Psalm 120 (1928 BCP)

Psalm 120 (1928 BCP) is the first of the fifteen Songs of Ascents in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (1928) Psalter. Appointed at Morning Prayer on the Twenty-seventh Day of the month, it gives the Church a prayer for truthful speech, deliverance from deceit, and costly peace. Its movement is not from trouble to retaliation, but from trouble to calling on the LORD and to the patient witness of one who “labour[s] for peace.”

Prayer Book Text

The Prayer Book calls the Psalm Ad Dominum and appoints it after the close of Psalm 119 at Twenty-seventh-Day Morning Prayer:

WHEN I was in trouble, I called upon the LORD, * and he heard me. 2 Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, * and from a deceitful tongue. 3 What reward shall be given or done unto thee, thou false tongue? * even mighty and sharp arrows, with hot burning coals. 4 Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Meshech, * and to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar! 5 My soul hath long dwelt among them * that are enemies unto peace. 6 I labour for peace; but when I speak unto them thereof, * they make them ready to battle.

The prayer names a real moral injury: lying lips and a deceitful tongue. Yet the Psalmist begins with God’s hearing, not with a program for answering falsehood in kind. Meshech and Kedar express the anguish of living as a stranger among people hostile to peace; they do not authorize hatred of particular peoples. The Psalm’s final contrast is ethical and personal: “I labour for peace,” while others prepare for battle.

A Song of Ascents

Psalm 120 begins the sequence traditionally called the Songs of Degrees or Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120–134). John Mason Neale and Richard Frederick Littledale describe the series’ pilgrim movement with appropriate caution about its historical explanation:

The most ancient Christian tradition, without being inconsistent with this one, is more probable, that they are originally pilgrim-songs, for going up to Jerusalem.... Psalm CXX. expresses weariness of heathen companionship and surroundings; CXXI., the first sight of the mountain girdle of Palestine by the pilgrim, now fairly on his way, and trusting in God to keep him safe on his road.

That reading illuminates, rather than replaces, the Psalm’s plain prayer. The singer is not yet at Jerusalem: Psalm 120 opens the ascent with speech wounded by falsehood and a longing for peace. In the monthly Office the placement after the long meditation on God’s law in Psalm 119 gives the transition a practical force. A people formed by God’s word must learn to speak and to seek peace when surrounded by contention.

Truthful Speech and the New Testament

The Psalm’s concern with the tongue finds a close New Testament echo. James refuses to treat speech as inconsequential; the small member can set a whole life on fire:

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.... But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.

This makes Psalm 120 a prayer for the Church’s own conversion before it is a judgment on somebody else’s speech. The petitioner asks God to deliver my soul from deceit. That first-person form leaves no room for an easy use of the Psalm as a weapon against opponents.

James then describes the wisdom that is recognizable by its fruit:

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

The connection is especially close to the Prayer Book’s “I labour for peace.” Peace in Psalm 120 is not passivity before lies; it is the righteousness of one who will not let a false tongue determine the character of his own speech.

Christian Reception

Augustine hears the title “Song of Degrees” as an ascent of the heart. His exposition is a theological reception of the Psalm, not a substitute for its Israelite setting:

When therefore a man has commenced thus to order his ascent; to speak more plainly, when a Christian has begun to think of spiritual amendment, he begins to suffer the tongues of adversaries.... He then, who will ascend, first of all prays God against these very tongues: for he says, “When I was in trouble, I called on the Lord; and He heard me.”

For Augustine, the Psalm’s cry is inseparable from amendment: the first answer to hostility is prayer for faithfulness. His reading therefore helps make explicit the Psalm’s spiritual discipline without denying its historical voice as a Song of Ascents.

The Psalm’s last line also receives an ecclesial application in Augustine’s sermon:

“With them that hated peace, I was peaceful.” ... Love ye peace, love ye Christ. For if they love peace, they love Christ. Wherefore? For the Apostle says of Christ, “He is our peace, who has made both one.”

Augustine’s argument is tied to his fourth-century controversy and should not be detached from it as a blanket verdict on every disagreement. Its enduring theological point is nevertheless clear: Christian peacemaking is measured by the peace of Christ, who makes enemies one, rather than by a merely strategic quiet.

Paul gives the same discipline a concrete form:

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath.... Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.... Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

Read with Romans 12, Psalm 120 neither silences the wounded nor blesses retaliation. It teaches the worshipper to bring the reality of slander and conflict before God, to refuse vengeance, and to persevere in truthful, peaceable speech.

Use in the Daily Office

At Twenty-seventh-Day Morning Prayer, Psalm 120 begins a sequence that continues through Psalms 121–125. It is well suited to a congregation that needs to confess the damage of false speech, intercede amid division, and ask for grace to labour for peace. Its short form is no reduction of its seriousness: public prayer gives the community words in which to name conflict before God without baptizing its own hostility.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• The Psalter (1928 BCP)
• Daily Office (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 119 (1928 BCP)
• Psalm 121 (1928 BCP)

External Links

• Psalm 120 in the 1928 Prayer Book Psalter
• Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 120
• Neale and Littledale, A Commentary on the Psalms, vol. IV (1874 Internet Archive scan)