Psalm 120 — 1 A Song of degrees. In my distress I cried to YAHWEH, and HE answered me. 2 Deliver my soul, O YAHWEH, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue. 3 What shall be given to you? or what shall be done to you, you 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 has long dwelt with him that hates shalom. 7 I am for shalom: but when I speak, they are for war.
“‘A Song of degrees.’— The next 15 Psalms (120-134) are knows as the “Psalms of Ascent” or the songs for “going up.” They were the songs commonly sung by those Israelites on their return journey back to Jerusalem three times a year for the required feasts (Deut 16:16). Imagine traveling through the hillsides surrounding Jerusalem as you make your way with other weary travelers, united in song and looking forward to laying your eyes on the Temple, God’s dwelling place. These songs were also sung by the priests as they entered into the Temple area for their time of service.” (Revived By His Word) “Kimchi, and some of the rabbins say, they were so called because they were sung on the steps of the second temple, which were fifteen in number.” (Adam Clarke)
“It is a painful but useful lesson which is taught by this first of the Pilgrim Psalms, that all who manifest a resolution to obey the commands and seek the favour of God, may expect to encounter opposition and reproach in such a course... This these worshippers of old found when preparing to seek the Lord in his Temple. They were watched in their preparation by malignant eyes; they were followed to the house of prayer by the contempt and insinuations of bitter tongues. But their refuge is in Him they worship; and, firmly convinced that He never can forsake His servants, they look up through the cloud of obloquy to His throne, and implore the succour which they know that His children shall ever find there. ‘O LORD, in this my trouble deliver my soul.’” (Robert Nisbet)
“In my distress I cried to YAHWEH, and He answered me.’ Very blessed are they that mourn while they are travelling the long upward journey from the Galilee of the Gentiles of this lower world to the heavenly Jerusalem, the high and holy city of the saints of God.” (J.W. Burgon, in "A Plain Commentary”)—> “Deliver my soul,’ that is me, ‘O YAHWEH, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue.’ (2) “’What shall be given [thee]?’ Intimating that his enemy expected some great reward for his malice against David; but, saith the Psalmist, he shall have ‘sharp arrows of the Almighty, with coals of juniper;’ as if he had said, ‘Whatever reward he have from men, this shall be his reward from God.’” (John Jackson, in "The Morning Exercises," 1661)—"'Or what shall be done to you, you false tongue?’ "How will God punish thee?" (Albert Barnes) Slanderers, like all sinners, will not be tormented throughout eternity. They'll be cut through by the sword of of the Word God by which every man and woman will be judged in the end time.(John 12:48) But ultimately, they will be utterly destroyed in the fires of hell. (Romans 6:23a) “He assured himself that God would turn their craft to their own destruction.” (Geneva Study Bible)— “in reply to the question of Psalm 120:3.” (Jamieson. Faussett, Brown)
“The punishment of an evil tongue from the Lord is intended, whose sore judgments are often compared to arrows, Deuteronomy 32:23; because they come from above, and bring swift and sudden destruction with them; and are very sharp in the hearts of his enemies; are very severe and cutting, and come with power irresistible, being the arrows of the Almighty, Job 6:4; see Jeremiah 50:9.” (John Gill)— “’And coals of juniper’— “‘And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among the members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.’ (Jam 3:6)… And here is the punishment: ‘Coals of juniper,’ remarkable for their long retention of heat. And yet what a feeble illustration of the wrath of God, which burns down to the lowest hell! ‘His lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire.’ Liars are excluded from heaven by a special enactment of the Sovereign; and all of them ‘shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.’” (N. McMichael ) “Stand now with your enchantments and the multitude of your sorceries, in which you have labored from your youth— perhaps you will be able to profit, perhaps you will prevail. You are wearied in the multitude of your counsels; let now the astrologers, the stargazers, and the monthly prognosticators stand up and save you from what shall come upon you. Behold, they shall be as stubble, the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame; it shall not be a coal to be warmed by, nor a fire to sit before!” (Isaiah 47:12-14)
“‘Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!’ (5) Mesech and Kedar are two sorts of people, oft mentioned in Scripture, and reckoned amongst the heathen and barbarous nations.
But their nurses are not here to be understood properly, (for we do not read that either David or the Israelites in the Babylonish captivity dwelt in their lands,) but only metaphorically, as the ungodly Israelites are called Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaiah 1:10, and Amorites and Hittithes, Ezekiel 16:3,45, and as :in common speech among us, men of an evil character are called Turks or Jews. And so he explains himself in the next verse by this description of them, him or them that hated peace, although David sought peace with them, Psalms 120:7. And so he speaks either, 1. Of the Philistines, among whom he sojourned for a time. But he did not seek peace with them, but sought their ruin, as the event showed; nor did they wage war against him, whilst he lived peaceably among them. Or rather, 2. The courtiers and soldiers of Saul, and the generality of the Israelites, who, to curry favour with Saul, sought David’s ruin, and that many times by treachery and pretences of friendship; of which he oft complains in this book; whom as he elsewhere calls heathen, as Psalms 9:5 59:5, it is not strange if he compares them here to the savage Arabians. And amongst such persons David was oft forced to sojourn in Saul’s time, and with them he sought peace by all ways possible; but they hated peace, and the more he pursued peace, the more eagerly did they prosecute the war, as it here follows.” (Matthew Poole)
David refers to “anywhere out of the bosom of the true Church; or (as some sense it) in the Church, but among Israelites worse than any Ishmaelites or Pagans.” (Trapp) “My soul has long dwelt with him that hates shalom.’ (6) With Saul, that implacable tyrant, and with other barbarous and brutish persons, skilful to destroy.” (John Trapp) “’I am for shalom.; David “spoke with all respect and kindness that could be; proposed methods of accommodation; spoke reason, spoke love; ‘but when I speak, they are for war.’ (7)They would not so much as hear him patiently.” (Matthew Henry) “He declares [here] what he means by Meshech and Kedar, that is, the Israelites who had degenerated from their godly fathers, and hated and contended against the faithful.” (Geneva Study Bible) “Our Lord was with the wild beasts in the wilderness. There are not a few who would rather face even these than the angry spirits which, alas, are still to be found even in Christian Churches.” (Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1879)