A song of ascents.
1 I call on the LORD in my distress,
and he answers me.
2 Save me, LORD,
from lying lips
and from deceitful tongues.
3 What will he do to you,
and what more besides,
you deceitful tongue?
4 He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows,
with burning coals of the broom brush.
5 Woe to me that I dwell in Meshek,
that I live among the tents of Kedar!
6 Too long have I lived
among those who hate peace.
7 I am for peace;
but when I speak, they are for war.
THE WORD ORDER IN THE OPENING LINE of the psalm is often lost in English translations. Verse 1 reads literally, “To Yahweh in my distress, I called and he answered.” By moving the indirect object (“to Yahweh”) to the beginning of the verse, the psalmist has fronted the most critical information in the poetic line.6 Typically, fronting signals that the object mentioned is the focus of the utterance. In other words, by structuring the psalm in this manner the psalmist is confessing that he is calling “to Yahweh” (and no other).7 The emphasis in this verse does not fall on the one who cries but on the one to whom the cries are made.
The psalmist characterized his previous situation as “distress” (NIV). The root tsrh implies a narrow place or a “tight” situation that confines the psalmist. In Psalm 118:5 the psalmist uses a cognate of the verb and contrasts being in a tight place, which connotes threat, with being in the wide, open places, suggestive of God’s deliverance. In Psalm 120 the poet recalls a similarly constricting circumstance from which God delivered him. God’s capacity to deliver him from a previous threat provides the assurance that God can redeem him from another context.
DISORIENTATION. In his volume The Message of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann sought to provide a new paradigm for considering the psalms—a paradigm that broke with the form-critical categories posited in traditional historical-critical studies.21 Modifying the Hegelian dialectic, Brueggemann suggested that there were three types of psalms in the Old Testament: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of new orientation. The first category, psalms of orientation, reflects the community’s claims to certain fundamental truths about God, the world, and God’s ways in the world (e.g., Pss 8, 33, 145). These claims lead to the praise of God. The second category, psalms of disorientation, contains poems that lament the “incoherence” between the faith claims of the psalmist and his experience in the world (e.g., Pss 1, 22, 88). The third category, psalms of new orientation, reflects the psalmist’s experience as he discovers a new understanding of reality after being delivered by God (e.g., Pss 30, 138).
Following Brueggemann’s paradigm, Psalm 120 can be understood as a psalm of disorientation. In many ways this label seems particularly well suited for Psalm 120 and is far more instructive than the more generic label of “lament.” Psalm 120 speaks of the disorienting experiences of the psalmist. Another psalm of disorientation, Psalm 12, reflects concerns similar to Psalm 120 and serves to highlight the intensity of the psalmist’s disorientation in Psalm 120. In Psalm 12 the poet mentions his travails and, as in Psalm 120, makes reference to the “lips” and “tongues” of the wicked (Ps 12:2–3, 8). His situation has devolved into such a state that the psalmist confesses “no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race” (v. 1). Yet at the end of Psalm 12 the psalmist asks for God to protect “us” (v. 7).22 While this poet laments the alleged disappearance of faithful and godly people, he does nevertheless appear to be part of a presumably faithful and godly group (“us”) who are suffering at the hands of the wicked.
Although Psalm 120 shares with Psalm 12 the imagery of “lips” and “tongues,” the poet in Psalm 120 never makes the shift from singular to plural when referring to himself. The psalmist speaks throughout of an “I-they” struggle, never a “we-they” encounter as in Psalm 12. The last three verses of Psalm 120 highlight the isolation, both physical and psychological, experienced by the psalmist. Six times in the last three verses some form of the first-person pronoun appears, yet the repeated references to “I” stand over against the plural references related to the enemy (i.e., the “tents of Kedar,” “those who hate peace,” and those who are for war). The disorientation experienced by the psalmist results from his isolation and his location.
The focus on isolation and location may also explain why Psalm 120 appears as the opening poem in the Songs of Ascent. The collection begins with a psalmist’s crying for help while ensconced in a foreign land amid a hostile world. As the reader prays through the Songs of Ascent, the psalms move from the threats experienced in a foreign land to God’s dwelling in Zion (Ps 132:13–14), where one enjoys living in unity with his people (Ps 133:1) and receiving the blessing of Yahweh (Ps 134:3).
LOSS OF PLACE. Although the twenty-first century continues to be marked by a sense of globalization and transnational identity, a number of writers have returned to the concept of “place” and even lamented what seems to be the loss of place.23 For many people, the loss of place is not by choice but by forced migration. The Syrian refugee crisis in recent years serves as but one of many examples. Due to political instability in the region and military threats posed by ISIS, nearly eleven million Syrian refugees were displaced; half of them children. Perhaps like this psalmist, they too lament that they have lived too long in a place that is not their own. And they too have sensed the threats surrounding them.
