He Is My PROTECTION

Welcome to this first Sunday of Lent in which we begin working our way through the Psalms of Ascent. Those are the Psalms numbering 120 to 134; they are the Psalms that the Old Testament Israelites would have likely used as prayers to sing while making one of the three annual pilgrimage journeys up Mount Zion to Jerusalem.

There are not enough Sundays in Lent for me to present a message on all of these Psalms. Hopefully you have been able to grab one of our reading calendars for Lent which maps out a way to read all of these Psalms over the next forty days. But for Sunday messages I will have to pick and choose certain passages to highlight. Today we are going to be taking a closer look at Psalm 121.

psalms of ascent reading for Lent | looking at one today

Here is how this is going to go today; let me give you a little bit of a roadmap for what is coming in the next 20 minutes. If you have an outline, you will notice that the only thing there is a printout of the passage with a few highlights. I am going to begin these messages on the Psalms by doing a bit of a workshop on the passage itself. we are going to take a close look at how the Psalm is written and the kind of Hebrew poetic techniques which are used. This will help us pull out the original meaning of the Psalm. From there we can see more plainly the timeless truth of God’s word which carries forward from this 2500-year-old poem and still applies to our world and our lives today.

Psalm 121 NIV

A song of ascents. 1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? 2 My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. 3 He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber; 4 indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The Lord watches over you— the Lord is your shade at your right hand; 6 the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The Lord will keep you from all harm— he will watch over your life; 8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

Structure

introduction has first person pronouns, verses 3-8 have second person pronouns

The first thing you are going to note is that I have divided the Psalm into four sections, each containing two verses. But I placed a line to divide the first two verses from the rest of the Psalm. This is because verses one and two are an introduction, and verses three through eight stand alone as a separate unit. We see this in two ways. First of all, the voice shifts. Verses one and two are first person pronouns—I and my. Verses three through eight use second person pronouns—you and your. Secondly, the main action of verses one and two is a search for help. The main action of verses three though eight is the watching protection Yahweh.

staircase technique - end of one line repeated at start of next line

verses 3-4 and 7-8 mirror each other, middle section is different (verses 5-6)

You will also see that I put a box around verses five and six. This is the center section of the poem which directs us to the main point; all the rest of the Psalm funnels to these verses. Let me show you how this works. There is a staircase literary technique going on in three out of the four sections of this psalm. The staircase technique goes like this; the action that ends one line is immediately repeated as the same action which begins the next line. Verse one ends with reference to my help. And then verse two begins with the same line—my help. Verses three and four repeat the same technique using the line he who watches over. And the last section does it again in verses seven and eight with the same line will watch over. Verses five and six do NOT use this staircase technique; something else is happening there which sets it apart, and is the reason why I marked it in a box. We’ll get to that.

Question of Help

mountain are unclear reference - point attention to God, or distraction away from God?

Back to the introduction. Let’s talk about the significance of mountains. In this psalm it is not entirely clear. One the one hand, it is a Psalm of Ascent; which means the people would be climbing the road to Jerusalem and see the temple of the LORD at the highest point in the city as they approached. When they looked up and saw the city, they would see God’s temple upon it. Other scholars have noted that the surrounding hills and high points along the journey to Jerusalem would have been marked with pagan alters to the other gods of the Mesopotamian people in that region. The introduction of the psalm would be a reminder to the people—my help does not come from those other gods, Baal and Ashura. My help comes from the LORD, the one who made those mountains in the first place. Depending on the point along the pilgrim journey, the view up the mountain would have been different. Either way, the reminder of the question was needed—where does my help come from?

my help comes from God: sometimes an affirmation, sometimes a reminder, sometimes a confession

You see, the question is real. Where do I get help? Where am I looking? Sometimes in need I look up and see that God is there to protect and to guide. Sometimes in need I look up and there before me in this world is a variety of other options for help apart from God, pulling away from God, clouding my view of God. Sometimes the question is an affirmation: where does my help come from? YES! I look up and I see that it is the LORD who provides and protects. Sometimes the question is a reminder: where does my help come from? Oh yeah, that’s right, it is the LORD. And sometimes the question is a confession of repentance: where does my help come from? I admit, I have been looking elsewhere and need to return to the LORD. The ambiguity of the mountain in this introduction fits the ambiguity of our lives as we journey up and down the pilgrim way from here to eternity. But the question is always the same, and the answer always brings us back to God.

Three Part Answer

verses 3-8 have A-B-A structure, 2 negative verses followed by 1 positive; then 1 negative verse followed by 2 positives

The three sections of Psalm 121 in verses three to Eight make up the answer to what this help from the LORD looks like. I divided these as section A, section B, and then a repeat of section A. This makes verses three to four and verses seven to eight a frame for what is in the middle—verses five to six. Look at the construction. Verses three and four have negative statements—what will not happen to you, and what the LORD will not do. Followed by verse five which makes a positive statement—the LORD is your shade. Verse six turns around and makes a negative statement—the sun and moon will not harm. Followed by verses seven and eight making positive statements. Two negatives resulting in one positive, and then one negative resulting in two positives.

shade is metaphor for protection - God does not only GIVE protection, God himself IS protection

