Let us go into the house of the Lord!

Psalm 122 and 123: Despite my middle-aged estrogen fog, I can still recite some of the scripture I memorized in Sunday School decades ago. The opening verse of 122, a psalm of thanksgiving and a zion psalm is one of those: "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord!'" Funny how I don't remember the exclamation mark, and back then, the house of the Lord only meant my particular Christian church, not the Jewish temple in Jerusalem which is obviously referred to here. This psalms was written in a time when peace in Jerusalem was a matter of faith, not necessarily of fact, since the psalmist would have been aware of the destruction of the first temple and the exile from Jerusalem when this psalm was written. So it is with the knowledge of the fragility of a place that the city is praised as a secure city: "Jerusalem-built as a city that is bound firmly together." (v.2).  In verse 7, in the midst of a prayer for Jerusalem's wellbeing, the pilgrims ask for peace in the walls and towers of the city and/or temple, with some parallels to an earlier zion psalm (48) where the people are encouraged to count the towers and walk around the walls.
In the four short verses of the community lament in 123, the psalmist conveys the pain felt  in light of ridicule and contempt from others, closing the prayer with: "Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud." (v. 4).