NOTES for Psa 121:6-7

"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!" is a call encountered repeatedly in various psalms. For the sake of brothers and neighbors, for the sake of the house of Yahweh, the hymnographer adds. What does he have in mind? Speaking of a concrete historical situation, one could say that the peace and well-being of Jerusalem and Judea also meant the peace and well-being of those living there.

Of course, well-being is a relative concept, but in any case, in the event of war there can be no talk at all of any well-being for the inhabitants of a country at war.

And yet the matter concerns not only external well-being. The psalm in which the call to pray for the peace of Jerusalem sounds is a pilgrimage hymn: pilgrims sang it as they went up first to Jerusalem, which is located at an elevation of one kilometer above sea level, and then up the steps of the Temple to the top of Mount Zion, to the temple court where the altar stood and the sacrifice was performed.

In the times of the Second Temple, when Psalm 122 was apparently written, the Jerusalem Temple was the only place where one could offer sacrifice to the One, and the very possibility of communion with God in all its fullness depended on the well-being of Jerusalem, this holy city. This truth was especially well known to the Jews of the post-exilic period, who during the whole time of exile had remained without the Temple and without sacrifices.

There is nothing surprising here: in Yahwism sacrifice was always the main form of communion with God, the shared meal of God with man. Without sacrifice, communion with God cannot be called full. In this context, the wish for peace to Jerusalem also means the wish for the well-being of God's altars.

However, there is still another aspect, connected with the history of the covenant, with the history of those relations that bind the people of God with their God. The matter concerns God's covenant with David, to whom God promised that his descendants would occupy the Jerusalem throne as long as it existed.

Precisely for this reason, already in the pre-exilic prophetic tradition the conviction was established that the Messiah, about whom Isaiah of Jerusalem was the first of the prophets to speak, would be a King from the line of David, and that He would rule, like David, in Jerusalem. Here the wish for peace to Jerusalem becomes a request to God that He not forget His covenant with David and that He remember His people, who await the promised Messiah.

For Jewish pilgrims going to Jerusalem, all three aspects connected with Jerusalem's sacred status were relevant. They remain relevant for us today as well: the covenant with God is one, and the promises given by God are given for all times.