Context & Key Themes
Psalm 120 opens the Songs of Ascent — fifteen psalms (120 through 134) that pilgrims sang as they made their way up to Jerusalem for the three great annual festivals. These were road songs, carried by ordinary men and women walking toward the place where God dwelled among his people. Psalm 120 does not begin the journey in triumph. It begins in distress, far from home, surrounded by people who love lies and hate peace. This is the starting point of the pilgrimage: not comfort, but need.
Key Verse
“I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.”
— Psalm 120:7
Summary
The psalmist calls to the Lord from distress and is answered. He asks for deliverance from lying lips and a deceitful tongue, invoking God’s judgment against the slanderer. He finds himself dwelling among the tents of Kedar — a distant land, a people hostile to God’s ways — and describes the ache of it: too long have I lived among those who hate peace. He extends the hand of peace; they respond with war. The psalm is short and raw, and it captures something real: the loneliness of living at odds with the world around you, surrounded by voices that treat truth as a weapon. The pilgrim journey begins here, in exactly this kind of place.
Reflection
Psalm 120 is the right place to start a pilgrimage. The pilgrim does not begin from a place of spiritual ease and serene contentment. He begins from Meshech and Kedar — far from the holy city, surrounded by hostility, wearied by lies. The journey toward God starts not when life is comfortable but when you can no longer stand remaining where you are. That longing — the ache of being for peace in a world that is for war — is what turns a person toward Jerusalem. It is not strength that begins the pilgrimage. It is need.