found its help and its Preserver, -found it where alone help is, in the living God.
The first part of the first verse is not, as some would make it, a question. For an Israelite the presence of God naturally connects itself with Zion; the place of His rest, but where as yet He is not found. The psalmist looks there, but as yet only questioningly. But not questionable, nevertheless, is the source of his help: it is found in Him whose is not merely Zion; but heaven and earth. His refuge is in His unslumbering care, keeping the feet of him who is still a pilgrim. He is Israel’s Keeper: so faith, even from afar off, claims Him; -Jehovah, the faithful covenant-keeping God. The Pillar of Cloud by day again appears in the shade upon the right hand which forbids the scorching sun of the desert to smite the people of God, or the moon by night: (for the moon can affect both eyes and brain). But this is only an illustration of wider and perfect protection: Jehovah shall keep thee from all evil: He shall keep thy soul."
The last verse answers, in its number attached, to what is expressed definitely in it: "Jehovah shall keep thy going out and coming in; from henceforth even for ever." Eternity shall have its blessed activities, realized in as blessed dependence on the unfailing God.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v1 Psa 121:1 - Psa 121:2.
Psalms
LOOKING TO THE HILLS
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Psa 121:1 - Psa 121:2.
The so-called ‘Songs of Degrees,’ of which this psalm is one, are usually, and with great probability, attributed to the times of the Exile. If that be so, we get an appropriate background and setting for the expressions and emotions of this psalm. We see the exile, wearied with the monotony of the long-stretching, flat plains of Babylonia, summoning up before his mind the distant hills where his home was. We see him wondering how he will be able ever to reach that place where his desires are set; and we see him settling down, in hopeful assurance that his effort is not in vain, since his help comes from the Lord. ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills’; away out yonder westwards, across the sands, lie the lofty summits of my fatherland that draws me to itself. Then comes a turn of thought, most natural to a mind passionately yearning after a great hope, the very greatness of which makes it hard to keep constant. For the second clause of my text cannot possibly be, as it is translated in our Authorised Version, an affirmation, but must be taken as the Revised Version correctly gives it, a question: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help?’ How am I to get there? And then comes the final turn of thought: ‘My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.’
So then, there are three things here-the look of longing, the question of weakness, the assurance of faith.
I. The look of longing.
‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills’-a resolution, and a resolution born of intense longing. Now the hills that the Psalmist is thinking about were visible from no part of that long-extended plain where he dwelt; and he might have looked till he wore his eyes out, ere he could have seen them on the horizon of sense. But although they were unseen, they were visible to the heart that longed for them. He directs his desires further than the vision of his eyeballs can go. Just as his possible contemporary, Daniel, when he prayed, opened his window towards the Jerusalem that was so far away; and just as Mohammedans still, in every part of the world, when they pray, turn their faces to the Kaabah at Mecca, the sacred place to which their prayers are directed; and just as many Jews still, north, east, south or west though they be, face Jerusalem when they offer their supplications-so this psalmist in Babylon, wearied and sick of the low levels that stretched endlessly and monotonously round about him, says, ‘I will look at the things that I cannot see, and lift up my eyes above these lownesses about me, to the loftinesses that sense cannot behold, but which I know to be lying serene and solid beyond the narrowing horizon before me.’
There was the look of longing, and the longing which made non-vision into a look; and there was the effort to divert his attention from the things around him to the things afar off; and there was the realisation, by reason of the effort, of these distant but most certain realities.
Now this Psalmist’s home-sickness, if I may so call it, had nothing at all religious about it. It was simply that he wanted to get to his own country-his own, though he had been born in exile; and there was nothing more devout or spiritual or refining about his longing than there is about the wish to return to his native country that any foreigner in a distant land feels. But when we take these words, as we all ought to do, as the motto of our lives, we must necessarily attach the loftiest religious meaning to them. And here start up the plain, simple, but tight-gripping and stimulating questions, ‘Do I see the Unseen? Does that far-off, dim land assume substance and reality to me? Do I walk in the light of it raying out to me through earth’s darkness? Do I dwell contented with never a glimpse of it?’ It comes to be a very sharp question with us professing Christians, whether the horizon of our inward being is limited by, and coterminous with, the horizon of our senses, or whether, far beyond the narrow limits to which these can reach, our spirits’ desire stretches boundless. Are, to us, the things unseen the solid things, and the things visible the shadows and the phantoms? The Apocalyptic seer, in his rocky Patmos, was told that he was to be shown ‘the things which are’; and what was it that he saw? A set of what people call unreal and symbolic visions. ‘The things which are,’ the world would have said, ‘are the rocks that you are standing on, and the sea that is dashing upon them, and all the solid-seeming Roman world, and the power that has got you in its grip. These are the realities, and these things that you think you see, these are the dreams.’ But it is exactly the other way. The world and all that is about us, Manchester and its hubbub, warehouses crammed with cloth, and mills full of jennies and throstles-these are the shadows; and the things that only the believing eye beholds, that are wrapped in the invisibility of their own greatness, these, and these only, are the realities. We see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the shadows. ‘I will lift up my eyes’ from the mud-flats where I live to the hills that I cannot see, and, seeing them, I shall be blessed.
