An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 120: Singing Up The Stairs (Psalms 121-125)

Psalms 121-125
Singing Up The Stairs.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Psalms 121
“The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.”

This is another “song of degrees”, which I had to look up. Of course, it’s another form of instruction to the musicians, and is thought to be for a psalm that is to be sung while ascending the temple steps, possibly a verse per step.

Which begs the question, and also one relevant to the other musical instructions – why does no-one know for sure? It’s interesting that the words have come down to us from two and a half to three thousand years ago, but on the way the music got lost. My guess would be it’s because the temple singers and musicians were hereditary roles chosen from within the Levites, who would probably know straight off what the terms meant, but that this was a kind of trade secret. I also thought that perhaps there weren’t specific tunes, as such, but more musical modes around which to improvise.

So at some point the knowledge of the temple singers died out, and there are plenty of possible candidates for this. Possibly the Assyrian captivity, but some psalms seem to have been written after this time; my guess would be the Roman destruction of the temple under Vespasian. At some point, too, the Jewish faith moved from the care of ephod-clad priests burning animal sacrifices to the more scholarly rabbinical tradition (at least, as far as I can tell as an outsider). Losing your big central temple and being driven to an almost underground faith will probably do this.

Anyway, what of this psalm? Short and simple, basically telling the listener that God will look after them at all times.

Psalms 122
“(A Song of degrees of David.) I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.”

This psalm praises Jerusalem, being peaceful because it is blessed by God (on which I pass no comment). Verse 3 “Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together:” I read at first as meaning that it covers a small area, but it could well be a compact as in a covenant. Perhaps, even, the translator has written a neat double meaning here – it is small, thus close-knit, and living under a compact with God.

Psalms 123
“Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.”

They are short, these psalms of degrees, I’ll give them that. And the staircase idea seems quite a good one as they have tended, so far, to talk of raising up eyes and otherwise drawing the attention upwards. This one also mentions the scorn of the proud, a common psalm theme.

Psalms 124
“Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.”

Another song of degrees, and I forgot to mention that the last few have been attributed to David. This one states that the Israelites have only prevailed against their enemies because God was with them, and if He hadn’t been they would have been overwhelmed by various water metaphors. The water metaphors work well, except for the sudden jump to hunting metaphors, with fowler’s snares and talk of teeth and prey. Either works well, but given the short length I think it would have been more effective to have done this twice, once with the water metaphors, once with the hunting metaphors.

Psalms 125
“(A Song of degrees.) They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever.”

Another favourite source of biblical simile and metaphor appears in this psalm. Not water, fire or lions, but mountains. God, and the faith of those who believe in him, is as solid as a mountain. The rest is fairly typical – the righteous will prevail against the wicked. I’m starting to long for something original here.

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