Psalm 120: When You Want Peace but Those Around You Want a Fight

Core Theme: For when you’re living with conflict you didn’t choose — lied about, misunderstood, and worn out by the quarreling

Background

Psalm 120 is the first of fifteen Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120–134), the songs God’s people sang as they made the climb up to Jerusalem for the feasts. It carries the heading “A Song of degrees,” meaning steps or ascents. The psalm does not name its author, but it is easy to see why it opens the collection. A pilgrim setting out for the house of God begins by remembering the place he is leaving, a place full of lies, hostility, and strife.

It is a short psalm, only seven verses, and it moves quickly: a cry for help, a rebuke to the false tongue, a lament over where he has been living, and a last confession of what is in his heart. Anyone who has ever tried to keep the peace in a home, a workplace, or a church where others seem determined to fight will recognize every line.

Psalm 120 (KJV)

1 A Song of degrees. In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me.

2 Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue.

3 What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue?

4 Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.

5 Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!

6 My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace.

7 I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.

The heart of it

Psalm 120 gives words to a particular kind of weariness: the tiredness of being around people who do not want peace. The psalmist is not the one starting fights. He says plainly, “I am for peace.” But every time he opens his mouth, others turn it into a battle. He is surrounded by “lying lips” and a “deceitful tongue,” and he has lived this way for a long time.

The psalm does something wise with that weariness. Before he describes the problem, he describes what he did about it: “In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me.” The cry came first, and the answer came with it. The remainder of the psalm explains what he was crying about, but the outcome is already settled in verse 1. God heard him.

That order is worth keeping in mind for anyone in a conflict that will not end. We often begin with the problem and wonder whether God will do anything. David reverses it. He begins with a God who hears, and then he brings Him the problem.

Walking through it

Verses 1–2: “In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me.”

“In my distress” points back to a time of real pressure, and the verb is in the past: I cried, and he heard. This is what makes the psalm so steady. The man who is writing is already on the other side of at least one answered prayer, and he carries that confidence into the next prayer. In verse 2 he asks for the thing he most needs: “Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue.” Notice that he asks to be delivered in his soul. Lies do their damage there, in our trust, our peace, and our sense of being known truly. The Lord cares about the soul under attack and not only the circumstances.

Verses 3–4: “What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue?”

Here the psalmist speaks directly to the lying tongue itself and asks what its end will be. The answer in verse 4 is a picture of judgment: “Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper.” Arrows of a warrior strike hard and from a distance, and juniper wood was known for burning hot and for a long time, so its coals held their heat. God’s answer to the false tongue is not mild. Proverbs 12:22 says, “Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight.” James 3:6 reminds us how much damage a tongue can do: “…the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity…” The psalmist does not take revenge into his own hands. He leaves the false tongue with God, who judges justly.

Verses 5–6: “Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!”

Mesech [Meshech] was a distant northern people, and Kedar was a nomadic tribe of the Arabian desert, two places far apart on the map. The psalmist cannot literally live in both. He is using them as pictures of a hostile, foreign world where he does not belong. To “sojourn” is to live somewhere as a stranger, a temporary resident, and that is how he feels. He has “long dwelt with him that hateth peace,” and the length of it wears on him. If you have lived for years with someone who is always stirring up trouble, you know the particular tiredness of verse 6. The psalmist does not pretend it is easy. He says “woe is me,” and the Lord lets that stand in His Word.

Verse 7: “I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.”

This is the confession at the heart of the psalm, and it is a quiet one. He is for peace. He does not say he has been perfect, but he says what direction his heart is facing. And yet he runs into people who want the opposite, so that even gentle words are met with hostility. The Bible takes this seriously and does not promise that peace is always possible. Romans 12:18 says, “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” Notice the honesty in those words: if it be possible, and as much as lieth in you. Some people will not be at peace no matter what we do. Our part is to want peace and pursue it, and as Psalm 34:14 says, “Seek peace, and pursue it.”

Carrying this forward

If the Lord has already brought you out of a season of living among strife and false words, remember how He did it, and keep a gentle hold on what you learned there. The psalmist’s heart stayed set on peace even when no one around him cared. Let that be your mark too. Our Lord said, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). The person who has come through conflict is often the best equipped to bring a little peace into someone else’s.

And if you are in the middle of it now, in a family, a workplace, or even a church where the quarreling does not stop, begin where the psalmist began: cry out to the Lord. He hears. Tell Him about the lies and how tired you are, and ask Him to guard your soul. Then follow the example of Christ, “Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). You are not required to win every argument or fix every person. You are called to keep your heart for peace and leave the rest with the One who sees. And remember that this is a song for pilgrims. The Lord’s people are strangers and travelers here (1 Peter 2:11), on their way up to a place where lying lips and war are no more.