Episode Details

Psalm 120: The Stranger Among the War-Makers

Here begin the Songs of Ascents — the pilgrim psalms, sung by travelers going up to Jerusalem — and the journey starts not with joy but with anguish. "In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me." The psalmist is surrounded by liars, by tongues sharp as arrows tipped with coals of broom wood, and he names his exile with two words that would have made any Israelite shudder: Mesech and Kedar — the far edges of the known world, places synonymous with hostility and foreignness. He is a man of peace living among people who are for war. The psalm is barely seven verses, but it captures something universally recognizable: the exhaustion of being good-willed in a world that rewards bad faith. "When I speak, they are for war." Every pilgrim knows this feeling. The road to the holy city begins in an unholy place, and the first step is not triumph but an honest cry. That is perhaps the most important thing about pilgrimage — it does not require you to be ready. It only requires you to start walking.

00:00 In My Distress I Cried
00:10 Deliver Me from Lying Lips
00:20 Sharp Arrows and Coals of Juniper
00:30 A Stranger in Mesech and Kedar
00:40 I Am for Peace