Understanding the Psalms of Ascent

Lindsey admits she’s struggled in the past to connect with the Psalms–but her recent deep dive into the structure and purpose of the Psalms of Ascent has her nerding out over God’s design for these special songs of pilgrimage. Check out her video to understand how the Psalms of Ascent work structurally to add thematic meaning to this pre-Feast season. In place of our traditional weekly study guide follow along in our booklet, Pilgrimage and Parables, Our Walk to the Kingdom or use the reflection questions below to add depth to this week’s study. 

[Transcript]

Hi! Welcome to the Psalms of Ascent. I have a confession to make:

I've never really enjoyed the Psalms.

I appreciate their emotional depth, but there just wasn't enough storyline or enough connections to really connect with me. And having done this study on the Psalms of Ascent, I completely repent of that attitude; I think they're fascinating now! So, I'd like to share a few things that fascinate me to hopefully draw you further in as we walk through this.

Hebrew Poetry Versus English Poetry

So the first thing is, how thoughtful is it—how cool—that God made Hebrew poetry based in thoughts and ideas. In English poetry, the words matter. The sound of the words, the syllables, the meter, the way you put those words together, that all really matters. And it's really untranslatable; it doesn't hit the same at all. But with Hebrew poetry, it's this rhythm of ideas, it's repetition or the foil—the comparison of the ideas—and that translates much better.

There is one particular form of Hebrew poetry or device used called chiasms, or chiastic structure, and they're fascinating. So put a pin in that; hold that idea for just a second. Chiasms.

The Psalms as a Carefully Crafted Storyline

I want to go into how the Psalms of Ascent were made. They're written by a few different people, and they're put together by an editor who wanted to chart this journey. You can think of it like a concept album: Somebody puts together all these different songs, maybe even written by different authors, to show a very carefully crafted storyline.

Chiasms and Sandwiches

All right, so coming back to chiasms, think of them like a sandwich. You have a piece of bread and then a piece of lettuce, and then your meat and then another piece of lettuce, another piece of bread. You put that all together, it's this delicious sandwich. And the meat is the most important part, right? It's the main part. So that's kind of how Hebrew chiasms work. You'll have one idea, the bread, and it's kind of paralleled by a similar idea in the slice of bread at the bottom of the sandwich. Or maybe it's an idea that's grown even more than the bread, or it's this contrast to the bread, but these two are connected somehow.

Then you have the two pieces of lettuce. They're also connected. And then you have the meat in the middle, and that is the main point of the sandwich. It's the main point of the Hebrew poem. It's what everything is leading to.

The Bible as the Ultimate Chiasm

In terms of really big chiasms, think of the Bible. You start with Genesis, and there's a tree of life, and there's a river going out to water the whole world, and God is with men. And then there's this curse. Now skip over to Revelation, and you've got this curse ending and this tree of life and this water going out and watering the whole world. And God is with men. So, right, those are the lettuce and the bread. And then you go to the middle and…and what's the middle turning point of the Bible? What's the most important part? It's the story of Christ. It's how we get from point A to point B. So those are chiasms.

Songs, Poetry, and Parables

Hebrew poetry is just like our songs, our poetry—it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It hits people emotionally differently in different stages of their life. I have a friend, and she listens to a song and I listen to the same song. She may be deeply feeling about how this song speaks to the struggles in her life, and I may hear that same song and think about how it is speaking of just the philosophy of life. And it's not wrong! Neither of us are wrong. It's just that poetry lets the author say so much more and connect so much more deeply. It's wisdom literature. It's like Jesus with the parables. He gave these parables and they hid things, but they also gave you something to chew on. It was something that you could connect to much more deeply than if it had just been precise.

The Psalms of Ascent themselves are one big chiasm.

