[This is Part 1 of “Songs for the Road”, a 10-part series on honest prayer in the Psalms of Ascent.]

Short Songs for a Long Walk

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, 176 verses on the Word of God. Turn the page and the pace changes. The next fifteen psalms are short, all but one of them under ten verses, short enough to sing between one stretch of road and the next. These are the Psalms of Ascent, the songs of pilgrims climbing to Jerusalem for the feasts, most likely sung on the road itself.

You might expect pilgrim songs to sound like a cheerful crowd with walking sticks. They don’t. The first one is a cry against lying lips and ends in war (Psalm 120:2, 7). A few songs later, the singers say they have had “more than enough of contempt” (Ps. 123:3). A few songs after that, someone cries, “Out of the depths” (Ps. 130:1). These are the songs of people who are worn out and still walking, and anyone worn out will be glad to find them.

Over the next ten posts we are going to walk the whole road, Psalms 120-134, and watch how these songs pray. This first post does not go verse by verse; that starts with Psalm 120 next time. Today we are getting our bearings: what these songs are, who sang them, and what to watch for.

What the Psalms of Ascent Are

Each of the fifteen carries the same heading in the Hebrew, shir hamma’alot, which the ESV renders “A Song of Ascents.” Scholars call the whole set the Songs of Ascents. (Psalm 121 reads very slightly differently, “for the ascents,” with no change in meaning.) The word “ascents” comes from the verb “to go up,” and that fits the map. Jerusalem sits high in the hill country, so the road to it, from almost any direction, climbs.

So why that title? Scholars have offered four answers, and it helps to know them:

• Pilgrim songs. Three times a year the men of Israel were to appear before the LORD at the place He would choose, at the feasts of Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Booths (Deuteronomy 16:16), and whole families made the trip (Luke 2:41-44). Most interpreters think Psalms 120-134 were the pilgrim songs sung on that road.¹
• The temple steps. The Mishnah, a collection of Jewish teaching compiled about AD 200, says fifteen steps led up inside the temple to match the fifteen psalms, and that the Levites, the tribe that served in the temple, sang on them.²
• Return from exile. Ezra uses the same word for the going up from Babylon (Ezra 7:9).³
• Climbing lines. In several of these psalms a line picks up the last word of the line before it, like steps on a staircase. Notice the repeated word in “From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD” (Ps. 121:1-2).

We can hold the options loosely. The pilgrim reading has the most going for it, because the songs themselves talk about going to the house of the LORD (Psalm 122:1), standing in the gates (122:2), and a road with danger on it (121:3-6). The Mishnah matches the number of steps to the number of psalms, but it never says the title came from the steps, and it describes the temple of Jesus’ day. The exile reading has its own trouble with Psalms 125-128, which sound as though the singers already live in the land. None of this has to be settled before we start. However the Songs of Ascents were first used, they read as the prayers of people on their way to God’s house.

Who Wrote the Songs

No single author stands behind the set. Four carry the name of David (Psalms 122, 124, 131, and 133), one carries the name of Solomon (Psalm 127), and the other ten are anonymous. It is a small irony that the psalm bearing the name of the king who built the temple (1 Kings 6) says, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1). Someone later gathered all fifteen into one collection, and the gathering looks deliberate. They share a title and a direction of travel, from a cry in a hostile country (Psalm 120) to a blessing sent out from Zion (Psalm 134).

Four Things to Watch For

As we read, watch for four things that build on one another:

• Honest prayer. These songs begin in distress, and the cry is already answered: “In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me” (Ps. 120:1).
• A God who answers. Three times the LORD is described as the One “who made heaven and earth” (Pss. 121:2; 124:8; 134:3), as though the writers wanted us to remember who we are talking to. He keeps (Psalm 121), builds (127), forgives (130), swears an oath (132), and blesses (134).
• A people walking together. These are “we” songs. The singers say, “let Israel now say” (Pss. 124:1; 129:1), and they pray as a company. For us, that company is the church.
• Zion, and the One who brings us there. Zion is the hill in Jerusalem where God’s house stood, and in Scripture it becomes a name for the city of God. Every road in the collection bends toward it.

How do the four fit together? Honest prayer is possible because the One we are praying to has already turned toward us. The pilgrim’s journey rests on what the LORD does, and not on how well the pilgrim prays, so we can stop polishing and bring the rough version.

