Psalm 121 w Commentary

“Let us go to the house of the Lord”, they said,

Oh how great was our joy when we heard!

Now our feet are set firm on Jerusalem’s soil

at the gates of the City of God,

For the city is blessed now with unity,

all restored in its beauty and calm.

Here the tribes of the Lord in their thousands have come

to give thanks unto Israel’s God.

For they come to sing praises and thanks to God,

and, as pilgrims, obey his commands.

In the city of justice where David has ruled

they now pray for Jerusalem’s peace.

In this city may wholeness and peace abound,

in your houses and palaces, peace!

For the sake of my friends and relatives here

for the sake of God’s House, pray, “Shalom”.

Words and music Noel Donnelly; (c) Kevin Mayhew.  Graphic (c) Netta Ewing

If you’ve ever signed up for a holiday or a trip to the Holy Land or a place like Lourdes just  think what it was like to arrive there…. You’ve read about it all in the brochures but now your feet are actually standing there and you look all around you with wide-open eyes: wow! Here it is at last!!

That’s exactly the feeling the writer of Psalm 121 had. His feet are now standing in Jerusalem, the climax of his pilgrim journey, and his heart is beating faster with great expectation.

The word “Jerusalem” has at its heart the word “shalom” which means completeness, wholeness, peace. The pilgrim has finally arrived in the City of Peace. The tribes of the Lord are gathered together to give thanks to God and when the psalmist calls them “the tribes of the Lord” he is strongly hinting that they are not now to act as the individual tribes of Jacob, Benjamin, Judah or Ephraim: no; their differences and rivalries are to be put aside: they are tribes of the one Lord; they have one common loyalty: to the one Lord of all! And just as the buildings are huddled together, or “strongly compact” as the psalmist puts it, they too are they to be huddled together in unity in this City of Peace.

Three times the word “Jerusalem” is used and this gives us a clue to the clever structure of the whole psalm: it’s built like a staircase since the word at the end of one line is used to start the next line.

At the top of this stairway there is a simple message: “Pray for peace!” At the top of the stairs in my house there’s a mirror. Can I look into it and see a person of peace? Peace in my home? Peace in my heart? Peace in my relations with my neighbour? Peace before God?

And can I pray for the peace of Jerusalem today? Shalom Jerushalom! Shalom!