NOTES for Psa 120:7
In various psalms, confidence is repeatedly expressed that God will preserve His faithful from every evil. At first glance these statements can seem overly optimistic. Who does not know that in every age quite a lot of troubles and sufferings usually fall to the righteous? But such an answer seems entirely unambiguous only at first glance.
What can be considered evil for a person? The answer depends entirely on the system of values and priorities by which this or that person is guided. Good for one can quite well turn out to be evil for another. In the psalm, however, the question is not simply about a person, but about a person of God, about such a person who has set out on the path of righteousness. Here the question of good and evil is wholly determined by God's will, by the Torah, by the commandments.
And in principle it is also resolved differently than when a person lives according to the laws of this world. What can be considered the main goal of the righteous person? What is his highest good? As for every person, for the righteous person the highest good would be the possibility of reaching the goal toward which the path he has chosen leads him.
In this world it often happens that a person who strove for a goal and reached it then becomes disappointed in it, not finding in it what he was seeking. This cannot happen with the righteous person: he will not be disappointed in his goal. And the goal, taking the path of righteousness as a whole, from beginning to end, is the Kingdom.
Before Christ's coming it was still too early to speak of this, but after His coming it became clear: the path of every righteous person ends exactly there, in the Kingdom. Therefore, the only evil for the righteous person will be whatever hinders him from walking the path of righteousness and reaching the Kingdom.
In that case the confidence of the hymnographers that God will preserve His faithful from evil takes on a new meaning: it is about God helping them walk to the end the path they have chosen and reach the goal that awaits them at the end. The troubles and hardships awaiting them on the way, in that case, will no longer be evil in themselves. They, like all circumstances of life, are only a kind of raw material, initial material, which can work either for the benefit or for the harm of the one walking the path of righteousness, which of course in no way justifies those who seek to make the righteous person's path harder and complicate his life.
God promises His faithful that He will not leave them and will do everything so that they reach the goal, obtaining the Kingdom and salvation at the end of the road.