Psalms 120
ConstablePsalms 120:1-2
- God’s deliverance from liars 120:1-2 The psalmist testified that he had prayed to God for deliverance from liars and that God had granted his request.
“After over fifty years of ministry, I am convinced that most of the problems in families and churches are caused by professed Christians who do not have a real and vital relationship to Jesus Christ. They are not humble peacemakers but arrogant troublemakers.” [Note: Wiersbe, The . . . Wisdom . . ., p. 335.
Psalms 120:3-4
- God’s destruction of liars 120:3-4 The writer asked the liar what would befall him and then answered his own question. God would destroy him as a warrior who shot arrows at an enemy or as a fire devoured a dry broom tree.
Psalms 120:5-7
- God’s dalliance with liars 120:5-7 The poet bewailed the fact that he had to continue living with people such as liars who continually stir up strife (Psalms 120:5-6). Meshech was a barbarous nation far to the north of Israel by the Black Sea in Asia Minor (cf. Genesis 10:2; Ezekiel 38:2; Ezekiel 39:1-2). Kedar in northern Arabia was the home of the nomadic Ishmaelites who periodically harassed the Israelites (Genesis 25:13; Isaiah 21:16-17; Jeremiah 2:10; Ezekiel 27:21). These people represented the kinds of individuals that surrounded the writer, namely, heathen liars and hostile barbarians. They seemed to be after war all the time, but he wanted to live in peace.
“If the ‘I’ of the psalm is Israel personified, these two names will summarize the Gentile world, far and near, in which Israel is dispersed. Otherwise, unless the text is emended, they must be taken as the psalmist’s figurative names for the alien company he is in: as foreign as the remotest peoples, and as implacable as his Arab kinsmen (cf. Genesis 16:12; Genesis 25:13).” [Note: Kidner, Psalms 73-150, p. 431. The continual antagonism of people who stir up trouble by telling lies, and in other ways, leads the godly to pray for God to deal with them. God’s will is for people to live peacefully with one another (Matthew 5:9; 2 Corinthians 13:11, et al.).