Other people find themselves in loss of place because of the mobility and movement associated with modern culture. As Craig Bartholomew laments, in our society “every person constantly ‘on the move’ suffers from placelessness in one form or another.”24 While it may seem that such movement leads to the threat of social instability, Edward Casey suggests that our culture does not suffer from anomie (social instability) as much as it does from atopia, placelessness.25 Nearly four decades ago, Walter Brueggemann first raised this concern about the loss of place and its significance for human life. In his classic study on land in the Bible, Brueggemann suggests that a sense of place is a “human hunger.”26 Psalm 120 captures well the notion that place is indeed a human hunger. Some commentators suggest that perhaps the psalmist is speaking metaphorically—he feels so isolated that it is like living in a foreign country. Others suggest that the language in verses 3–4 suggests a social context among a hostile people. Whether the psalmist is physically or socially removed from his society, it is clear that he has no sense of place—the kind of place that makes sense of God, his world, and God’s interaction with the world. As a result, the psalmist can only cry out to God for deliverance (v. 2).
The human hunger for place is not resolved in this poem. Psalm 120 remains open-ended. As one reads the Songs of Ascent, however, one discovers a move from placelessness to a sacred place—to Zion. It is a journey of faith that orients life to the place of life. As we minister among people experiencing atopia from frequently moving every few years due to job demands and other commitments, we would do well to remember that, despite all appearances of “upward mobility,” they too likely suffer from the human hunger for a place that makes sense of God and his world. Psalm 120 invites them—and us—to give words to that human hunger for place (v. 5b), and the Songs of Ascent invite us on a journey toward God.
1. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 296.
2. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 423.
3. A number of interpreters suggest the psalmist announces in verse 1 that he has cried to the Lord and even received an answer related to the current crisis. In the remainder of the poem, however, the psalmist seems to indicate that the situation has not been remedied, thus necessitating the plea for deliverance in the remainder of the psalm. See Allen, Psalms 101–150, 147–48; McCann, “The Book of Psalms,” 1177–78.
4. For similar interpretations see Davidson, The Vitality of Worship, 404–5; Cuthbert C. Keet, A Study of the Psalms of Ascent: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary upon Psalms CXX to CXXXIV (London: Mitre, 1969), 18–19; Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 303–5.
5. For similar structure see Goldingay, Psalms 3, 448.
6. For a brief explanation of fronting in biblical Hebrew see Christo H. J. van der Merwe, Jackie A. Naudé, and Jan H. Kroze, A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar, Biblical Languages: Hebrew 3 (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 344–50.
7. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 305.
8. Göran Eidevall has tracked numerous occurrences in the book of Isaiah in which the prophet associates the use of arrogant and deceitful language with the behavior of empires. See Göran Eidevall, Prophecy and Propaganda: Images of Enemies in the Book of Isaiah, ConBOT 46 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 23–131.
9. While it is possible that the enemy was actually in the audience as the psalmist spoke, it is more likely that this address is meant rhetorically, as when the prophets address the nations (cf. Joel 3:4–8).
10. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 306.
11. Author’s translation. See also 1 Sam 14:44; 20:13; 25:22; 2 Sam 3:9, 35; 19:13; 1 Kgs 2:23; 2 Kgs 6:31.
12. Goldingay, Psalms 3, 450.
13. Keet, A Study of the Psalms of Ascents, 21.
14. For example, see the translation in the NRSV.
15. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 307.
16. Ibid., 309. The Septuagint and Vulgate failed to identify the word “Meshek” and opted instead to render the word based on the same three consonants (mshk), which can mean “to draw out,” “to endure,” “far away”; hence the Septuagint’s translation, “that my place of sojourn was placed far away” (NETS).
17. David C. Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms, JSOTSup 252 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 118. See also Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part 2, and Lamentations, 319.
18. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 309. Michael Goulder rejects a symbolic reading of Meshek and Kedar and instead attempts to connect the activity of Sanballet with Meshek and Geshem with Kedar. Such a move is consistent with his larger project of reading the Psalms of Ascents in light of the fourteen testimonies of Nehemiah, an approach that has yet to win significant support (Goulder, The Return of the Psalms, 37–39).
19. On the construction rabat . . . lah, “more than they can bear,” in verse 6a, see Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 310.
20. Mays, Psalms, 388.
21. Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms.
22. In the Masoretic text the first verb, shamar (“to guard”), does not have the first-person plural suffix (“us”) added to the end of the word. Other Hebrew manuscripts and the Septuagint include the suffix, likely in an attempt to create tighter parallelism in the verse.
23. Craig G. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place Today (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011); John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003); Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory and Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). For a comprehensive investigation of “place” in the Western tradition, see Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
24. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell, 3–4.
25. Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), xi.
26. Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).
EVEN AS VERSE 1 OPENS WITH MENTION of Yahweh, so the plea for deliverance in verse 2 begins by mentioning Yahweh and actually uses the vocative, “O Yahweh.” English translations typically move the imperative verbal form to the front (i.e., “Save me, O LORD”), but the psalmist has placed the vocative (“O Yahweh”) first, perhaps in an attempt to structure the second verse similarly to the first one. In Hebrew, the vocative can occur after the verb (“Save me, O king” [2 Sam 14:4]), or it can appear before the verb, as in Psalm 120 (cf. 1 Kgs 1:17). Consequently, the location of the vocative in Psalm 120:2a does not necessarily suggest a deviation from expected word order but, more likely, signifies an attempt to create parallelism between verses 1a and 2a.