You can start with 120, and that's the first one. And 15 later you get to 134, and those two are kind of foils of each other. In Psalm 120, you start in a dark place and you feel hopeless. And in 134, you're still in a dark place and it's night, but you're singing and praising God. Why? Because the top of the chiasm, the middle point, is that unless the Lord builds the house, unless God's part of it, it doesn't mean anything. So you can be in the dark, and it's not real good, but if God's part of it, you can be in the dark, and it can be amazing. So these chiasms continue building, mirroring each other. You have: 121 would be the same as 133. And 122, you can compare with 132. (And those are cool, actually. My challenge to you is to find out the similarities between 122 and 132 that aren't in the rest. There's something specific.)

You keep building, and each side is seven layers. In the middle of the chiasm is 127—it's the high point. It's the ascension to Jerusalem, it’s the only one written by Solomon (who built the temple) and it's all about being in His temple. The whole point of this pilgrimage is to go up to the mountain of the Lord, to go up to God's temple and worship Him. And the whole point is, if God's not in your journey, it doesn't matter—what are you doing it for? So that's something to consider, right? As we enter the Feast, we are doing what God has commanded. And is God in it? Do we remember to keepHhim in it every day? (I struggle with that sometimes.) It's a good reminder that if God's not in it, what are we doing??

Parallels Between Psalms 125 and 129

So with all that in mind, let's look at the middle five Psalms of Ascent. They can be their own chiasm, and it's a really neat one. You can look at it as a theme of people as God's crop. The Israelites would have been singing these as they go up in a pilgrimage for the Feasts on Passover, Pentecost, and the holy days in the fall—and that's the barley harvest, the wheat harvest, and just the general harvest—so crops are on people's brains. Psalm 125 is the idea that we will be planted in God's mountain, and we will be immovable forever; and the foil to that is 129. It's this cautionary tale that if you're not rooted in God, then you're like grass on a rooftop; you're just going to blow away. There's no permanence there.

Parallels Between Psalms 126 and 128

Then you look up at 126 and 128. And 126 is that God brought us out of captivity. It's like He's transplanted us here on His mountain. If you read it through the lens of Christ, I think some really cool things pop. In verse five it says, “Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy…” (So think of Christ sowing in his death—right?—the sadness of that. And what he reaped was all of mankind.) “…He who continually goes forth weeping”—(the Man of Sorrow)—“bearing seed for sowing shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bearing his sheaves with him. That's Trumpets in a nutshell! He comes again with rejoicing, and He's bringing His people with Him.

Then you have Psalm 128. And the idea of Psalm 28 is that when you are planted in God, there is growth—and it’s this abundant, explosive growth! It's just incredible blessings when you're planted in God. Again, we can look at this with a little bit of a Christ lens, and it shows some cool things. So verse 3: “Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine.” Who is the bride of Christ. It's supposed to be us, and we are supposed to bear His fruit in the very heart of our homes. Where has Christ gone? To prepare rooms in His Father's house for us, His bride, who is producing his fruit. “…Your children, like olive plants all around your table.” We are God's children, and he has invited us this Feast to come to His table, to come feast with Him, come eat with Him. And that's just a really cool way, I think, to look at that.

The Top of the Chiasm

So the top of the chiasm—Paslm 127—it's this middle piece in the Psalms of Ascent. It’s what everything's pointing to, which is this idea that if the Lord isn't in something, it doesn't matter; “unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor toil in vain.” What is the point of all this growth if God's not in it? It won't produce according to its potential. And again, you can kind of turn your Christ lens on and read verses three to five: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord…” (We have been given to Christ through His sacrifice, right?) “The fruit of the womb is a reward. "Like arrows and the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.” So we are arrows in Christ's quiver; we're meant to be shot out in the direction that He points us, to do what He wants us to do.

So that's just a really neat way to look at the Psalms—to look at how they talk to each other, how they connect to each other, what they highlight about each other. You'll find a really beautiful woven picture that stretches throughout the whole span of the Bible, and I hope you find some of the beautiful joy that's there.

Enjoy.