Up and up and up

Psalms 120 and 121: Over the course of this project, one of the themes I've been considering is how the psalms are related to each other, or what scholars like to call the shape of the canon. Scholars generally agree that the 150 psalms we have today were collected and ordered in the 2nd century BCE, but many of them are much older than that. Probably the superscriptions (usually located under the title of the psalm) date to that time. Today's reading are the first two of 15 psalms called songs of ascent. My study Bible explains that these are brief psalms which often reflect everyday life and the ascent part refers to the ascent of pilgrims to Jersualem. These psalms may have been sung as they climbed up the hill to the city. The first in this series is a lament, where the psalmist despairs of his/her situation among strangers who hate peace. It closes with this peculiar verse: "I am for peace' for when I speak, they are for war." (120:7) The psalm of thanksgiving in 121 looks upward for inspiration; not only is it a song of ascents, but it also looks to the hills as a source of guidance. "I life up my eyes to the hill--from where will my help come?" In a series of parallelism, the psalmist affirms that God is the one who assists and keeps the psalmist form all evil. These are much sung lines in the Christian church and since it is evening when I'm writing this, I'll quote an appropriate line to close: "The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night." (v. 5-6).