Ps 121 (To liturgy)

I look up / to the mountains

                To see where my help / is to come from

The source of my help / is Yhwh

                Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let / your foot stumble

                Your guardian / will not slumber

Of course / no slumber

                No sleeping

                Marks Israel’s guardian

Yhwh / is your guardian

                Yhwh / is your shade

                At your right hand

By day / the sun will not strike you

                Nor the moon / by night

Yhwh / will guard you / from all danger

                He will guard / your life

Yhwh will guard

                Your going and your coming

                Henceforth / for evermore

The psalmist begins with his eyes turned toward “the mountains.” He is actively looking to them to see “where his help comes from.” These mountains must be a source of divine aid, of heavenly aid. They must serve as a gateway between the human and the divine and therefore a place from which the divine heaven can flow toward the human realm. What these particular mountains are, though, is not clear. They may represent the “heights” on which idols were placed, like conduits to that god’s authority and power. Or, it could be one of Yhwh’s mountains, perhaps Zion, on which his Temple was perched and from which the prophets will envision the redemption of the world flowing. In both of these, it confirms that mountains, as higher than the earth, stand closest to the place of divinity and therefore of aid to man.

The psalmist then answers his question—his help “is Yhwh”, the “maker of heaven and earth.” This designation of Yhwh, following the “gaze to the mountains”, is instructive. Yhwh, here, is the transcendent one. He dwells beyond the “heavens and the earth” and, more to the point, he is the creator of heaven and earth. He made these mountains. This should not cast a negative light on the mountains because Yhwh routinely approaches his people “with aid” from mountain tops and, as we said, has established his home on Zion. The point, rather, is that this supremely transcendent creator, also has made himself the “source of help” as he has also made his “dwelling among men” on Zion. Help “comes from” Yhwh.

How Yhwh “helps” is that he will not let the psalmists “foot stumble”. The remaining portions of the psalm focus on Yhwh as “guardian.” The image of the slumbering deity is not foreign. There are many such stories. Important for our purposes are the times when it is used in a negative way to show that god’s neglect of his devotees. In the episode involving Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al, Elijah mocks Ba’al’s devotees that he is not responding to them because “he must be slumbering”. Although in other stories, sleeping is not negative, here it is clearly is and it represents Ba’al’s inattentiveness and the limits of his authority and power. To “look to Ba’al” for aid, in this story, is to “look to a slumbering god”. Yhwh is no slumbering god. Like the many perpetual seeing eyes of the cherubim wings, Yhwh remains a perpetual guardian, always already aware of his devotees and ready to come to their aid and protect them. They are encased within his watchful gaze. Here, we see how the psalmist’s ‘gaze’ to the mountains is matched and overtaken by Yhwh’s always wakeful gaze upon him. It is a key insight—that Yhwh looks upon his devotees with the loving care and devotion that the psalmist looks upon the mountains and Yhwh. This perpetual gaze is then described as Yhwh being “at your right hand”, and, in this we come to see how Yhwh’s ‘gaze’ is not simply an act of seeing but an act. For Yhwh to see is for Yhwh to act in a way that is similar to Yhwh’s words—they do what they say; when he speaks, the words happen, like creation itself.

The psalmist then contemplates the ‘rulers of time’—the sun and the moon. Yhwh, the creator of heaven and earth, has control over these rulers and, because he is the always guardian, he will not permit the sun to strike you or the moon by night. The moon was understood as casting a ‘baleful gaze’ on people, of their being ‘moonstruck’. Yhwh stands between this gaze and his devotees and the guards against it.

At the end, Yhwh is the all-encompassing guardian of this pilgrim. He began his journey looking to the mountains, the psalm ends with Yhwh guarding that journey, his “going and his coming.” Here we come to see the liturgical setting of the psalm more clearly. The superscription of the psalm says that it is a processional psalm. It is therefore likely that the psalmist is to be  understood as leaving a liturgical celebration at the Temple. This would create a deeper level to the psalm and its insistence on Yhwh being a ‘guardian’. Yhwh is the guardian who protects the psalmist so that he can again return to the Temple. This is, in fact, the deepest reality of the Scriptures because they begin and end in the same fashion—beginning with the priestly activity of Adam in the Eden Temple and ending with the Temple-Bride descending from heaven to earth. Between the two, is the pilgrimage of Yhwh’s devotees from one to the other. Within the arc of that “master story” are many, many instances of that happening. Whether it is Abraham leaving Ur, the Israelites leaving Egypt for the Land, the Babylonian captivity and the re-building of the Temple, and finally, of Chris’s own life as it is consummated when he enters the heavenly Temple. Finally, the entire book of Revelation can be read this way—moving from ‘day of the Lord’ that John is in, to be taken to a ‘high mountain’ and then, finally, to heaven’s descent to earth. The nuance there is that the protection of the God-the Lamb-and Spirit is not one from bodily harm; the Lamb himself is “as if slain”. It is from a type of ‘final death’, the ‘second death’. And, importantly, protection from that death comes by being conformed to the slain lamb, in other words, through death. In so far as one conforms one’s life to Jesus, the slain lamb, then God will guard them “against the sun and moon” of final destruction with the Satan and the demons. This protection is the final protection from the final battle. And key to this is that it is protection against those forces that seek to annihilate the liturgy offered to God, that seek to keep the earth impure and tainted such that heaven will not be able to descend.

The trajectory of all of these—is the leaving and entering of Yhwh’s people from and to liturgy.  Yhwh looks over his people and protects them and is their divine guardian, not simply so that they can be established within their own bodily security and stability. He does so, in order to bring them out of themselves and into his divine Presence so that they, each for each other, stand “face to face” in ecstatic joy.