The nature of the distress currently experienced by the psalmist appears initially in verse 2 (“lying lips” and “deceitful tongues”). On first glance, the mention of lying lips and deceitful speech may seem only mildly threatening, but other psalms reinforce the gravity of deceitful speech for the life of the psalmist. For example, in Psalm 59 the psalmist compares the enemy and his deceitful words to wild dogs that prowl the city, prepared to devour their victim.8 Arguably, a similar usage appears in Psalm 120. As the psalm progresses, the threatening overtones increase in intensity, culminating in the psalmist’s final claim: “They are for war” (v. 7b).
DISORIENTATION. In his volume The Message of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann sought to provide a new paradigm for considering the psalms—a paradigm that broke with the form-critical categories posited in traditional historical-critical studies.21 Modifying the Hegelian dialectic, Brueggemann suggested that there were three types of psalms in the Old Testament: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of new orientation. The first category, psalms of orientation, reflects the community’s claims to certain fundamental truths about God, the world, and God’s ways in the world (e.g., Pss 8, 33, 145). These claims lead to the praise of God. The second category, psalms of disorientation, contains poems that lament the “incoherence” between the faith claims of the psalmist and his experience in the world (e.g., Pss 1, 22, 88). The third category, psalms of new orientation, reflects the psalmist’s experience as he discovers a new understanding of reality after being delivered by God (e.g., Pss 30, 138).
Following Brueggemann’s paradigm, Psalm 120 can be understood as a psalm of disorientation. In many ways this label seems particularly well suited for Psalm 120 and is far more instructive than the more generic label of “lament.” Psalm 120 speaks of the disorienting experiences of the psalmist. Another psalm of disorientation, Psalm 12, reflects concerns similar to Psalm 120 and serves to highlight the intensity of the psalmist’s disorientation in Psalm 120. In Psalm 12 the poet mentions his travails and, as in Psalm 120, makes reference to the “lips” and “tongues” of the wicked (Ps 12:2–3, 8). His situation has devolved into such a state that the psalmist confesses “no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race” (v. 1). Yet at the end of Psalm 12 the psalmist asks for God to protect “us” (v. 7).22 While this poet laments the alleged disappearance of faithful and godly people, he does nevertheless appear to be part of a presumably faithful and godly group (“us”) who are suffering at the hands of the wicked.
Although Psalm 120 shares with Psalm 12 the imagery of “lips” and “tongues,” the poet in Psalm 120 never makes the shift from singular to plural when referring to himself. The psalmist speaks throughout of an “I-they” struggle, never a “we-they” encounter as in Psalm 12. The last three verses of Psalm 120 highlight the isolation, both physical and psychological, experienced by the psalmist. Six times in the last three verses some form of the first-person pronoun appears, yet the repeated references to “I” stand over against the plural references related to the enemy (i.e., the “tents of Kedar,” “those who hate peace,” and those who are for war). The disorientation experienced by the psalmist results from his isolation and his location.
The focus on isolation and location may also explain why Psalm 120 appears as the opening poem in the Songs of Ascent. The collection begins with a psalmist’s crying for help while ensconced in a foreign land amid a hostile world. As the reader prays through the Songs of Ascent, the psalms move from the threats experienced in a foreign land to God’s dwelling in Zion (Ps 132:13–14), where one enjoys living in unity with his people (Ps 133:1) and receiving the blessing of Yahweh (Ps 134:3).
LOSS OF PLACE. Although the twenty-first century continues to be marked by a sense of globalization and transnational identity, a number of writers have returned to the concept of “place” and even lamented what seems to be the loss of place.23 For many people, the loss of place is not by choice but by forced migration. The Syrian refugee crisis in recent years serves as but one of many examples. Due to political instability in the region and military threats posed by ISIS, nearly eleven million Syrian refugees were displaced; half of them children. Perhaps like this psalmist, they too lament that they have lived too long in a place that is not their own. And they too have sensed the threats surrounding them.
Other people find themselves in loss of place because of the mobility and movement associated with modern culture. As Craig Bartholomew laments, in our society “every person constantly ‘on the move’ suffers from placelessness in one form or another.”24 While it may seem that such movement leads to the threat of social instability, Edward Casey suggests that our culture does not suffer from anomie (social instability) as much as it does from atopia, placelessness.25 Nearly four decades ago, Walter Brueggemann first raised this concern about the loss of place and its significance for human life. In his classic study on land in the Bible, Brueggemann suggests that a sense of place is a “human hunger.”26 Psalm 120 captures well the notion that place is indeed a human hunger. Some commentators suggest that perhaps the psalmist is speaking metaphorically—he feels so isolated that it is like living in a foreign country. Others suggest that the language in verses 3–4 suggests a social context among a hostile people. Whether the psalmist is physically or socially removed from his society, it is clear that he has no sense of place—the kind of place that makes sense of God, his world, and God’s interaction with the world. As a result, the psalmist can only cry out to God for deliverance (v. 2).
