A key theme of Psalm 121, one of the group known as Psalms of Ascent, is the relationship of human beings to the divine and to the natural world. God is creator and defender, transcending time and place, aware of human fear and offering protection.

The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade on your right hand.…

The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life (vv.5, 7 NRSV)

Psalm 121 has generated much exegetical debate. Are the mountains the source of danger or of succour? Who is speaking? Pilgrim and priest or father and son? Does the Psalmist pose a question then answer it himself? Is this the internal dialogue of a traveller? Is it a conversation on the journey to Jerusalem? Is it a liturgical discourse for pilgrims who have safely arrived in the Temple in Jerusalem? Is it a reassurance for those concerned for the journey home?

Notwithstanding these scholarly discussions, profound truths of this psalm remain for people of faith—God created all that is. In all aspects of their journey of life God will protect those who have faith. Faithful pilgrims need not fear, nor seek other sources of protection apart from the God who created them.

Mountains are liminal spaces between earth and sky, heaven and earth. The God of Israel has a dwelling place in His Temple on the holy mount of Zion. The mountains of Psalm 121 are places of physical danger. Wild animals and robbers inhabit them and threaten the safety of the pilgrim traveller (‘evil’ lurks here (v.7)). Unlike the gods of the Canaanites who sleep in winter and return to wakefulness and life in spring, the God of the Psalmist is eternally awake, protecting those who have faith in Him (v.4). He is the one who made the land, the mountains, and, indeed, all of creation (v.2).

Mountains symbolize great age and their presence inspires awe. For the nineteenth-century traveller, mountains, such as the volcano Pichincha in Ecuador, exemplified the sublime in nature. They seemed insurmountable and as unknowable as the essence of the divine. They were also barriers to be conquered in the search for new land to explore and colonize.

These lands teemed with life, life which revealed the mysteries of creation (v.2) in often startling and confronting ways. Frederic Edwin Church painted at a time when science and religion were grappling with the revelations of evolutionary theory, natural selection, geological time, and the antiquity of ‘man’. His response was to depict rich and complex scenes which reflected both new scientific knowledge and a sense of awe and wonder.

The Galla Placidia Good Shepherd, William Dyce’s Gethsemane, and Church’s Pichincha are not narrative images. Each is to be understood through its symbolism, and the images of trust and vulnerability it conveys—the travellers in Pichincha, the incarnate Jesus in Gethsemane, and the sheep who look to the Good Shepherd for protection.

In Gethsemane, we see the incarnate one who seeks deliverance in the darkness.  The darkness is physical although the moon is visible as night falls (Psalm 121:6). The true darkness in the painting is existential. Incarnation means being fully human with fully human emotions. Like the traveller in Psalm 121:1, Jesus prays for help in the garden of trial as he faces arrest and crucifixion. The traveller in the psalm ascends to Jerusalem. In Gethsemane Jesus begins his ascent to the Father through his ascent on the cross. For both there is a journey to be made through fear, doubt, and suffering.

The Good Shepherd of Galla Placidia ‘lays down his life for the sheep’ (John 10:11 NRSV). He knows the Father and the Father knows him (John 10:15; Psalm 121:7–8). He has passed through Gethsemane and has ascended as Christ Pantocrator, the ruler, saviour, and judge of all places and times.

God is present in the Temple and in the high mountains but God is not confined to them. They are sacred places, liminal and numinous, but all of God’s creation is sacred and interconnected. The fantastically composite Andean landscape of Pichincha depicts the lushness of creative life. The omnipresent and eternal God of the Bible is present in ancient Israel, nineteenth-century Scotland, and the wild places of the Americas. The Creator God’s being, presence, and actions are not confined to, or by, any one place, time, or culture (Psalm 121:8).

References

Greidanus, Sidney. 2016. Preaching Christ from Psalms (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans)