The National Prayer
The Word that awakened joy now awakens grief. In chapter eight, the people stood at the Water Gate to understand Scripture; in chapter nine, understanding turns into confession. The feast ends, the booths come down, and Israel gathers again—this time clothed in sackcloth, dust in their hair, hearts exposed. The walls are rebuilt, the city repopulated, the Law understood; now the people must face their history. The threat is no longer ignorance but inheritance: generations of rebellion rising before them. And Yahweh meets them with mercy as they name the truth.
The People Confess and Worship (1-4)
After the seven days of dwelling in booths and the time of fasting, sin-confession commenced. The Jews wore coarse, uncomfortable clothing and poured dirt on their hair. They confessed their sins, as well as the sins inherited from those before them (1-2). For a fourth of the day, they had the Law read to them, and then for a fourth of the day, they confessed their sins and worshiped Yahweh (3). Eight Levites cried out the confession-of-sin prayers, and eight Levites led the congregation in reading the prayer of worship and praise (4-5). The prayer recorded in verses five to 38 is one of the longest prayers in Scripture. No doubt it was written by Ezra because it reflects what had been read over the previous three weeks.
The Prayer Acknowledging Who God Was (5-15)
The prayer acknowledges:
The glorious exaltation of Yahweh over all (5)
The creative power of Yahweh (6)
The covenant love of Yahweh to Abraham (7-8)
The miraculous and powerful deliverance of Yahweh from Egypt
The miraculous and powerful guiding of Israel through the wilderness
The covenant love of Yahweh to the nation of Israel
The giving to Israel the Land of Promise (9-15)
The Prayer Acknowledging Who Israel Had Been (16-31)
After the prayer acknowledged who Yahweh was, the prayer turned and began to acknowledge who Israel had been:
They had been presumptuous, stubborn, and disobedient, ready to reject Yahweh and appoint another leader when in the wilderness under Moses (16-17).
They had been idolatrous, building a golden calf in the face of God’s forgiveness, graciousness, forgiveness, and steadfast love (18).
They had cast God’s Law aside, killed God’s prophets, and mocked sacred things (26), after God had:
led them by a pillar of fire and cloud through the wilderness (19)
given them His Spirit and provided manna and water (20)
sustained them for 40 years by not allowing their clothes to wear out or their feet to swell (21)
enabled them to defeat enemy kingdoms, who were resisting their entering the land (22)
multiplied their descendants and fulfilled His promise to give them the land (23)
given them the land by subduing the inhabitants of the land before they even entered it, so the inhabitants could be defeated easily (24)
caused them to capture cities and inherit lands already settled, built, and planted, then prospered incredibly (25)
Because they had cast God’s Law aside, killed God’s prophets, and mocked sacred things (26), they acknowledged Yahweh had given them suffering defeat to their enemies, which caused them to cry out for God’s mercy, leading Yahweh to send saviors and deliverers, who restored peace and rest to them (27).
After a time of prosperity, they did evil again and were abandoned to their enemies, who dominated them. Every time they turned to Yahweh, He faithfully delivered them (28).
He warned them to turn back to following His Word. Yet again, they would become presumptuous and stubbornly disobey Him and embrace sin, living by its standard, opposing God’s Word and will (29).
They repeated this cycle many times and for many years until the nation was destroyed and taken into captivity (30), yet God’s graciousness and mercy would not allow Him to forsake them (31).
The Prayer Appealing for Grace (32-37)
Finally, the prayer turned to an appeal for Yahweh’s grace and mercy by:
summarizing God’s greatness, awesomeness, and covenant love
appealing to God not to allow all the suffering to be insignificant in His eyes, even while acknowledging He had been good and just in all He had done, and Israel had deserved everything they had received (32-33)
asking God to see their enslavement, domination, heavy taxation, and distress in the place of peace, rest, and prosperity (34-37)
The Prayer of Commitment (38)
The final act of prayer was to make a firm covenant, in a sealed document, signed by the leaders of the people (38).
Christ Is Seen
Jesus would have heard the prayer’s sweep—creation, covenant, exodus, wilderness, conquest, exile and it becomes the backdrop for His own mission. Christ is the One who steps into Israel’s cycle of sin and deliverance and ends it by bearing the judgment Himself. As Israel recounts centuries of mercy, Jesus sees His own work: the final Deliverer who answers their confession with a covenant sealed in His blood.
Psalms 120-134 are all “Pilgrimage Songs” and were written to be sung by the Jews on their way up to Jerusalem for the three feasts held there each year [the feasts: Passover, Pentecost, Booths]. Ten of the Psalms are anonymous, four are attributed to David (122, 124,131,133), and one to Solomon (127)].
I have written these chapter devotionals as Jesus would have sung them and heard them as He was going to Jerusalem to celebrate feasts as a Boy, as a Man, and then ultimately in His final ascent to Jerusalem as the Passover culminated at Calvary. I will especially let these Psalms flow from Jesus’ own lips as we imagine a bit of what might have been going through His mind as He walked His disciples to that city 3,800 feet above sea level—the city in these Psalms referred to as Jerusalem and Zion.