The human hunger for place is not resolved in this poem. Psalm 120 remains open-ended. As one reads the Songs of Ascent, however, one discovers a move from placelessness to a sacred place—to Zion. It is a journey of faith that orients life to the place of life. As we minister among people experiencing atopia from frequently moving every few years due to job demands and other commitments, we would do well to remember that, despite all appearances of “upward mobility,” they too likely suffer from the human hunger for a place that makes sense of God and his world. Psalm 120 invites them—and us—to give words to that human hunger for place (v. 5b), and the Songs of Ascent invite us on a journey toward God.
1. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 296.
2. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 423.
3. A number of interpreters suggest the psalmist announces in verse 1 that he has cried to the Lord and even received an answer related to the current crisis. In the remainder of the poem, however, the psalmist seems to indicate that the situation has not been remedied, thus necessitating the plea for deliverance in the remainder of the psalm. See Allen, Psalms 101–150, 147–48; McCann, “The Book of Psalms,” 1177–78.
4. For similar interpretations see Davidson, The Vitality of Worship, 404–5; Cuthbert C. Keet, A Study of the Psalms of Ascent: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary upon Psalms CXX to CXXXIV (London: Mitre, 1969), 18–19; Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 303–5.
5. For similar structure see Goldingay, Psalms 3, 448.
6. For a brief explanation of fronting in biblical Hebrew see Christo H. J. van der Merwe, Jackie A. Naudé, and Jan H. Kroze, A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar, Biblical Languages: Hebrew 3 (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 344–50.
7. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 305.
8. Göran Eidevall has tracked numerous occurrences in the book of Isaiah in which the prophet associates the use of arrogant and deceitful language with the behavior of empires. See Göran Eidevall, Prophecy and Propaganda: Images of Enemies in the Book of Isaiah, ConBOT 46 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 23–131.
9. While it is possible that the enemy was actually in the audience as the psalmist spoke, it is more likely that this address is meant rhetorically, as when the prophets address the nations (cf. Joel 3:4–8).
10. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 306.
11. Author’s translation. See also 1 Sam 14:44; 20:13; 25:22; 2 Sam 3:9, 35; 19:13; 1 Kgs 2:23; 2 Kgs 6:31.
12. Goldingay, Psalms 3, 450.
13. Keet, A Study of the Psalms of Ascents, 21.
14. For example, see the translation in the NRSV.
15. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 307.
16. Ibid., 309. The Septuagint and Vulgate failed to identify the word “Meshek” and opted instead to render the word based on the same three consonants (mshk), which can mean “to draw out,” “to endure,” “far away”; hence the Septuagint’s translation, “that my place of sojourn was placed far away” (NETS).
17. David C. Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms, JSOTSup 252 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 118. See also Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part 2, and Lamentations, 319.
18. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 309. Michael Goulder rejects a symbolic reading of Meshek and Kedar and instead attempts to connect the activity of Sanballet with Meshek and Geshem with Kedar. Such a move is consistent with his larger project of reading the Psalms of Ascents in light of the fourteen testimonies of Nehemiah, an approach that has yet to win significant support (Goulder, The Return of the Psalms, 37–39).
19. On the construction rabat . . . lah, “more than they can bear,” in verse 6a, see Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 310.
20. Mays, Psalms, 388.
21. Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms.
22. In the Masoretic text the first verb, shamar (“to guard”), does not have the first-person plural suffix (“us”) added to the end of the word. Other Hebrew manuscripts and the Septuagint include the suffix, likely in an attempt to create tighter parallelism in the verse.
23. Craig G. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place Today (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011); John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003); Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory and Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). For a comprehensive investigation of “place” in the Western tradition, see Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
24. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell, 3–4.
25. Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), xi.
26. Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).
BEGINNING IN VERSE 3 THE DISCOURSE shifts and the psalmist turns to address the enemy rhetorically.9 The psalmist links verses 2 and 3 by repeating “deceitful tongue” from 2b and using it as a vocative (“you deceitful tongue”) in verse 3b. In poetry, a synecdoche is a figure of speech in which the part represents the whole. In this instance the psalmist uses “deceitful tongue” to indicate the enemy.
The statement in verse 3 adapts a self-cursing formula meant to suggest that something is unquestionably true. In an attempt to reinforce claims of veracity, a person would have pledged, “May Yahweh do so to me and more as well if I do not do this or that.”10 Such a self-cursing vow can be found in the book of Ruth when Ruth vows to Naomi, “May Yahweh do thus to me and even more if death parts me from you.”11 A variation of the formula also appears in an exchange between David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel 20:12–13. In each instance the speaker (e.g., Ruth or Jonathan) invites God’s punishment upon her or him should the individual fail to live up to the oath. In Psalm 120, however, the relationship between the psalmist and the enemy is not evident, so the context of the oath remains obscured. Goldingay contends that the psalmist may be recalling an oath the enemy had uttered previously but had failed to honor; his failure would result in the curses that follow in verse 4.12 While this understanding is possible, it may be that the psalmist has simply reworked the self-curse formula as a rationale for God’s judgment on the enemy. The enemy’s deceitful words will result in punitive actions by God.
