The Pulpit Commentary — Psalms — Volume 3 — Section 192

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vere. 1-5.-Such as cannot be moved. There can be little doubt, eo it seems to me, that these psalms, from one of which our text is taken, were all of them songs of the exiles returning from their captivity in Babylon. Their very name-" Songs of Degrees "-denotes that they were sung as the people went up towards their land, their city, and the sanctuary of the Lord. But the frequent allusions to the Exile, to its degradation and sorrow, to the almost complete destruction which had there all but overtaken them, and then to their p~eservation and restorntion, all show that in these fifteen psalms we have the devout utterances of those whom God hnd once suffered to be in exile, but whom he had not only graciously preserved therein, but now had wonderfully restored. So that we may picture the long line of the returning captives as they journeyed on over the weary waste of rock nnd sand which stretched between the place of their exile and their beloved home. We listen to them refreshing and cheering their hearts from time to time by singing one or other of these holy psalms. After their return, these psalms appear to hnve been collected together, and to have formed part of their national liturgy, and were sung, as they well deserved to be, when their city and temple were again built and dedicated to the Lord. There is a beautHul progression in them-an advance in thought nnd expression, harmonizing with the commencement, progress, and completion of the return from B.ibylon to the city of God. The .firse tells how, in their distress, the exiles cried unto the Lord, l\nd utters their lament over their long sojourn in the strnnge land. 'rhe next-the hundred and twenty-first-is one which, it is probable, formed the evening psalm, ns the tents wero pitched, ancl the whole encampment lay down to rest. 'l'lrnn did they lift up their eyes tu the Lord-the Lord that kept Israel and who neither slumbered nor slept. Tho next is a song of gladness in view of their once moro standing in the house of the Lord-the j?ladness of those who had long been hindered in the en.if>yment of any such privilege. The next recalls their prayer-their earnest, pleading prayer, which they offered up because of tho contempt of the proud and the scorning of their luxurious stranger-lords. And the nexe celebrates with joyous rapture the grel\t deliverance which God gave them: "Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us ns a prey to their teeth." Such is the spirit of the whole. And then comes the devout conclusion from all their experience-the blessedness of trusting in the Lord. Perhaps it was sung ns the exiles drew near to Jerusalem and Mount Zion, and saw the mountains round about her, and the Mount Zion which abideth for ever. As those beloved heights, on which their fathers had gazed with delight, reared themselves on high, unchanged amid all the storm and tumult which had surged around and upon them, they seemed to th'l devout Israelites a typ~, not only of the Divine guard over Israel, encompi-.ssing his people even as thes! mountains "were round about Jerusalem," but a type also of the stability, the permanence, the immovability, of all those who trust in thE Lord. 214 THE BOOK OF PSALMS. (rs. CXXV. 1-5.