Morrison (Q. H.), The Return of the Angels, 98.
Moule (H. C. G.), Thy Keeper, 7.
Power (P. B.), Tlie " I wills " of the Psalms, 217.
Pulsford (W.), Trinity Church Sermons, 50.
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Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 42.
Smith (G. A.), Four Psalms, 99.
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sa
Help from beyond the Hills.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains :
From whence shall my help comep
My help cometh from the Lord,
Which made heaven and earth.— Ps. czxi. i, 3.
This psalm is one of that remarkable series of fifteen which are called, in the ancient headings of our Bibles, " Psalms of Degrees," or, as the Kevised Version renders the Hebrew, " Songs of Ascents." In the ancient Greek and Latin versions of the Scriptures the rendering is, " Songs of Steps," or " of Staircases." They are psalms connected somehow with steps upward, as to a shrine ; and one ancient explanation of the heading is that there were fifteen steps leading up to the "Court of Israel" in the Temple of Jerusalem, and that the fifteen Songs of Degrees have connexion with those steps, and were sung on certain ceremonial occasions on them, or while worshippers went up by them. A mystic meaning is given to the title by some of the ancient Jewish expositors. One of them sees in these psalms an allusion to the spiritual steps " on which God leads the righteous up to a blessed hereafter " ; and true it is that these psalms, in a sweet way of their own, lead us to views of His Word, of His promises, and of Himself, which afiPord an uplifting guide and help to the pilgrim as he ascends " from strength to strength " towards the heavenly shrine. Another account of the word is that these were psalms used, not upon the steps in the Temple, but on the ascending march of pilgrims returning from exile in Babylon, or going up at the great festivals to Jerusalem from the remote parts of the Holy Land. They climbed towards the mountain throne where the City and the Temple were set, and they solaced their way with these psalms of peculiar and beautiful faith, hope, and joy, as most of them conspicuously are.
^ These Psalms of Degrees, the Psalms from the 120th to 134th inclusive, display a certain characteristic rhythm, and they
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 3
34 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS
speak a tender pathetic dialect of their own, if one may use the word ; a certain uplook, almost always, as out of a felt need to the ever-present Lord, seems to be the deepest inspiration of the song. This Psalm, assuredly, the 12l8t, is " a Song of Ascents," a song of up-goings, a song befitting the heart which believes and loves, on its way to the eternal Zion. The whole direction of it is upwards, God-wards. It is, in the language of the Communion Service, a Sursum corda, a " Lift up your hearts ; we lift them up unto the Lord." Shall we describe the Psalm in few and simple words ? It is the soul's look, out from itself, and up to its all- sufficient God, under a sense of complete need, and with the prospect of a complete supply.
My need and Thy great fulness meet, And I have all in Thee.^
^ The speaker, as we take it, was one of the Jews in Babylon. Under the hand of a tyrant and among heathen, neither day nor night, in going out or coming in, was he safe. Evening by evening, therefore, he put himself anew into a keeping that could not fail. Ever as the time came for the altar smoke to rise on Mount Zion did he come forth into the open. The great plain, arched by the great sky, was his temple : and Jehovah, the Lord of heaven and earth, was there. Nevertheless, his heart yearned towards the Holy of Holies, God's chosen spot, and he turned his face to it. As he closed his eyes to pray, he saw the blue hills of Judah and the towers that crowned the Holy House. He sent his cry for mercy to the Mercy Seat. His help would come from beyond the hills, even from the Glory between the cherubim.2
^ When I lived at Oxford, a good many years ago, one of the tutors lay dying of a cancerous disease. It was a summer of perfect warmth and beauty, and every meadow was as a haunt of dreams. But the dying man was a native of Iceland, and amid all the glory of those days, the cry on his lips was to get back to Iceland, just that he might see the snow again. That same feeling breathes in this verse " I to the hills will lift mine eyes." The writer was an exile, far from home ; he was in a land where everything was strange. And what did it matter to him though Babylonia was fairer than the country of his birth ! The hills of his homeland were calling him.'