Before cell phones, before radios, before even postal services connected distant towns, a lone traveler climbing into the Judean mountains faced a terrifying reality. If bandits attacked, if injury struck, if illness came—there would be no help. No one would hear their cries. The mountains that rose before them represented not just a physical challenge but complete vulnerability.
This was the world of ancient Israel, where a journey of even twenty miles meant days of exposure to danger with no way to call for assistance. When you left your village and headed into the wilderness, you were truly alone.
Psalm 121 opens with a traveler facing exactly this moment:
The contemporary Israeli Bible scholar Amos Hakham understood this psalm as a conversation between a traveler about to set out and a friend seeing him off. The traveler looks at the mountains ahead and asks the question that must have haunted countless ancient journeys: where will help come from when I’m out there, exposed and alone?
But there’s another way to read this psalm. Rabbi David Kimchi saw it as the cry of Jews in exile, looking up at the “mountains”—the mighty empires and kingdoms that surrounded them. The question becomes: which great power will help us through this bitter exile? Rome? Babylon? Persia? Which mountain of human strength will be our salvation?
Both readings circle around the same fear: human vulnerability in the face of forces we cannot control.
The traveler in Hakham’s reading answers his own question: “My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.” Not from the mountains themselves, not from the kingdoms represented by those mountains, but from the one who created them all.
Notice the verb tense. Not “who made” heaven and earth in some distant past, but “maker”—present tense, ongoing. This reflects a core Jewish understanding: God didn’t wind up creation like a clock and walk away. He continues to sustain the world at every moment. As the liturgy says, God “renews daily the work of creation.” The fact that the sun rises each morning, that gravity continues to function, that the natural order persists—this isn’t mechanical momentum from an ancient act of creation. It’s active, present divine involvement.
The friend responds with a blessing:
Here’s where the psalm reveals something striking about divine protection versus human protection. Every human guardian, no matter how devoted, must eventually sleep. The night watchman grows tired. The bodyguard’s attention wavers. The sentry’s eyes close. Even the most vigilant human protection has gaps, moments of vulnerability when we’re unguarded.
But the guardian of Israel?
The Hebrew makes a distinction here between two levels of sleep: slumber and sleep. One is light sleep, the other deep sleep. God experiences neither. There is no moment, not even a second, when the divine eye closes or attention drifts. The protection is unbroken from one end of time to the other.
The blessing continues:
This pairs the heat of the Mediterranean sun—which could bring heatstroke and dehydration—with the cold of night. The ancient world believed the moon itself could be harmful (we still use the word “lunatic” from this belief), but the verse also simply refers to the dual dangers of extreme temperature. From the blazing heat of midday to the bitter cold of a mountain night, God’s protection covers all conditions.
Then comes the most expansive promise: “The Lord will guard you from all harm; he will guard your soul.”
The word translated as “soul” here is nefesh. It means more than just staying alive physically. It encompasses spiritual protection, mental protection, the preservation of one’s essential self. The blessing extends beyond not getting attacked by bandits, for example, to protection from losing oneself on the journey.
The psalm ends:
If we stay with Hakham’s reading, this is the friend’s final blessing for the specific journey—protection from departure to return. If we follow Radak’s interpretation about exile, it becomes God’s promise to watch over Israel from the moment of exile until the return home.
But both interpretations point toward something larger. The journey isn’t just one trip through the mountains or even the long exile from the land. It’s the journey of a human life—from birth to death, from beginning to end.
We all face moments when we look at the mountains ahead and wonder where help will come from. These mountains take different forms. Sometimes they’re literal dangers—illness, financial crisis, threats to our safety. Sometimes they’re the great powers and systems that seem to control our fate—governments, economies, cultural forces that feel as immovable as stone. Sometimes they’re just the ordinary challenges of life that leave us feeling small and vulnerable.
The psalm’s answer doesn’t minimize these dangers or pretend the mountains aren’t real. Instead, it redirects our gaze. The help doesn’t come from the mountains or from our own ability to climb them. It comes from the one who made the mountains in the first place.
This isn’t passive resignation. The psalm is recited as one of the “Songs of Ascents”—psalms sung by pilgrims actively making the journey up to Jerusalem, or by the Levites standing on the Temple steps. The trust in divine protection doesn’t replace action; it accompanies it. You still make the journey. You still climb the mountain. But you climb knowing who guards your steps.
There’s a reason this psalm has been recited in times of trouble throughout Jewish history. When the mountains loom large—whether they’re the armies of empires or the challenges of daily life—human help always proves limited. Human guardians sleep. Human strength fails. Human kingdoms rise and fall.
But the guardian of Israel never closes his eyes. The protection that began when our ancestors left Egypt continues through every generation, through every exile and return, through every personal journey from beginning to end. From the moment we enter this world until we leave it, the same guardian who split the sea and brought our people home from Babylon watches over each step.
The traveler in Psalm 121 eventually had to stop looking at the mountains and start walking. But he walked differently, knowing that the maker of those mountains was walking with him—not as a distant force but as a guardian at his right hand, watching every step, never sleeping, protecting both body and soul from departure to return.
That remains true whether the journey is twenty miles through the Judean wilderness or 120 years through this world. The guardian still doesn’t sleep, and the protection still holds, now and forever.
This article is based on my series on Psalms on Bible Plus.
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