This structure sets verses five and six as the central turning point of the whole psalm. This is the answer to what the LORD’s help looks like. He is shade. Maybe that is not helpful; this poetic line needs a little more explanation. Shade is a metaphor for protection. The image here is more than God simply providing protection or giving protection. God himself IS protection. He does not simply give you a shield, he himself IS the shield.

sun and moon - mythical pagan gods that cause harm, very real physical threat, symbolic of totality of all creation

God’s protection (or shade) produces two results. The sun will not harm you, and the moon will not harm you. This sun-and-moon-thing also needs a little more explanation. On the first level, the sun and moon were symbolic of other harmful or hurtful forces. Pagan religions had a sun god and a moon god who were not to be trusted. The moon god in particular was feared. We still have words and phrases in English which make reference to the harmful nature of the moon. When we say someone is moonstruck, it means they’ve lost their mind. We mean the same thing by the term lunatic, a reference to the moon (lunar) used to describe someone who is insane and detached from reality.

Beyond the mythical symbols of the sun and moon, the sun also presented a very real physical threat, especially in the climate of making a long pilgrim journey in Palestine. There was no such thing as sunscreen back then. It wasn’t like the always overcast sunless winter we know here in Michigan. Sunburn and heatstroke were very real occurrences on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The reference here is not just mythical, it is also physical.

There is a third level at play in this verse as well. The mention of both sun and moon together as a pair is symbolic of a totality. It is the author’s way of saying that NOTHING will harm you. God’s protection has no boundary. There is no limit to how far his loving arm will stretch to keep hold of you. There is no place too far away from the secure grasp of his care.

physical connection to God’s protection seen in every section: eyes, foot, hand, life (negesh lit. throat)

We might be quick to relegate this protective care of God to an eternal afterlife application. It is certainly implied by the conclusion of the psalm. He guards your coming and going both now and forevermore. This again speaks to the far reach of his eternal protection of his people. It is comfort and assurance for God’s people against an uncertain future. But do not dismiss the totality of God’s protection to only project upon the afterlife. The psalmist is very clear that this protection from God is also very much real right here and now in this physical world. Look at the way the psalm pulls this in. Every section has reference to part of the physical body in some way. Verse one: eyes. Verse three: foot. Verse five: hand. Verse seven: this will need a little explanation. “He will watch over your life.” The Hebrew word for life is negesh. It literally means throat. In Jewish culture the negesh is a person’s life, soul, breath. When God gave the soul of human life to Adam and Eve in Genesis one, he breathed it into them. This is physically represented in Hebrew culture as someone’s throat.

The protection of the LORD is not confined only to some future afterlife. The psalmist is declaring that God’s watchful care is present even now along this pilgrim journey of life closer to the presence of the Almighty.

Protection

shamar = watch over, attentively guard, adamantly protect

Protection within God’s loving embrace is the point this psalmist is illustrating in this poem. It is the answer given to question of help which is repeated in every section following the introduction. It is the Hebrew word shamar. The NIV Bible translates it as watch over. It also carries the idea to attentively guard, to keep a close eye, to adamantly protect at all costs. This is a protection that is unrelenting and unwavering.

then why does harm seem to happen?

I think the question has to be asked here. How does that work? He does not let your foot slip. I have to be honest; my foot has slipped before. I’ve had a wipeout or two. I have been hurt in this world and in this life. “The LORD will keep you from all harm” says verse seven. Really? All harm? I’ve fallen into some harm before. As much as I’d love to believe every word of this, it doesn’t seem to quite match up with real life. What do we make of it then?

verse 6 - nacah: harm is too soft, carries nuance of total and complete takeover, overwhelmed, overrun; KJV smite

I am not going to take time to explain all the different forms that verbs can take in the Hebrew language; I’ll just cut to the chase. Every verb in this entire psalm is expressed in the exact same form, except for one. One verb stands apart from all the rest. And by no surprise it stands right at the turning point of the psalm in verse six. Harm. It comes from the Hebrew word nacah. Harm is actually a pretty mild English translation of this word. It means more than harm. It carries the idea of a total and complete takeover. The old King James version Bible translates nacah as “smite.” When God smites someone in the Bible they are totally and completely destroyed. To be smitten with love means you are totally and completely taken over by affection for someone else. Nacah is to be completely and totally overwhelmed.

promise of God in Psalm 121 - I will protect you from nacah

God tells his people in Psalm 121, I will protect you from nacah. It is certainly true that you and I live in a broken world into which we were born carrying a sinful nature. We live in the consequences of our sin. And we live in the path of consequences left as a result of others’ sins. It is absolutely true that there is harm that will fall upon us in this world during this life. There will be trials. There will be loses. There will be hurt.

But it will not overtake you. You will not be overwhelmed. You will not ever be totally and completely swept over. That is the promise of Psalm 121. The LORD is my protection. The watchful protection of God never takes a break. It never goes away. And his protection extends to every part of my life. It extends to every corner of the creation. It is there for all eternity from everlasting to everlasting.

the cross of Jesus brings God’s protection to his people

Those Israelites of the Old Testament traveled on the pilgrim to Jerusalem. They looked up and saw the temple of the LORD on Mount Zion. It was a reminder to them of God’s protective care. We in the church today look upon the cross of Jesus and are reminded of the same thing. Jesus has come to us and through the cross has joined us together with him on this pilgrim journey. Every step of this life, he is right there beside us. And by the power of the cross he reminds us again, you will always and forever be kept in the loving and gracious arms of Jesus.