Verse 4 answers the question in verse 3a: “What will he do to you, and what more besides?” The psalmist’s response is simply to mention two items: the warrior’s sharp arrows and burning coals of the broom brush. The sharp arrows and coals of the broom brush were actually used in battle to lay waste to a city and its inhabitants, as is well attested both in textual and iconographic evidence. In this instance the reference to such devastating weapons of war is used figuratively to express divine punishment.13 In an attempt to provide greater clarity, the NIV interjects the phrase, “He will punish you with,” at the beginning of verse 4 but the Hebrew simply mentions both items without attributing them directly to the action of Yahweh.14 While not made explicit, such an association appears understood in the psalm. The two images mentioned in verse 4 could function metaphorically to imply that Yahweh will return the false words of the enemy upon them. In Proverbs 26:18–19 spoken words are compared to burning arrows: “Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death is one who deceives their neighbor and says ‘I was only joking!’ ” Both items of war are used metaphorically in the Old Testament, and particularly in the Psalter, to describe the “life-destroying power of lies, betrayal and calumny through ‘tongue’ and ‘lips.’ ”15 For example, in a manner similar to the allusion in Psalm 120, the writer of Psalm 57:4 incorporates the image of wild animals, mouths, and weapons of war:
I am in the midst of lions;
I am forced to dwell among ravenous beasts—
Men whose teeth are spears and arrows,
Whose tongues are sharp swords.
The plea for deliverance in Psalm 120:2 and the foreboding sense of war in verse 7 suggest that the psalmist perceives his life to be in danger because of the deceitful tongue of the enemy. In the light of his circumstances, the psalmist pleads with God in verse 2 for deliverance and then later, in verse 4, announces God’s punishment on the perpetrators of such lies: their lives will be laid waste even as cities were last waste by arrows and flames of fire.
DISORIENTATION. In his volume The Message of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann sought to provide a new paradigm for considering the psalms—a paradigm that broke with the form-critical categories posited in traditional historical-critical studies.21 Modifying the Hegelian dialectic, Brueggemann suggested that there were three types of psalms in the Old Testament: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of new orientation. The first category, psalms of orientation, reflects the community’s claims to certain fundamental truths about God, the world, and God’s ways in the world (e.g., Pss 8, 33, 145). These claims lead to the praise of God. The second category, psalms of disorientation, contains poems that lament the “incoherence” between the faith claims of the psalmist and his experience in the world (e.g., Pss 1, 22, 88). The third category, psalms of new orientation, reflects the psalmist’s experience as he discovers a new understanding of reality after being delivered by God (e.g., Pss 30, 138).
Following Brueggemann’s paradigm, Psalm 120 can be understood as a psalm of disorientation. In many ways this label seems particularly well suited for Psalm 120 and is far more instructive than the more generic label of “lament.” Psalm 120 speaks of the disorienting experiences of the psalmist. Another psalm of disorientation, Psalm 12, reflects concerns similar to Psalm 120 and serves to highlight the intensity of the psalmist’s disorientation in Psalm 120. In Psalm 12 the poet mentions his travails and, as in Psalm 120, makes reference to the “lips” and “tongues” of the wicked (Ps 12:2–3, 8). His situation has devolved into such a state that the psalmist confesses “no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race” (v. 1). Yet at the end of Psalm 12 the psalmist asks for God to protect “us” (v. 7).22 While this poet laments the alleged disappearance of faithful and godly people, he does nevertheless appear to be part of a presumably faithful and godly group (“us”) who are suffering at the hands of the wicked.
Although Psalm 120 shares with Psalm 12 the imagery of “lips” and “tongues,” the poet in Psalm 120 never makes the shift from singular to plural when referring to himself. The psalmist speaks throughout of an “I-they” struggle, never a “we-they” encounter as in Psalm 12. The last three verses of Psalm 120 highlight the isolation, both physical and psychological, experienced by the psalmist. Six times in the last three verses some form of the first-person pronoun appears, yet the repeated references to “I” stand over against the plural references related to the enemy (i.e., the “tents of Kedar,” “those who hate peace,” and those who are for war). The disorientation experienced by the psalmist results from his isolation and his location.
The focus on isolation and location may also explain why Psalm 120 appears as the opening poem in the Songs of Ascent. The collection begins with a psalmist’s crying for help while ensconced in a foreign land amid a hostile world. As the reader prays through the Songs of Ascent, the psalms move from the threats experienced in a foreign land to God’s dwelling in Zion (Ps 132:13–14), where one enjoys living in unity with his people (Ps 133:1) and receiving the blessing of Yahweh (Ps 134:3).
LOSS OF PLACE. Although the twenty-first century continues to be marked by a sense of globalization and transnational identity, a number of writers have returned to the concept of “place” and even lamented what seems to be the loss of place.23 For many people, the loss of place is not by choice but by forced migration. The Syrian refugee crisis in recent years serves as but one of many examples. Due to political instability in the region and military threats posed by ISIS, nearly eleven million Syrian refugees were displaced; half of them children. Perhaps like this psalmist, they too lament that they have lived too long in a place that is not their own. And they too have sensed the threats surrounding them.
