These are the first two of the fifteen Songs of Ascents, sung by pilgrims climbing toward Jerusalem for the feasts. Psalm 120 comes from someone who has not left yet. He is still living where he cannot stand to live. He sojourns in Meshech and dwells among the tents of Kedar, two peoples about as far apart on the map as the ancient world allowed, one in the far north and one among the Arabian tribes to the south. Put together, the names mean he is surrounded, and it does not matter which way he turns. The psalm opens with what he does with all of it: 1"In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me." His complaint is specific: 2"lying lips" and "a deceitful tongue." 6"Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace."
Then comes the line the English cannot quite carry. 7"I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war!" In Hebrew the first half is two words, ani shalom, which reads "I am peace." A preference for peace can be dropped the moment an argument turns ugly. An identity cannot be dropped, because it is what a person is when someone else picks a fight. That is a much higher standard than the conflict-avoidance most of us pass off as peacemaking, and it is a much better one.
Psalm 121 answers the lament, and the voice changes. The opening lines are first person, "I lift up my eyes to the hills." Then the psalm turns to second person, "he who keeps you," as if a priest or a fellow traveler is speaking back to the pilgrim as the road begins. The hills were where many of his neighbors believed the gods lived. So he asks the honest question, 1"From where does my help come?" and answers by looking past the mountains to the one who made them: 2"My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth."
The whole psalm hangs on one Hebrew root, shamar, "to keep" or "to guard," used six times in eight verses, as if the psalm wants no doubt about who is doing the work. 4"He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." Elijah once mocked the prophets of Baal with the opposite claim, that their god might be "asleep and must be awakened" (1 Kings 18:27). Baal could be absent. The keeper of Israel cannot, and he never needs relief from the watch. The promise reaches from one road to a whole life: 8"your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore."
Name your own Meshech and Kedar today. Ask who is working against peace, and then ask how much of the trouble comes from inside you. Then be peace in the exact moment someone wants war, and let the one who never sleeps be the reason you can.
Prayer
Father, in our distress we call to you, and we thank you that you answer. Where we have kept peace as a preference, teach us to be peace itself when someone else wants war. Thank you that our help comes from the one who made heaven and earth. You will not let our feet be moved, and you who keep us will not slumber. In the name of Jesus, amen.