PS Later addition, it seems this particular psalm might not have been written by David after all but in his style or tagged with his name. Doh! Another great theory bites the dust ... or not as the case may be.
The issue of the hills
Starting with this vivid retorical question.I currently live in a little town at a low point where 2 small river valleys meet. They call it a cuvette, bowl (same word as used for a toilet bowl) and in 3 directions all you can see is hill. This made it a difficult position to attack in the past as you only have to put guards at the passes. This also gives it an excellent microclimate as rain clouds get driven to one side or the other but their water still comes via the streams and rivers off the hills. I suspect that on a bigger scale Jerusalem, as indeed Rome, had similar benefits.
But it's an odd thing, when you're going around the place just how little we do actually lift our eyes up. I sometimes do it and think, Oh wow, a hill! Coming from Eastern England and then living near Flanders what an odd experience. It makes me think of Phillip Larkin saying about old Hull "Ships up streets" this is hills up streets. My first reaction was a slight claustrophobia, but regularly driving home from work coming up from the Rhone valley, over the top into our little cuvette started to feel symbolically a very safe thing to do and I had a regular comforting prayer image in my mind of being like a chick nestled in a big farmer hand, with God's hand being like the valley I was driving down into.
But in this psalm the image is different. He's not looking to the hills to save him, he's looking for reinforcements or supplies to arrive over the tops of the hills.
If David wrote it I suppose he would have been fairly newly installed in Jerusalem of course, though it's later use was as fan song to sing 'in the bus' ie in the caravan by pilgirims. I've not read this anywhere but when I did a word study on 'king' and looked at when it was first applied to God I found Samuel addressing God as Sovereign Lord. Then I found David's prayers and psalms call God King.
Given that it's a Song of Ascents, so to sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, it feels to me like reflection on the fact that although this wonderful and relatively new capital city seems in an extraordinarily safe situation, that even she can't depnd on that for her safety. After all, David conquered her so she's not invincible.
It reminds me about not just relying on what I find humanly comfortable, as in the end I could just as easily end up trapped in the valley, or trapped in the false sense of security given by my material comforts.
I think this Cv19 outbreak is showing up just how unreliable some of our survival strategies can be faced with something where the best and safest behaviour is quite counter intuitive. We want to huddle. Out of the question. We want to brave it out and carry on as normal. Unthinkable.
The Guard Poem
After the intitial question the poem with 3 uses of one noun - the guard or the keeper, then 3 uses of the verb.
I wonder if the 'problem' of the hills is a distraction from the larger sense of this song.
What if the picture was more to do with David reflecting on the novelty of being royalty in his new capital city but bearing in mind the caution of his promoter, Samuel, he too wants to emphasise that it's God that's king over all.
For me what jumps out of the picture is the image of a sheikh with a body guard on one side and a parasol holder on the other.
When I did a word study on "king" I found the first references to God being one were Samuel saying "Sovereign Lord". Then David making all his royal allusions to God.
It makes me wonder if both, being conscious that kings weren't really God's choice, were trying to underline that just because the country suddenly has a classic (for the time) monarchy with the much desired standing army to make them feel safe, in fact that's not really where the nation's security comes from.
I wonder if they both felt the need to counterbalance the spin shown so clearly in Judges that it was a king that would give vision and bring order and security to the nation. So they, well David in particular, kept using royal pictures in his prayers and worship songs to keep people focussed on God and off himself. Expectations of him and his successors could have been unrealisticly high, even worse, his own expectations of himself and he'd seen what happened to his father-in-law Saul. I really respect his humanity and his humility. He's saying - you want me to be your king, your guard, your shepherd, your judge but God is my king, guard, shepherd, judge, so even under me you're really under him.
Despite the emphasis on pilgrimage to Jerusalem for worship I'm sure people would have looked to the new monarchy, it's palaces, rituals and official for shows of pomp, status and national pride so they could now compete with neighbouring kingdoms and hold their heads up. The sheep people are no longer just hicks who only manage to strike back at their powerful neighbours' raids once a generation. They'd no longer be in the shadow of those amazing Phoenician trading cities along their west coast, a humble milk cow for the Philistine raiders.
I don't think the picture is quite as weak as our modern view would make it, with God being merely a body guard and shade holder. I suspect they were very high status jobs being in permanent intimate contact with a king, a situation of total trust. I think David is saying I'm not looking for reinforcements from outside, or even the city's amazing geographical location as security, as I have The Lord as personal guard.
I think this sort of close personalising of God's role fits with The Shepherd image too. All designed to balance the fact that they would soon have a temple to focus on as well as a king to rely on and maybe David was very aware in his own life how he didn't want to loose the close, even intimate faith he and his followers had had in his adventures and wanderings.
The pilgrims singing this would have a powerful picture in their heads as it starts in the first person singular - the great David himself has given them this reassurance as they travel through well known bandit territory in the foothills leading towards Jerusalem (Good Samaritan country, also the first reason for founding the Knights Templar for protecting pilgrims in that self same region albeit so many years later) - as David had relied on God to be his closest body guard (imperial guard) he was saying that God was not locked up in the temple only accessible to priests through the rituals they were on their way to participate in.
I find this all particularly helpful and relevant at our time in history where we're looking to scientists to come up with solutions, doctors to fix us, governments to manage the national crisis. And so we should, that's fine, it's their job. But to see beyond that to the one in whom we put our ultimate trust puts the whole thing in quite a different perspective. I look up to the hills to see if they're managing to keep out the enemy, and are reinforements are coming. But in my heart of hearts I know my ultimate guide, guard, government, is God.
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