Other people find themselves in loss of place because of the mobility and movement associated with modern culture. As Craig Bartholomew laments, in our society “every person constantly ‘on the move’ suffers from placelessness in one form or another.”24 While it may seem that such movement leads to the threat of social instability, Edward Casey suggests that our culture does not suffer from anomie (social instability) as much as it does from atopia, placelessness.25 Nearly four decades ago, Walter Brueggemann first raised this concern about the loss of place and its significance for human life. In his classic study on land in the Bible, Brueggemann suggests that a sense of place is a “human hunger.”26 Psalm 120 captures well the notion that place is indeed a human hunger. Some commentators suggest that perhaps the psalmist is speaking metaphorically—he feels so isolated that it is like living in a foreign country. Others suggest that the language in verses 3–4 suggests a social context among a hostile people. Whether the psalmist is physically or socially removed from his society, it is clear that he has no sense of place—the kind of place that makes sense of God, his world, and God’s interaction with the world. As a result, the psalmist can only cry out to God for deliverance (v. 2).
The human hunger for place is not resolved in this poem. Psalm 120 remains open-ended. As one reads the Songs of Ascent, however, one discovers a move from placelessness to a sacred place—to Zion. It is a journey of faith that orients life to the place of life. As we minister among people experiencing atopia from frequently moving every few years due to job demands and other commitments, we would do well to remember that, despite all appearances of “upward mobility,” they too likely suffer from the human hunger for a place that makes sense of God and his world. Psalm 120 invites them—and us—to give words to that human hunger for place (v. 5b), and the Songs of Ascent invite us on a journey toward God.
1. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 296.
2. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 423.
3. A number of interpreters suggest the psalmist announces in verse 1 that he has cried to the Lord and even received an answer related to the current crisis. In the remainder of the poem, however, the psalmist seems to indicate that the situation has not been remedied, thus necessitating the plea for deliverance in the remainder of the psalm. See Allen, Psalms 101–150, 147–48; McCann, “The Book of Psalms,” 1177–78.
4. For similar interpretations see Davidson, The Vitality of Worship, 404–5; Cuthbert C. Keet, A Study of the Psalms of Ascent: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary upon Psalms CXX to CXXXIV (London: Mitre, 1969), 18–19; Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 303–5.
5. For similar structure see Goldingay, Psalms 3, 448.
6. For a brief explanation of fronting in biblical Hebrew see Christo H. J. van der Merwe, Jackie A. Naudé, and Jan H. Kroze, A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar, Biblical Languages: Hebrew 3 (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 344–50.
7. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 305.
8. Göran Eidevall has tracked numerous occurrences in the book of Isaiah in which the prophet associates the use of arrogant and deceitful language with the behavior of empires. See Göran Eidevall, Prophecy and Propaganda: Images of Enemies in the Book of Isaiah, ConBOT 46 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 23–131.
9. While it is possible that the enemy was actually in the audience as the psalmist spoke, it is more likely that this address is meant rhetorically, as when the prophets address the nations (cf. Joel 3:4–8).
10. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 306.
11. Author’s translation. See also 1 Sam 14:44; 20:13; 25:22; 2 Sam 3:9, 35; 19:13; 1 Kgs 2:23; 2 Kgs 6:31.
12. Goldingay, Psalms 3, 450.
13. Keet, A Study of the Psalms of Ascents, 21.
14. For example, see the translation in the NRSV.
15. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 307.
16. Ibid., 309. The Septuagint and Vulgate failed to identify the word “Meshek” and opted instead to render the word based on the same three consonants (mshk), which can mean “to draw out,” “to endure,” “far away”; hence the Septuagint’s translation, “that my place of sojourn was placed far away” (NETS).
17. David C. Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms, JSOTSup 252 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 118. See also Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part 2, and Lamentations, 319.
18. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 309. Michael Goulder rejects a symbolic reading of Meshek and Kedar and instead attempts to connect the activity of Sanballet with Meshek and Geshem with Kedar. Such a move is consistent with his larger project of reading the Psalms of Ascents in light of the fourteen testimonies of Nehemiah, an approach that has yet to win significant support (Goulder, The Return of the Psalms, 37–39).
19. On the construction rabat . . . lah, “more than they can bear,” in verse 6a, see Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 310.
20. Mays, Psalms, 388.
21. Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms.
22. In the Masoretic text the first verb, shamar (“to guard”), does not have the first-person plural suffix (“us”) added to the end of the word. Other Hebrew manuscripts and the Septuagint include the suffix, likely in an attempt to create tighter parallelism in the verse.
23. Craig G. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place Today (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011); John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003); Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory and Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). For a comprehensive investigation of “place” in the Western tradition, see Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
24. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell, 3–4.
25. Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), xi.
26. Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).
IN THE FINAL STROPHE OF THE POEM the psalmist provides further explication concerning the situation that has prompted the lament. While verse 2 suggests that the enemy has “deceitful tongues,” verses 5–7 suggest that the one with a deceitful tongue has a proclivity toward violence, presumably against the psalmist.
