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A Song of Ascents. 1 I will lift up my eyes to the hills—From whence comes my help? 2 My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth. 3 He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. 4 Behold, He who keeps Israel Shall neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, Nor the moon by night. 7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul. 8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in From this time forth, and even forevermore.
When we lift our eyes up, we are looking beyond ourselves, beyond our fellow man, beyond human resources and strength; we are looking UP to something, Someone higher than anything here!
We must look BEYOND the hills, BEYOND the man-made structures (both physical and philosophical) and keep moving our gaze UPWARD to the LORD on His throne.
This looking up is really a seeking mindset - where do your eyes, mind, actions go when life gets hard?
Some examples:
We don’t need human strength - it will eventually fail.
We need the strength that only comes from God!
Psalm 121:2 reminds us that this Helper is the One that created the hills, the universe, and us.
A creator has a unique position of authority over that which they have made [ex.: kid’s Lego creation]
As creator, God alone has the right to love and to be loved. This is the metanarrative of the Bible: [look up notes from GSOT]
Now that we have this UPWARD perspective, we must move through the remainder of the Psalm with this firmly grasped in hand.
Verb: עָזַר (ʿāzar), GK 6468 (S 5826), 82×. ʿāzar means “to help.” This help can be any sort of help, such as when the Gibeonites ask Joshua for “help” against the five kings of the Amorites (Jos 10:6), the Arameans come to “help” Hadadezer (2 Sam. 8:5), and the many warriors come to David’s side to “help” him (1 Chr. 12:19, 21, 22). Ahaz king of Judah thinks that the gods of Damascus will “help” him win battles (2 Chr. 28:23).
But in the vast majority of occurrences of ʿāzar, the helper is the Lord, the God of Israel. When Samuel defeats the Philistines at Mizpah, he sets up a stone and calls it “Ebenezer” (which means “stone of helping”), saying, “Thus far has the Lord helped us” (1 Sam. 7:12). When God’s people are faced with danger, they cry out: “Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you” (2 Chr. 14:11; cf. Ps 30:10; 79:9). This can be a cry from an individual (109:26; 119:86) or a community. While the help of God often seems to imply military assistance against an enemy army (e.g., Isa 41:10–16), in Isa 44:2 ʿāzar appears to be more spiritual blessings (cf. especially 44:3). In Ps 10:14 we read of the God who is “the helper of the fatherless.” The confession of the believer should be at all times: “Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me” (Ps 54:4). See NIDOTTE , 3:378–79.1
GK GK Goodrick/Kohlenberger numbers (Greek in italics, Hebrew in roman)
S S Strong’s number (Greek in italics, Hebrew in roman)
NIDOTTE NIDOTTE New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis
1 William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 331–332.