The Shape of the Road

Watch for two movements in the collection. In the first (Psalms 120-126), the pilgrims pray from trouble: lying lips, contempt, a flood, a snare, tears sown in the field. Even there the answer keeps breaking in, and the escape is real (Psalm 124:7). In the second movement (Psalms 127-134), the songs keep showing what the LORD does: He builds the house, forgives the guilty, swears His oath to David, and blesses from Zion. The people are still on the road and still tired, but the songs keep pointing to Him.

One note on order. Psalm 131 sits right before Psalm 132 in your Bible, but we will read it together with Psalms 133 and 134 after Psalm 132. All three are only three verses long, and together they show what pilgrims look like once the promise has been sworn. That is a teaching choice only.

The Road Ahead

Here is where we are headed, ten posts in all:

• Part 2: The Road Starts in Trouble (Psalm 120). A cry from a country of lies, and an answer already given.
• Part 3: A Question on the Road (Psalm 121). Where does help come from, and what does it mean to be kept?
• Part 4: Glad to Go, Tired of Contempt (Psalms 122-123). Joy and weariness in the same traveler.
• Part 5: If the LORD Had Not Been on Our Side (Psalms 124-125). Remembering a rescue and resting on a mountain that does not move.
• Part 6: Sowing Before the Harvest Shows (Psalm 126). Praying “again” because of what He has already done.
• Part 7: Unless the LORD Builds (Psalms 127-128). Work, sleep, and home.
• Part 8: From the Depths, Forgiveness (Psalms 129-130). Wronged and guilty, and the word that answers both.
• Part 9: The Oath Behind the Road (Psalm 132). God’s promise to David.
• Part 10: The Road Ends Quiet (Psalms 131, 133, and 134). A still soul, shared life, and a blessing at night.

Rosa Floyd has an additional great resource on the Psalms of Ascent, a blog series from 2010 that takes a different angle but is no less valuable. You can find the first post here on Surpassing Glory.

The One Who Walked Ahead

If these are songs for going up to Jerusalem, there is Someone whose trip we should recognize. Luke tells us, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). Mark catches Him on the road itself: “And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them” (Mark 10:32). Those who followed were afraid, and they had reason to be (Mark 10:32-34). The road He walked led through a cross and an empty tomb before it led up.

That is the gospel under the whole collection, and the writer of Hebrews says it plainly to people who are tired of the road:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb. 12:22-24)

Notice the verb: you have come. We still walk the road, with all its tiredness, and we still sing. But we walk it as people who have been brought to Zion by Someone else’s going up. That is why we can begin where Psalm 120 begins, in trouble, with a cry that has already been heard. Next time we take the first step.

Application Points

• Read the songs slowly, and out loud. Before each post in this series, read that week’s psalm once, aloud, at the pace of someone walking uphill. Read it as practice. These are the prayers of people who already have the Father’s ear (Ephesians 2:18).
• Bring the rough version. Think of something you have been tidying up before you pray about it: a conflict at work, a fear about money, a temptation you are embarrassed by. Pray it this week in plain words, the way Psalm 120 does: “Deliver me, O LORD, from lying lips” (Ps. 120:2). Jesus has already opened the way to the Father for you, so the rough version is welcome.
• Find a walking companion. These are “we” songs. Ask one person from your church to read along with you and talk once a week about that week’s psalm. Pilgrims sang together, and we were never meant to walk this alone.
• Watch who is doing the verbs. As you read each psalm, underline what the LORD does (hears, keeps, builds, forgives, blesses) and circle what the pilgrim does (cries, lifts his eyes, waits). Notice how often the LORD’s list is the longer one. That is the shape of the gospel: grace first, and our praying in response.

Reflection Questions

• Which of these songs (lying lips, contempt, the depths) sounds closest to what you are carrying right now, and what has kept you from praying it that plainly?
• When you come to pray, do you picture a God who is already listening or one who is waiting for you to get it right? Where did that picture come from?

1. Thijs Booij, “Psalms 120-136: Songs for a Great Festival,” Biblica 91 (2010): 241-255. Booij argues that the title designates pilgrimage or procession songs and that Psalms 120-134 form a functional unity. For the pilgrim reading as the most widely accepted view, see also Biblical Training, “Songs of Degrees,” biblicaltraining.org/library/songs-of-degrees. ↩︎
2. Mishnah, Middot 2:5 and Sukkah 5:4. Booij, “Songs for a Great Festival,” notes that the Mishnah does not say the title came from the steps and questions whether the temple had these steps when the songs were named. ↩︎
3. Booij, “Songs for a Great Festival.” The exile reading is old, but Booij observes that some of the songs, such as Psalms 125-128, give the impression that the speakers already live in their own country. ↩︎