Woe to me that I dwell in Meshek. The psalmist compares his present circumstance to living in a foreign land. Both place names can be located on a map and appear to allude to warring people groups. Those from the tribes of Kedar are first mentioned in Genesis 25 and are recognized elsewhere for their skills in battle, especially with the bow (Isa 21:13–17). Geographically, Kedar would have been associated with the tribes in the Arabian Desert to the southeast. Although more difficult to locate, Meshek has generally been associated with a region in the far north, where a warlike people group lived south of the Black Sea.16 Despite the ability to locate these people groups more specifically, the place names are here functioning metaphorically for hostile peoples generally.17 Similar to the move made in Psalm 108, the apparent historical references in Psalm 120 have been loosened from their historical moorings in an effort to heighten the drama of the text. Mention of these locations is what Hossfeld and Zenger refer to as “theological topography.”18 These terms are not meant to provide actual locations of where the psalmist is; rather, they are meant to reinforce the isolation he experienced and his utter reliance on Yahweh for deliverance.
Too long have I lived among those who hate peace. The final two verses encapsulate the struggle of the psalmist. In verse 6a he announces, “Too long have I lived.” The phrase carries with it a note of exasperation in that the psalmist is confessing his circumstance has become more than he can bear.19 He seeks what he does not have, shalom or “peace” (v. 7a). By using shalom he is invoking the full range of meanings associated with the word. James Mays suggests that shalom “in the psalmic vocabulary is the hopefulness and wholeness of life when living is knit into the fabric of relatedness to God and others and world.”20 In the experience of the psalmist, however, such wholeness remains altogether absent. Rather than peace, he is met by those who seek war. Given that the psalm centers on speech, and in particular false speech, the reference to war may have been meant metaphorically (i.e., “a war of words”); yet in using the language of “war,” the lament of his own social location (vv. 5–6) and the response he has received (v. 7) suggest that words have given way to threatening action that further necessitates deliverance by God.
DISORIENTATION. In his volume The Message of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann sought to provide a new paradigm for considering the psalms—a paradigm that broke with the form-critical categories posited in traditional historical-critical studies.21 Modifying the Hegelian dialectic, Brueggemann suggested that there were three types of psalms in the Old Testament: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of new orientation. The first category, psalms of orientation, reflects the community’s claims to certain fundamental truths about God, the world, and God’s ways in the world (e.g., Pss 8, 33, 145). These claims lead to the praise of God. The second category, psalms of disorientation, contains poems that lament the “incoherence” between the faith claims of the psalmist and his experience in the world (e.g., Pss 1, 22, 88). The third category, psalms of new orientation, reflects the psalmist’s experience as he discovers a new understanding of reality after being delivered by God (e.g., Pss 30, 138).
Following Brueggemann’s paradigm, Psalm 120 can be understood as a psalm of disorientation. In many ways this label seems particularly well suited for Psalm 120 and is far more instructive than the more generic label of “lament.” Psalm 120 speaks of the disorienting experiences of the psalmist. Another psalm of disorientation, Psalm 12, reflects concerns similar to Psalm 120 and serves to highlight the intensity of the psalmist’s disorientation in Psalm 120. In Psalm 12 the poet mentions his travails and, as in Psalm 120, makes reference to the “lips” and “tongues” of the wicked (Ps 12:2–3, 8). His situation has devolved into such a state that the psalmist confesses “no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race” (v. 1). Yet at the end of Psalm 12 the psalmist asks for God to protect “us” (v. 7).22 While this poet laments the alleged disappearance of faithful and godly people, he does nevertheless appear to be part of a presumably faithful and godly group (“us”) who are suffering at the hands of the wicked.
Although Psalm 120 shares with Psalm 12 the imagery of “lips” and “tongues,” the poet in Psalm 120 never makes the shift from singular to plural when referring to himself. The psalmist speaks throughout of an “I-they” struggle, never a “we-they” encounter as in Psalm 12. The last three verses of Psalm 120 highlight the isolation, both physical and psychological, experienced by the psalmist. Six times in the last three verses some form of the first-person pronoun appears, yet the repeated references to “I” stand over against the plural references related to the enemy (i.e., the “tents of Kedar,” “those who hate peace,” and those who are for war). The disorientation experienced by the psalmist results from his isolation and his location.
The focus on isolation and location may also explain why Psalm 120 appears as the opening poem in the Songs of Ascent. The collection begins with a psalmist’s crying for help while ensconced in a foreign land amid a hostile world. As the reader prays through the Songs of Ascent, the psalms move from the threats experienced in a foreign land to God’s dwelling in Zion (Ps 132:13–14), where one enjoys living in unity with his people (Ps 133:1) and receiving the blessing of Yahweh (Ps 134:3).
LOSS OF PLACE. Although the twenty-first century continues to be marked by a sense of globalization and transnational identity, a number of writers have returned to the concept of “place” and even lamented what seems to be the loss of place.23 For many people, the loss of place is not by choice but by forced migration. The Syrian refugee crisis in recent years serves as but one of many examples. Due to political instability in the region and military threats posed by ISIS, nearly eleven million Syrian refugees were displaced; half of them children. Perhaps like this psalmist, they too lament that they have lived too long in a place that is not their own. And they too have sensed the threats surrounding them.
