Psalm 122 Part 1 

If you had one donkey and five children, the journey to Jerusalem would have been a long uphill climb. For safety reasons you would travel with other families from your village, eventually being joined by other groups as the crowd grew. This is where the songs of ascent came in handy as pilgrims climbed toward the city. These psalms were not originally written as music to climb hills by. Instead, they were written for worship at the temple (122,124,134), for public singing (123,125), for national celebration, (121,126,129,132,133,) or for private family use, (120,127,128,130,131.) But because these psalms are all rather short and speak of things that were appropriate for a pilgrimage to the temple, they were good for communal singing as a caravan plodded its upward way toward Jerusalem. What wonderful family vacations those days must have been – with a spiritual end in view! 

Ps.122 is one of the four Songs of Ascents that is specifically attributed to King David (remember the chiastic structure of the 15 psalms.) He wrote it both for what Jerusalem was in his day and for what it would become under his successors. David perhaps never made a pilgrimage from a great distance to one of the major feasts, but he wrote Ps.122 in the voice of one who did, and who had arrived at the Holy City. 250 years later Hezekiah chooses it as one of his tributes to God’s miracle both of deliverance from Sennacherib’s invading army, and his healing. David wrote it for people to sing at the time of their going up to holy feasts at Jerusalem. In the 5thcentury BC Ezra placed it third in the series and it appears to be suitable to be sung when the people had entered the gates of Jerusalem.

Jesus would have made this journey many times. But engage your mind in the last Passover pilgrimage in that final week before His crucifixion. At journey’s end, looking over the city he wept as he foresaw the destruction of the city by the Romans one generation hence. (Luke.19:42). Each of these Psalms would have been sung one last time on that final journey!