Psalm 120

Psalms 120-134 are all "songs of ascent."They received this title because the pilgrim Israelites sang them as they travelled from their homes all over the land and ascended Mt. Zion for the annual feasts. David composed at least four of these 15 psalms (Pss. 122, 124, 131, and 133). Solomon wrote one (Ps. 127), and the remaining 10 are anonymous.

In Psalm 120 an unknown composer asked God for protection from people who wanted to stir up war.

 1. God's deliverance from liars 120:1-2

The psalmist testified that he had prayed to God for deliverance from liars and that God had granted his request.

 2. God's destruction of liars 120:3-4

The writer asked the liar what would befall him and then answered his own question. God would destroy him as a warrior who shot arrows at an enemy or as a fire devoured a dry broom tree.

 3. God's dalliance with liars 120:5-7

The poet bewailed the fact that he had to continue living with people such as liars who continually stir up strife (vv. 5-6). Meshech was a barbarous nation far to the north of Israel (cf. Ezek. 39:1-2). Kedar in northern Arabia was the home of the nomadic Ishmaelites who periodically harassed God's people (Gen. 25:13). These people represented the kinds of individuals that surrounded the writer, namely heathen liars. They seemed to be after war all the time, but he wanted to live in peace.

"If the I' of the psalm is Israel personified, these two names will summarize the Gentile world, far and near, in which Israel is dispersed. Otherwise, unless the text is emended, they must be taken as the psalmist's figurative names for the alien company he is in: as foreign as the remotest peoples, and as implacable as his Arab kinsmen (cf. Gn. 16:12; 25:13)."¹⁹⁹

The continual antagonism of people who stir up trouble by telling lies and in other ways leads the godly to pray for God to deal with them. God's will is for people to live peacefully with one another.