1 I will lift mine eyes to the hills;
Whence cometh my help?
2 My help [comes] from Jehovah,
The Maker of heaven and earth.
3 May He not suffer thy feet to totter,
May thy Keeper not slumber!
4 Behold, thy Keeper slumbers not;
Behold, He slumbers not nor sleeps
[Who is] the Keeper of Israel.
5 Jehovah is thy Keeper,
Jehovah is thy shade on thy right hand.
6 By day the sun shall not smite thee,
Nor the moon by night.
7 Jehovah shall keep thee from all evil,
He shall keep thy soul.
8 Jehovah shall keep thy going out and thy coming in,
From now, even for evermore.
How many timid, anxious hearts has this sweet outpouring of quiet
trust braced and lifted to its own serene height of conscious safety!
This psalmist is so absorbed in the thought of his Keeper that he
barely names his dangers. With happy assurance of protection, he says
over and over again the one word which is his amulet against foes
and fears. Six times in these few verses does the thought recur that
Jehovah is the Keeper of Israel or of the single soul. The quietness
that comes of confidence is the singer's strength. Whether he is an
exile, looking across the plains of Mesopotamia towards the blue
hills, which the eye cannot discern, or a pilgrim catching the first
sight of the mountain on which Jehovah sits enshrined, is a question
which cannot be decisively answered; but the power and beauty of
this little breathing of peaceful trust are but slightly affected by
any hypothesis as to the singer's circumstances. Vv. 1 and 2 stand
apart from the remainder, in so far as in them the psalmist speaks
in the first person, while in the rest of the psalm he is spoken to
in the second. But this does not necessarily involve the supposition
of an antiphonal song. The two first verses may have been sung by a
single voice, and the assurances of the following ones by a chorus or
second singer. But it is quite as likely that, as in other psalms,
the singer is in vv. 3-8 himself the speaker of the assurances which
confirm his own faith.
His first words describe the earnest look of longing. He will lift
his eyes from all the coil of troubles and perils to the heights.
_Sursum corda_ expresses the true ascent which these psalms enjoin
and exemplify. If the supposition that the psalmist is an exile on
the monotonous levels of Babylon is correct, one feels the pathetic
beauty of his wistful gaze across the dreary flats towards the point
where he knows that the hills of his father-land rise. To look
beyond the low levels where we dwell, to the unseen heights where
we have our home, is the condition of all noble living amid these
lower ranges of engagement with the Visible and Transient. "Whence
comes my help?" is a question which may be only put in order to make
the assured answer more emphatic, but may also be an expression of
momentary despondency, as the thought of the distance between the
gazer and the mountains chills his aspirations. "It is easy to look,
but hard to journey thither. How shall I reach that goal? I am weak;
the way is long and beset with foes." The loftier the ideal, the more
needful, if it is ever to be reached, that our consciousness of its
height and of our own feebleness should drive us to recognise our
need of help in order to attain it.
Whoever has thus high longings sobered by lowly estimates of self is
ready to receive the assurance of Divine aid. That sense of impotence
is the precursor of faith. We must distrust ourselves, if we are ever
to confide in God. To know that we need His aid is a condition of
obtaining it. Bewildered despondency asks, "Whence comes my help?" and
scans the low levels in vain. The eye that is lifted to the hills is
sure to see Him coming to succour; for that question on the lips of one
whose looks are directed thither is a prayer, rather than a question;
and the assistance he needs sets out towards him from the throne, like
a sunbeam from the sun, as soon as he looks up to the light.
The particle of negation in ver. 3 is not that used in ver. 4, but
that which is employed in commands or wishes. The progress from
subjective desire in ver. 3, to objective certainty of Divine help as
expressed in ver. 4 and the remainder of the psalm, is best exhibited
if the verbs in the former verse are translated as expressions of
wish--"May He not," etc. Whether the speaker is taken to be the
psalmist or another makes little difference to the force of ver. 3,
which lays hold in supplication of the truth just uttered in ver.
2, and thereby gains a more assured certainty that it is true, as
the following verses go on to declare. It is no drop to a lower
mood to pass from assertion of God's help to prayer for it. Rather
it is the natural progress of faith. Both clauses of ver. 3 become
specially significant if this is a song for pilgrims. Their daily
march and their nightly encampment will then be placed under the
care of Jehovah, who will hold up their feet unwearied on the road
and watch unslumbering over their repose. But such a reference is
not necessary. The language is quite general. It covers the whole
ground of toil and rest, and prays for strength for the one and quiet
security in the other.
The remainder of the psalm expands the one thought of Jehovah the
Keeper, with sweet reiteration, and yet comprehensive variation.
First, the thought of the last clause of the preceding verse is
caught up again. Jehovah is the keeper of the community, over which
He watches with unslumbering care. He keeps Israel, so long as Israel
keeps His law; for the word so frequently used here is the same as
is continually employed for observance of the commandments. He had
seemed to slumber while Israel was in exile, and had been prayed to
awake, in many a cry from the captives. Now they have learned that He
never slumbers: His power is unwearied, and needs no recuperation;
His watchfulness is never at fault. But universal as is His care,
it does not overlook the single defenceless suppliant. He is "_thy_
Keeper," and will stand at thy right hand, where helpers stand, to
shield thee from all dangers. Men lose sight of the individual in
the multitude, and the wider their benevolence or beneficence, the
less it takes account of units; but God loves all because He loves
each, and the aggregate is kept because each member of it is. The
light which floods the universe gently illumines every eye. The two
conceptions of defence and impartation of power are smelted together
in the pregnant phrase of ver. 5_b_, "thy shade at thy right hand."
The notion of shelter from evils predominates in the remainder of
the psalm. It is applied in ver. 6 to possible perils from physical
causes: the fierce sunlight beat down on the pilgrim band, and the
moon was believed, and apparently with correctness, to shed malignant
influences on sleepers. The same antithesis of day and night, work
and rest, which is found in ver. 3 appears again here. The promise is
widened out in ver. 7 so as to be all-inclusive. "All evil" will be
averted from him who has Jehovah for his keeper; therefore, if any
so-called Evil comes, he may be sure that it is Good with a veil on.
We should apply the assurances of the psalm to the interpretation of
life, as well as take them for the antidote of fearful anticipations.
Equally comprehensive is the designation of that which is to be
kept. It is "thy soul," the life or personal being. Whatever may be
shorn away by the sharp shears of Loss, that will be safe; and if it
is, nothing else matters very much. The individual soul is of large
account in God's sight: He keeps it as a deposit entrusted to Him
by faith. Much may go; but His hand closes round us when we commit
ourselves into it, and none is able to pluck us thence.
In the final verse, the psalmist recurs to his favourite antithesis
of external toil and repose in the home, the two halves of the
pilgrim life for every man; and while thus, in the first clause of
the verse, he includes all varieties of circumstance, in the second
he looks on into a future of which he does not see the bounds, and
triumphs over all possible foes that may lurk in its dim recesses, in
the assurance that, however far it may extend, and whatever strange
conditions it may hide, the Keeper will be there, and all will be
well. Whether or not he looked to the last "going out," our exodus
from earth (Luke ix. 31; 2 Peter i. 15), or to that abundant entrance
(2 Peter i. 11) into the true home which crowns the pilgrimage here,
we cannot but read into his indefinite words their largest meaning,
and rejoice that we have One who "is able to keep that which we have
committed to Him against that day."