Some imagine these Psalms were written for Solomon's Temple, each Psalm written for the fifteen steps leading up to the inner court—one Psalm at a time sung by the Levitical choirs accompanied by musicians as the priest made his way up each step.
Others imagine the Psalms were written for the exiles returning from Babylon to Jerusalem. Still others place them at 445 B.C. during Nehemiah's time, after the walls were built, when the Jews ascended to the temple for the Feast of Tabernacles.
Whenever these Psalms were written, they became songs sung by Pilgrims moving toward Jerusalem for one of the three feasts of Israel.
Psalm 120
The Psalm of the Suffering Pilgrim
The Psalmist's Prayer (1-2)
If this Psalm was written in Nehemiah's day, as it may have been, then the Psalmist would have been saying something like this: “In the distress of the city of Jerusalem in shambles, I called to Yahweh, and He answered.” Nehemiah recognized that when he had asked Yahweh to send him to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, Yahweh had listened and granted him full authority to rebuild (1).
Nehemiah called out to Yahweh in distress again, after his return to Jerusalem, when adversaries were lying and opposing the rebuilding work. Those of the opposition were denying Israel's very identity and relationship to Yahweh. Further, they were reducing Israel's mission to an act of insurrection and minimizing it to a dream they could never finish because they were a feeble flock of “has-beens” and “wannabes.” One of the primary adversaries, Sanballat, and his hoard of liars, afflicted Israel constantly with their cursed exaggerations. The menacing threats and lies made their way into the minds of some of the Jews returned-from-exile. Eventually, these lies formed on the lips of these Jews, who uttered them and expressed doubt in God.
So it goes with those who become squatters and forget they are pilgrims—the deceptions of the world begin to take hold in their minds as truth and then form lies on their lips, too.
The Psalmist does not define the exact person or people with lips that lied. Both “lips” and “tongue” are singular in Hebrew. The Psalmist could well be saying, “Deliver me, Yahweh, from my lips, from the lie on my tongue that deceives me.”
The mission of those who make a home in this world is clear: they seek to get by, find meaning and fulfillment, discover identity, please the body, discover love, and be known. The mission of the pilgrim searches to find home in worship—the unleashed, without-limits worship of Yahweh.
The person who has made a home in this world says, “If only this …,” “Wait until the next breakthrough …,” “If I just get a pay raise …,” or, “If only I had that happen.”
The pilgrim discovers, “It's all a lie, for the world told me how to find my identity without telling me about my origin—Creation and my Father. The world told me how to please my body without telling me my body was a dwelling of the Holy Spirit. The world left so much out, and I listened and spoke lies myself. I became a squatter, but I want to return to being a pilgrim.”
This is at the heart of the Psalms of Ascent: one step at a time, contemplating how one moves from being a squatter to being a pilgrim.
Jesus sings this song for us. On His last trip to Jerusalem, when He became the Passover Lamb, He sang this Psalm with His disciples, mouthing the words, “Deliver Me from lying lips and deceitful tongues.” Jesus, in and with His disciples, may have been singing this prayer, meaning something like this, “Keep us, Your pilgrims, as we enter My hour. In the distress of this moment, Father, let My (our) home in worship be My (our) mission and My (our) heart. Don't let the stain of any lie corrupt the hearts of those who pilgrim with Me.”
The Psalmist's Remedy (3-4)
The Psalmist then asks what should be done as a remedy to a lying tongue (3).
The reply of the Psalmist comes with the keen edge of death: “Let the lying tongue be shot and killed with the warrior's arrow and then let it burn in the coals of a broom tree.” This is a metaphoric way of saying, “Let the lying tongue renounce the lies of the squatter, the lies of those who make their home in this world. Oh, tongue, renounce this world as home and make a home in Yahweh and the worship of Yahweh.”
Jesus renounced loving His own safety, His own bodily comfort, for the rich pilgrimage of worship and being home in Yahweh (4).
The Psalmist's Inner-Conflict (5-7)
“Woe to me,” says the Psalmist, “if I make my home distant from God (Meshech/Russia) or make my home in the wandering lust of whatever I want (Kedar/wandering Bedouin Tribes)” (5).
The Psalmist knew those who lived distant (Meshech) from Yahweh and those who lived meandering for their own desire (Kedar) would have no peace (6).
“For when I live among them and long for peace, and seek to speak for peace with my tongue,” the Psalmist says, “it creates conflict. When I have made my home in this world and seek for the peace of this world, I end up creating strife” (7).
Jesus, the Psalmist Singer, when singing this Psalm, was crying out that He had no desire to be distant from God nor roam after His own desire; He had dwelt too long with power-grabbers who hated peace. He was going to Jerusalem and would speak peace, and His kind of peace—heavenly peace—would incite in those peace-haters a war against God Himself.