Devotional Short Note to Psalm 122: Do not even think of making this Psalm non-Davidic or post-exilic as so many commentaries want to do. There was no strong king after the exile and there could not have been thrones for judgment set up at that time. It is not necessarily after Solomon built the temple since also the tabernacle and other places of worship for the Lord was called “house of the Lord”. Grammatically the linguists are whining that it must be late-Phoenician due to the relative pronoun /š/ added to the nouns in 122:3b and 122:4a. Hebrew normally used three letters for the relative pronoun, but Phoenicians used one. Aramaic preferred a /d/. Phoenician texts known to us all post-date 900 BCE. Thus, scholars want to cancel David for 970 BCE when David died, which they consider as too remote for the Phoenicianism to have slipped in by the hand of David. David in one place used the short form for the name of the Lord, namely just Yah instead of Yahweh (122:4b). What about the relative pronoun /š/ late appearance? Answer: In Old Babylonian of 1980 BCE and further, it was ša. OK. What is the difference between Hebrew /š-/ and Old Babylonian /ša/? Answer: Nothing. In Amorite it was /šu/ dating most Mari-period 1750 BCE. (For pastors: Consult the book by Sabatino Moscati, An introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, 1969, page 113-114). Just that you know it is not thumb-sucking stuff. So what is the conclusion: we do not know for sure if the loan is from Phoenician since it appeared also in Old Babylonian and in Amorite that were earlier than David in 1050-970 BCE. Thus, linguistic dating of the relative pronoun is just a guess that it is Phoenician but evidence is ambiguous. Sorry. David still wrote Psalm 122. For reasons why David wrote the Psalm read also the commentary of Hengstenberg. What makes one commentary liberal and another conservative is what? The political party they belong to? The Bible as navigational rule in life. Either culture and environment dictates the rules or the Bible overrides culture and environment rules. The populist wide way and the narrow way. Hengstenberg is a lover of the narrow way. So are we. Atheists, secularists and liberals are calling those ‘conservative’, ‘fundamentalists’ because they cling to the fundamental words of the Bible or ‘biblicists’, because they always want to answer confrontation with “it is written”.

It sounds like David the soldier was asked by the troops to go to house of the Lord. He was outside for whatever purpose. But, he said he was very glad: “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘let us go unto the house of the Lord’” (122:1). This is not Jerusalem Romanticists. Not the cult of Jerusalem worshipping. It is not that the city is a god to be worshipped with awe and holy respect. The soldiers did not ask to go to Jerusalem for the city’s sake. They went up to see the Lord. They need worship and sorting things out with the Lord. Soul matters to be fixed. To be set straight. So they want to go to the “house of the Lord”. That happen to be in Jerusalem.

Arriving at the gates, David spoke formally and his diary keeper wrote frantically every detail down, word for word: “Standing is our feet in your gates Jerusalem” (122:2). Just before anyone clinched in their minds that it is a clear case of city-worship or Jerusalem-fetishism, stop the bus. Go down to 122:4c “to give thanks unto the name of the Lord”. Not to the city. Not to its people. Not to himself. To the Lord. Thus, the awe of being close to where they are able to have worship is more important than the stones and wood with which the entryway is built.

He describes Jerusalem as “like a city that [Old Babylonian or Phoenician relative pronoun used] is companioning to her together” (122:3). Someone said he wanted to express that it is “compact”. “That [relative pronoun] there went up the tribes, the tribes of Yah = the Lord, a testimony to Israel” (122:4). Spiritual Israel not ethnic Israel. When one give thanks to the Lord unto His name as Creator then one is giving a testimony and this witness is edifying the whole spiritual Israel.

It is possible that 122:2 as standing in the gates of Jerusalem is the location referred to in 122:6 that the king’s thrones were set up in the gates to give judgment (122:5).

David then requested praying for peaceful conditions for the people in Jerusalem: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (122:6). Peace has nothing to do with structures but has all to do with people and relationships. Spiritual Israel needs peace in all their relationships for effective tasking.

“May they prosper that loves You” [the Lord, not the city] (122:6b). Many commentaries interpreted this part as the blessing to the pilgrim who loves Jerusalem. God does not operate with superstitions. The witch of Endor with Saul is an example. There is a great no-no to such language and games. You do not embrace and kiss walls of Jerusalem because you want to be blessed. It is those who love the Lord that will prosper. Nothing short of it.

The peace is not on the walls or the palaces itself, it says: “May there be peace in your walls” (122:7a). May the people that are operating, living and filling the space of the structure experience peace. Not the structure or buildings of Jerusalem. There are people who really kiss structures in the Old City of Jerusalem until today because they think it has magical, mystic or other powers flowing from it to the worshipper. Judaism went through additions of mysticism in their development and thus many practices in and around Jerusalem is filled with an outside appearance of holiness but is actually essentially mystical influences borrowed from Islam, Christianity mixed with Stoicism, neo-Platonism, Gnosticism and other early movements. Even in our day the Franciscan book of Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell. The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation. It is a hodge-podge of mixing Hinduism, Stoicism, Christianity and what we know about the Trinity and the theory of kenosis (self-emptying of Christ). The main idea is that the Trinity empties itself to flow in one another and so also the Godhead empty to each person in order to flow into the person as a life-giving energy. Those who supports the book are the new age adherents and atheist ‘Christians’ and new movements to bring in “meditation”, “contemplation” and other transformational experiences into worship. Ellen White said that in the last days Spiritism will make inroads in Christianity trying to pull them away from the truths of the Bible.

David then says: “For the sake of my brothers and friends I will say however, ‘Peace in You” (122:8). Again the peace is within the walls and not the walls or structure as some would make it, misplacing the text boundaries with enlargements of inclusiveness.

Why is David seeking peace, seeking good, “I will seek your good” (122:9b). It is because the house of the Lord is important “for the sake of the house of the Lord our God” (122:9a). This is the overriding Leitmotif of the psalm.