Other people find themselves in loss of place because of the mobility and movement associated with modern culture. As Craig Bartholomew laments, in our society “every person constantly ‘on the move’ suffers from placelessness in one form or another.”24 While it may seem that such movement leads to the threat of social instability, Edward Casey suggests that our culture does not suffer from anomie (social instability) as much as it does from atopia, placelessness.25 Nearly four decades ago, Walter Brueggemann first raised this concern about the loss of place and its significance for human life. In his classic study on land in the Bible, Brueggemann suggests that a sense of place is a “human hunger.”26 Psalm 120 captures well the notion that place is indeed a human hunger. Some commentators suggest that perhaps the psalmist is speaking metaphorically—he feels so isolated that it is like living in a foreign country. Others suggest that the language in verses 3–4 suggests a social context among a hostile people. Whether the psalmist is physically or socially removed from his society, it is clear that he has no sense of place—the kind of place that makes sense of God, his world, and God’s interaction with the world. As a result, the psalmist can only cry out to God for deliverance (v. 2).
The human hunger for place is not resolved in this poem. Psalm 120 remains open-ended. As one reads the Songs of Ascent, however, one discovers a move from placelessness to a sacred place—to Zion. It is a journey of faith that orients life to the place of life. As we minister among people experiencing atopia from frequently moving every few years due to job demands and other commitments, we would do well to remember that, despite all appearances of “upward mobility,” they too likely suffer from the human hunger for a place that makes sense of God and his world. Psalm 120 invites them—and us—to give words to that human hunger for place (v. 5b), and the Songs of Ascent invite us on a journey toward God.
1. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 296.
2. Kraus, Psalms 60–150, 423.
3. A number of interpreters suggest the psalmist announces in verse 1 that he has cried to the Lord and even received an answer related to the current crisis. In the remainder of the poem, however, the psalmist seems to indicate that the situation has not been remedied, thus necessitating the plea for deliverance in the remainder of the psalm. See Allen, Psalms 101–150, 147–48; McCann, “The Book of Psalms,” 1177–78.
4. For similar interpretations see Davidson, The Vitality of Worship, 404–5; Cuthbert C. Keet, A Study of the Psalms of Ascent: A Critical and Exegetical Commentary upon Psalms CXX to CXXXIV (London: Mitre, 1969), 18–19; Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 303–5.
5. For similar structure see Goldingay, Psalms 3, 448.
6. For a brief explanation of fronting in biblical Hebrew see Christo H. J. van der Merwe, Jackie A. Naudé, and Jan H. Kroze, A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar, Biblical Languages: Hebrew 3 (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 344–50.
7. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 305.
8. Göran Eidevall has tracked numerous occurrences in the book of Isaiah in which the prophet associates the use of arrogant and deceitful language with the behavior of empires. See Göran Eidevall, Prophecy and Propaganda: Images of Enemies in the Book of Isaiah, ConBOT 46 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 23–131.
9. While it is possible that the enemy was actually in the audience as the psalmist spoke, it is more likely that this address is meant rhetorically, as when the prophets address the nations (cf. Joel 3:4–8).
10. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 306.
11. Author’s translation. See also 1 Sam 14:44; 20:13; 25:22; 2 Sam 3:9, 35; 19:13; 1 Kgs 2:23; 2 Kgs 6:31.
12. Goldingay, Psalms 3, 450.
13. Keet, A Study of the Psalms of Ascents, 21.
14. For example, see the translation in the NRSV.
15. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 307.
16. Ibid., 309. The Septuagint and Vulgate failed to identify the word “Meshek” and opted instead to render the word based on the same three consonants (mshk), which can mean “to draw out,” “to endure,” “far away”; hence the Septuagint’s translation, “that my place of sojourn was placed far away” (NETS).
17. David C. Mitchell, The Message of the Psalter: An Eschatological Programme in the Book of Psalms, JSOTSup 252 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 118. See also Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part 2, and Lamentations, 319.
18. Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 309. Michael Goulder rejects a symbolic reading of Meshek and Kedar and instead attempts to connect the activity of Sanballet with Meshek and Geshem with Kedar. Such a move is consistent with his larger project of reading the Psalms of Ascents in light of the fourteen testimonies of Nehemiah, an approach that has yet to win significant support (Goulder, The Return of the Psalms, 37–39).
19. On the construction rabat . . . lah, “more than they can bear,” in verse 6a, see Hossfeld and Zenger, Psalms 3, 310.
20. Mays, Psalms, 388.
21. Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms.
22. In the Masoretic text the first verb, shamar (“to guard”), does not have the first-person plural suffix (“us”) added to the end of the word. Other Hebrew manuscripts and the Septuagint include the suffix, likely in an attempt to create tighter parallelism in the verse.
23. Craig G. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place Today (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011); John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003); Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory and Identity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). For a comprehensive investigation of “place” in the Western tradition, see Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
24. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell, 3–4.
25. Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), xi.
26. Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).