Taking a journey into the…Psalms of Ascent, Part 1

This week I welcome guest blogger, David Hundert. David and his wife Terri are members of Faith Church. David is currently studying for his Master of Divinity at Evangelical Seminary of Kairos University.

Does you like vacations? I have to admit, I don’t travel well. I get so stressed out about the travel process that, until I get to my destination, I’m not pleasant to be with. My wife can testify to that fact.

What about you? Is there any music that you have to have on when you’re traveling? For me, I have my worship music on my phone, and a set of noise cancelling headphones that I listen to when I fly. I find it calming and relaxing.

Then again, worshiping God can have that affect too. When I praise God during my travels, it tends to put my mind in perspective. God is in control of the process. Some people like to pray for travel mercies, I just like to praise God.

Where am I going with all of this? During Advent, we’ve been learning from various genres of psalms. This week we will study a new genre of psalms. However before we get to that, I want to take you on a journey; a little road trip of our own if you would, but I want to set up some historical context for you.

The Book of Psalms was written by various authors, at various points in the history of the Jewish people and their leaders, and because of that, it can be difficult to pin down a time frame that each psalm fits in. The psalms that we are going to discuss this week, and I do mean “psalms” plural, because there are 15 of them, are no different. So let’s take a look at some historical context.

Various scholars point to a time period somewhere after the destruction of the city of Jerusalem in 587BC by the Babylonians and the rebuilding of the temple under Persian rule around 515 BC. At this time period, Jews were returning to the land and trying hard to rebuild a national identity, a “land of Judea” as it were, while rebuilding the temple, all under the watchful eye of Persia. During the first exile, ten years before the destruction of Jerusalem, the armies of Babylon seized Jerusalem, deported most of the nobility, temple personnel, and the royal house, and set up a king from David’s house who would cooperate with Babylonian rule. At this time, there was a large group of Judeans who lost their property, their place in society, and their primary point of reference, which was the temple in Jerusalem.

Conditions for these first exiles were no doubt devastating and harsh, but the biblical books such as Daniel, Esther, 2 Kings, Nehemiah and Ezra indicate that a good number of them found places of importance and influence within Babylon. They weren’t without resources, and they poured a good deal of them in two different directions: they collected, edited, and wrote scrolls of prophets, prayers, histories, and commandments and combined them into an larger-than-life remembrance of Israel that would serve as a foundational document for its reconstitution. What we know of today as “the Scriptures” took on its foundational shape at this point.

Second, they never lost sight of their home, Jerusalem, and devoted time and resources into networks of communication and involvement in the goings on there. This fact alone speaks of a profound sense of resurrection ingrained in the soul of this people. When Cyrus, the king of Persia, conquered Babylon and issued a decree that deported peoples could return to their lands and rebuild their cities and temples, the Jews in Babylon were ready to act.

After the temple dedication (515 BC) and up until the time of Nehemiah (444 BC), control of the land was divided into three groups: the first was a group of priests inspired by Ezekiel that had been formulating a temple and religious reform that would correct the abuses of the past. They placed a larger emphasis on the people being a “holy people,” a nation of priests and envisioned how the temple could become the center of unity and leadership in the land, taking over many functions once under royal administration.

The second was more like a coalition of many groups, and it pressed harder than ever for the people to unite under the covenant that God had made with the people at Sinai. They believed Israel could reconstitute itself in a confederation of “tribes,” similar to the time before Israel had kings, and they understood the binding force for Israel to be the Torah. They organized a “council of Elders” to help lead the newly forming province.

Last were the Persian administrators—Jews, Persians, and non-Jewish regional leaders who assured that the interests of the empire were not undermined.

The two Jewish groups (the first two groups above) had differing visions of how best to reconstitute Israel. As you can imagine, the differences did cause their share of grief, but they did agree on some critical points. First, they both agreed that a Torah of Moses would be the binding law of the land and to which all Israelites must be subordinate to as a mark of citizenship. They strongly pushed for all Israelites, not just the leadership, to be responsible for covenant obedience.

Out of this partnership of leading Jewish groups, a daring innovation was launched. No longer would Israel define itself by a king and his royal system, but by faith.

I want to take you on a bit of a journey. We are going to look at what is called the “Song of Ascents” or the “Psalms of Ascent.” You can find them, starting at Psalm 120 all the way through Psalm 134.

According to Jewish tradition, the songs are associated with Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles. They were sung when going to God’s house, the Temple. They involved going upward in space and in thought. Beyond the women’s court to the west, there were 15 steps, on which the Levites would stand when they sang each of the Songs. However, the most likely view of a Jew singing the Psalms of Ascents would be when they were sung by pilgrim groups on their way to one of the three great festivals of the Jewish year. These types of journeys were called “going up” regardless of their geographical location of origin. The Talmud contains teachings which interpret and expand Torah law to make it relevant to Jewish daily life. The Talmud records the Sukkot temple ceremony:

“The pious men and wonder-workers would dance before them, with flaming torches in their hand, and they would sing before them songs and praises. And the Levites played on harps, lyres, cymbals, trumpets, and [other] musical instruments beyond counting,[standing, as they played] on the fifteen steps which go down from the Israelites’ court to the women’s court, corresponding to the fifteen Songs of Ascents which are in the Book of Psalms — on these the Levites stand with their instrument and sing their song. And two priests stood at the upper gate which goes down from the Israelites’ court to the women’s court, with two trumpets in their hands. [When] the cock crowed, they sounded a sustained, a quavering, and a sustained blast on the shofar.

[When] they got to the tenth step, they sounded a sustained, a quavering, and a sustained blast on the shofar. [When] they reached the courtyard, they sounded a sustained, a quavering, and a sustained blast on the shofar. They went on sounding the shofar in a sustained blast until they reached the gate which leads out to the east. [When] they reached the gate which goes out toward the east, they turned around toward the west, and they said, “Our fathers who were in this place turned with their backs toward the Temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they worshiped the sun toward the east. “But as to us, our eyes are toward the Lord.” Rabbi Judah records, “They said it a second time, ‘We belong to the Lord, our eyes are toward the Lord.’”

Can you see it? Everything that they did on their journey to the temple was a joyous, act of worship. Everything they did, once the temple was reached, was a joyous act of worship.

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash