Deliver me, O Lord!

This month we start a new series on the ‘Songs of Ascents’.  I tend to think of the ‘Songs of Ascents’ as pocket sized psalms as with the exception of Psalm 132 they are very short.  The Hebrew term can mean: ‘marching song’[1] or: ‘going up’[2] and it’s likely these psalms were sung during the pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem.   It’s thought there are 15 of them as there were 15 steps to ascend to the temple.

But Psalm 120 may strike us as an unusual psalm as we generally think of psalms starting in a negative light and changing at some point to end on a positive note.  But Psalm 120 doesn’t and we find the writer in a similar situation at the end of the psalm to the one he was in at the beginning!

A while back I was talking to a former elder of the church I grew up in.  Both of us could recount situations where we’d counselled people only for them to go off and do exactly the opposite of what we’d advised.  The worst of it was that sometimes, when challenged, they would respond by saying we’d told them to do it!  The upshot was we often felt there were people talking about our supposedly bad advice behind our backs.  The Psalmist seems to have a similar problem as he appeals to the Lord to save him: ‘from lying lips’ and: ‘from a deceitful tongue’ (v1).

The nature of the problem is highlighted in verse 1.  The phrase: ‘I called to the Lord’ has a past and present tense in the Hebrew which suggests the problem has been going on for some time.[3]  Perhaps, every now and again, the psalmist thinks that the malicious gossip has died down only for it to resurface again!  Yet he prays confidently expecting the Lord to intervene.  He may be troubled, but he knows that when deceitful things are said behind his back there’s very little he can do about it.  So instead the Psalmist looks to the Lord to vindicate him by asking the rhetorical question: ‘What shall be given to you, and what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue? (v3).  There’s a sense that even if he’s under attack, the: ‘shape arrows’ (deceitful talk), which are aimed at him, are, in actual fact, being turned back on his attackers (v4)!  As Christians we will undoubtedly find ourselves in the same kind of situation from time to time, but the wisdom of the Psalmist is to leave it with the Lord rather than continually worry about a situation we can do very little about!

Yet the Psalmist is realistic enough to know that he appears isolated.  After all, the Lord is not under any obligation to act as a ‘Fairy Godmother’ and wave a wand so all our problems disappear.  The mention of Meshech and Kedar in verse 5 is interesting as both places are far apart and outside the borders of Israel.  As the Psalmist can’t literally be living in both and as they were barbarous and pagan places, I suspect the Psalmist is experiencing a sense of spiritual loneliness which is typified in verse 7 where he wants peace and yet those against him are for all out war!  In other words the slanderous attacks on him may be coming from people he would expect to be on his side!

In the end this might seem a very strange psalm for Pilgrims to sing as they’re going up to the temple in Jerusalem.  Surely they’d want something a bit more uplifting.  But basically it reflects the Pilgrims / Christians experience.  We, just as they were for being zealous, will be singled out for ridicule and slanderous things will be said about us and our faith!  But what a joy it was for them to come together in pilgrimage, as it is for us today in fellowship, with God’s people!

Would you like to listen to a sermon on this passage? Deliver me, O Lord!

[1] Eric Lane, Psalms 90-150, The Lord Reigns (Fearn, Christian focus, 2006) 143.

[2] James Montgomery Boice, Psalms volume 3, Psalms 107-150 (Grand Rapids, Baker Books 1998) 1068-1069.

[3] Craig C. Broyles, New International Biblical Commentary, Psalms (Pleabody, Massachusetts, Hendrickson Publishers Inc, 1999) 447.