October 27 / Psalm 120

Psalm 120

Only seven verses, following on Psalm 119’s 176 verses! Today’s psalm begins with the heading, “A Song of Ascents”. We see this today and we’ll see it for the next fourteen psalms (Psalms 120-134). Scholars have suggested one of two meanings for these headings. The first is a suggestion that these psalms are prayed or sung by someone who is walking up the steps leading to the Temple. It could also include the whole of the journey for someone who lived in Jerusalem as they walked to the Temple, since the Temple was built on a high hill, Mount Moriah. (See the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22.)

I’m more attached to the second argument, that travelers from afar would pray and sing these psalms as they journeyed to Jerusalem for one of the annual feast days. That understanding rings true in today’s Psalm, since the psalmist mentions his sojourn in Meshech and his dwelling in Kedar (v. 5).

I’ve mentioned before how the psalms can trigger a different interpretation in my head, different from what the psalmist meant or what Biblical scholars say. Today, another one of those cases. In today’s first four verses the standard interpretation is that the psalmist is being verbally attacked by an adversary – a straightforward explanation. But I saw it as the psalmist speaking to himself about his own tongue! It could be that with his tongue he is lying or slandering or simply twisting words to win his point. How often I have later regretted something that I have said! Maybe the psalmist feels the same way. Read what the Apostle James has to say about “the tongue” (James 3:1-12). Powerful! It’s this connection that makes me wonder if today’s psalmist has his own problem with his own tongue: A warrior’s sharp arrows, with glowing coals of the broom tree! (v. 4)

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