Further, do we know anything of that longing that the Psalmist had? He was perfectly comfortable in Babylon. There was abundance of everything that he wanted for his life. The Jews there were materially quite as well off, and many of them a great deal better off, than ever they had been in their narrow little strip of mountain land, shut in between the desert and the sea. But for all that, fat, wealthy Babylon was not Palestine. So amidst the lush vegetation, the wealth of water and the fertile plains, the Psalmist longed for the mountains, though the mountains are often bare of green things. It was that longing that led to his looking to the hills. Do we know anything of that longing which makes us ‘that are in this tabernacle to groan, being burdened’? ‘Absent from the Lord,’ and ‘present in the body,’ we should not be at ease, nor at home. Unless our Christianity throws us out of harmony and contentment with the present, it is worth very little. And unless we know something of that immortal longing to be nearer to God, and fuller of Christ, and emancipated from sense, and from the burdens and trivialities of life, we have yet to learn what the meaning of ‘walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit’ really is.
Further, do we make any effort like that of this Psalmist, who encourages and stimulates himself by that strong ‘I will lift up my eyes’? You will not do it unless you make a dead lift of effort. It is a great deal easier for a man to look at what is at his feet than to crane his neck gazing at the stars.
And so, unless we take up and persevere in maintaining a habitual attitude of stirring up and lifting up ourselves, gravitation will be too much for us, and down will go the head, and down the eyes; and down will go the desires, and we shall be like men that live in some mountainous country, who never lift their gaze to the solemn white summits that travellers come across half Europe to see. Christian men and women too often walk beneath the very peaks of the mountains of God, and rarely lift their vision there. They perhaps do so for an hour and a half on a Sunday morning, or an hour on a Wednesday evening, when there is no other engagement, or for a minute or two in the morning before they hurry down to breakfast, or a minute or two at night when they are dead beat and unfit for anything. For the rest of the time, there are the mountains and here is the saint, and he seldom or never turns his head to look at them! Is that the sort of Christianity that is likely to be a power in the world, or a blessing to its possessor?
II Further, notice the question of weakness.
‘From whence cometh my help?’ The loftier our ideal, the more painful ought to be our conviction of incapacity to reach it. The Christian man’s one security is in feeling his peril, and the condition of his strength is his acknowledgment and vivid consciousness always of his weakness. The exile in Babylon had a dreary desert, peopled by wild Arab tribes hostile to him, stretching between his present home and that where he desired to be, and it would be difficult for him to get away from the dominion that held him captive, unless by consent of the power of whom he was the vassal. So the more the thought of the mountains of Israel drew the Psalmist, the more there came into his mind the thought, ‘How am I to be made able to reach that blessed soil?’ And surely, if we saw, with anything like a worthy apprehension and vision, the greatness of that blessedness that lies yonder for Christian souls, we should feel far more deeply than we do the impossibility, as far as we are concerned, of our ever reaching it. The sense of our own weakness and the consciousness of the perils upon the path ought ever to be present with us all.
Brethren! if, on the one hand, we have to cultivate, for a healthy, vital Christianity, a vision of the mountains of God, on the other hand we have to try to deepen in ourselves the wholesome sense of our own impotence, and the conviction that the dangers on the road are far too great for us to deal with. ‘Blessed is the man that feareth always.’ ‘Pride goeth before destruction.’ Remember the Franco-German war, and how the French Prime Minister said that they were going into it ‘with a light heart,’ and how some of the troops went out of Paris in railway carriages labelled ‘for Berlin’; and when they reached the frontier they were doubled up and crushed in a month. Unless we, when we set ourselves to this warfare, feel the formidableness of the enemy and recognise the weakness of our own arms, there is nothing but defeat for us.
III. Finally, notice the assurance of faith.
The Psalmist asks himself, ‘From whence cometh my help?’ and then the better self answers the questioning, timid self: ‘My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.’ There will be no reception of the divine help unless there is a sense of the need of the divine help. God cannot help me before I am brought to despair of any other help. It is only when a man says, ‘There is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God!’ that God comes to help.
There is a story in the Book of Chronicles, about one battle in which Judah engaged, of a very singular kind. The first step in the campaign was that the king of Judah gathered all his people together, and prayed to God, and said, ‘We know not what we shall do. We have no strength against this great multitude that cometh against us, but our eyes are unto Thee.’ Then a prophet came and assured him of victory, and next day they arrayed the battle. It was set in this strange fashion: in the forefront were put the priests and Levites, with their instruments of music, and not soldiers with spears and bows, and they marched out to battle with this song, ‘The Lord is gracious and merciful. His mercy endureth for ever.’ Then, without the stroke of sword or thrust of spear, God fought for them and scattered their foes.
