Psalms 121King James Version

The great guardian psalm of the ascent collection. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the LORD who made heaven and earth. He will not suffer your foot to be moved; he that keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he that keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper, your shade at the right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day nor the moon by night. The LORD shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.

The keeper of Israel does not sleep, cannot be distracted, and his protection covers every vulnerability: day and night, going and coming, from this moment to forever.

verse: "The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore." Every departure and every return, from now until the end of everything.

Superscription: 'A Song of degrees.' The second of the ascent psalms. The question in v1 ('from whence cometh my help?') may be a pilgrim rhetorical question: looking toward the hills where bandits hid, and locating help not in geography but in the maker of the geography. The keeper-sleep contrast (v3-4) responds to the Baal-mocking of Elijah in 1 Kings 18:27.

The pilgrim as the one who lifts eyes to the hills; God as the keeper who never slumbers; Israel as the collective people under the same guardianship; the sun and moon as the dangers from which God protects.

Psalm 121 is among the most universally known psalms, used at births, deaths, departures, and returns in Jewish and Christian tradition. The repetition of the root 'keep/preserve' six times in eight verses creates a verbal canopy of protection. The hills of v1 may be either Jerusalem's hills (toward which the pilgrim travels) or threatening hills where bandits lurked on the road.

For any departure: a journey, a procedure, a transition, a death. The psalm covers the going out and the coming in. Both directions are under the same protection.