The YouVersion verse of the day is Psalm 121:2.

“My help comes from the LORD,

                        who made heaven and earth.”

I love this verse, so I decided to read it in context. Many verses in the Bible can sing solos, but the melodies are even richer when you hear them as part of a choir of verses. The entire psalm in which this verse occurs is short, so I thought I would read the whole thing.

“Psa. 121:0     A Song of Ascents.

Psa. 121:1       I lift up my eyes to the hills.

                        From where does my help come?

²           My help comes from the LORD,

                        who made heaven and earth.

Psa. 121:3       He will not let your foot be moved;

                        he who keeps you will not slumber.

⁴           Behold, he who keeps Israel

                        will neither slumber nor sleep.

Psa. 121:5       The LORD is your keeper;

                        the LORD is your shade on your right hand.

⁶           The sun shall not strike you by day,

                        nor the moon by night.

Psa. 121:7       The LORD will keep you from all evil;

                        he will keep your life.

⁸           The LORD will keep

                        your going out and your coming in

                        from this time forth and forevermore.”

In the Bible, Psalms 120-134 are classified as “Songs of Ascent”. Scholars aren’t sure exactly what that means. I think that the most likely theory is that these psalms were used when people were on pilgrimage (going up) to Jerusalem.

I was especially struck by Derek Kidner’s comments on this psalm in the Tyndale Commentary Series.

“1. The hills are enigmatic: does the opening line show an impulse to take refuge in them, like the urge that came to David in Psalm 11:1, to ‘flee like a bird to the mountains’? Or are the hills themselves a menace, the haunt of robbers?

2. Either way, he knows something better. The thought of this verse leaps beyond the hills to the universe; beyond the universe to its Maker. Here is living help: primary, personal, wise, immeasurable.

3, 4. The rest of the psalm leads into an ever expanding circle of promise, all in terms of ‘he’ and ‘you’ (the ‘you’ is singular). Another voice seems to answer the first speaker at this point in the pilgrims’ singing, and yet another in verse 4; or else the whole song is an individual utterance, and the dialogue internal, as in, e.g., Psalm 42:5.

            In verse 3 the word for not is the one used normally for requests and commands. So this verse should be taken, not as a statement which verse 4 will virtually repeat, but as a wish or prayer (cf. TEV⁶⁰), to be answered by the ringing confidence of 4 and of all that follows. I.e. ‘May he not let your foot be moved, may he … not slumber!’ – followed by the answer, ‘Look, he who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.’

[Vol 16: Psa, p. 468]

5, 6. Now Israel’s privilege is made sure to the single Israelite: a protection as individual as he himself. It starts where he is now, out on his journey, looking at the hills. The Lord is closer than they (5c), and his protection as refreshing as it is complete. It avails against the known and the unknown; perils of day and night; the most overpowering of forces and the most insidious.⁶¹

7, 8. The promise moves on from the pilgrim’s immediate preoccupations to cover the whole of existence. In the light of other scriptures, to be kept from all evil does not imply a cushioned life, but a well-armed one. Cf. Psalm 23:4, which expects the dark valley but can face it. The two halves of verse 7 can be compared with Luke 21:18f., where God’s minutest care (‘not a hair of your head will perish’) and his servants’ deepest fulfilment (‘you will win true life’, NEB) are promised in the same breath as the prospect of hounding and martyrdom (Luke 21:16f.). Your life, in the present passage (7), is as many-sided a word as in Luke; it means the whole living person. Our Lord enriched the concept of keeping or losing this by his teaching on self-giving and self-love (e.g. John 12:24f.).

            The psalm ends with a pledge which could hardly be stronger or more sweeping. Your going out and your coming in is not only a way of saying ‘everything’ (cf. the footnote to verse 6): in closer detail it draws attention to one’s ventures and enterprises (cf. Ps. 126:6), and to the home which remains one’s base; again, to pilgrimage and return; perhaps even (by another association of this pair of verbs) to the dawn and sunset of one’s days. But the last line takes good care of this journey; and it would be hard to decide which half of it is the more encouraging: the fact that it starts ‘from now’, or that it runs on, not to the end of time but without end; like God himself who is (cf. Ps. 73:26) ‘my portion for ever’.”

[Vol 16: Psa, p. 469]

I was especially struck by Kidner’s comments on the verse of the day, “The thought of this verse leaps beyond the hills to the universe; beyond the universe to its Maker. Here is living help: primary, personal, wise, immeasurable.”

Leaping from the hills to the universe to the maker of the universe—yes! Unfortunately, I get stuck on the hills.

What are my hills? Daily circumstances, daily problems, daily tasks. Then there is getting older and the aches and pains that go with that process. Past regrets and future fears may be hills that seem like mountains. Yes, I know: I tend to make mountains out of molehills. They still look and feel like mountains to me.

What are your hills? More importantly, do you let your mind make the leap to the Maker of the universe? Perhaps we have such (seemingly) big problems because we have such a small view of God.