‘Which things are an allegory.’ If we recognise our helplessness, God is our help. If we conceit ourselves to be strong, we are weak; if we know ourselves to be impotent, Omnipotence pours itself into us. We read once that Jesus Christ healed ‘them that had need of healing.’ Why does the Evangelist not say, without that periphrasis, ‘healed the sick’? Because he would emphasise, I suppose, amongst other things, the thought that only the sense of need fits for the reception of healing and help.
If, then, we desire that God should be ‘the Strength of our hearts, and our Portion for ever,’ the coming of His help must be wooed and won by our sense of our own impotence, and only they who say, ‘We have no might against this great multitude that cometh against us,’ will ever hear from Him the blessed assurance, ‘The Lord will fight for you.’ ‘Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord!’ So, brethren! the assurance of faith follows the consciousness of weakness, and both together will lead, and nothing else will lead, to the realisation of the vision of faith, and bring us at last, weak as we are, to the hills where the weary and foot-sore flock ‘shall lie down in a good fold, and on fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The song of the traveller, whose guide is Jehovah.
The song of the traveller, whose guide is Jehovah.
1. Hills] RV 'mountains.' The mountains suggest strength, and the Psalmist asks a question, 'Whence shall my help come?' The answer is given in Psa_121:2 : 'from Him who made the mountains and all else.' If this Ps. were sung going up to Jerusalem then the 'mountains' may be the hills around Jerusalem, or those on which that city is built.
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5. Shade] i.e. shelter for defence.
6. A belief in the injurious influence of the moon is an almost universal superstition. If e.g. the moon shines on the face of a sleeper he may become blind: cp. 'moonstruck.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v1 A Song of degrees
A Song of degrees
Literally, "of ascents." Perhaps chanted by the people as they went up to Jerusalem to the feasts. Psa 122:1; Psa 122:2.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 The Guardian Care of the Lord.
The Guardian Care of the Lord.
A song of degrees, full of believing fervor due to the consciousness of the fellowship of God with His children on earth.
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v. 1. I will lift up mine eyes, in anxious, yet trustful desire and longing, unto the hills, regarded as the throne of Jehovah, from whence cometh my help, or, in the form of a question, "From whence will come my help?" a most emphatic declaration of trust in the almighty power of God and in His willingness to help His children.
v. 2. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth, His creative power being a pledge of His ability to rescue those who trust in Him from all dangers. In order to strengthen this trust still more, the psalmist now addresses his own soul.
v. 3. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved, to stagger with weakness; He that keepeth thee will not slumber, His watchful care never ceases, is never diminished.
v. 4. Behold, an exclamation expressing and inducing further assurance, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber, in an occasional short nap, nor sleep, in total forgetfulness of His children. His is a sleepless vigilance, as the history of Israel abundantly shows. The assurance of the believers is therefore expressed in a series of positive statements setting forth the fatherly care of the Lord.
v. 5. The Lord is thy Keeper; the Lord is thy Shade upon thy right hand, literally, "over the hand of thy right side," said of a complete overshadowing and protecting.
v. 6. The sun shall not smite thee by day, its withering heat producing illness or even death, nor the moon by night, for in the case of many people, and in a number of countries, the effect of the moon’s rays on the uncovered head is similar to that of the direct light of the sun. The injurious influences proceeding from sun and moon are representative of all dangers by day and night, against all of which the ever-watchful eye of God grants protection.
v. 7. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil, no matter of what kind it may be and from which side it may threaten; He shall preserve thy soul, the life of the soul being the believer’s highest possession.
v. 8. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in, the believer’s whole life, with all its occupations and undertakings, from this time forth and even forevermore, in time and eternity; for no danger can harm him who rests in the shadow of the eternal love of the heavenly Father, relying on the merciful promises of His Word.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 5, 7 General Information:
General Information:
Parallelism is common in Hebrew poetry. (See: Poetry and Parallelism)
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A song of ascents
Possible meanings are 1) "song people sang while going up to Jerusalem for a celebration" or 2) "song people sang while going up the steps into the temple" or 3) "song whose words are like steps." See how you translated this in Psalms 120:1.
lift up my eyes
This expression means "look at" or "focus my attention on." (See: Metonymy)
From where will my help come?
The writer uses this question to focus attention on the source of his help. This rhetorical question can be translated as a statement. AT: "I will tell you from where my help comes." (See: Rhetorical Question)
My help comes from Yahweh
This is the answer to the previous question.
translationWords
Yahweh
heaven
earth
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4 Ps 121 The leader of the group of pilgrims…
Ps 121 The leader of the group of pilgrims uses word pictures to assure the group of the Lord’s presence during the journey.
121:1 The mountains were known for their idolatrous worship (Deut 12:2), and Israel was enticed to the hilltop shrines (Hos 4:13). This verse can be understood as a rhetorical question expecting a negative answer: The gods of the hilltop shrines cannot rescue anyone. Others understand the mountains to be a symbol of the Lord’s strength (Ps 95:4). In that case, the question would be interpreted literally (Where does my help come from?), with the answer given in the next verse
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.