In my distress I cried unto the LORD, and he heard me. Psalms 120:1-7.-The first of the fifteen "Songs of degrees."
The Septuagint, not probably, translate, 'Songs of the steps' [toon anabathmoon] - namely, sung on thee fifteen steps between the court of the women and that of the men х shiyr (H7892) hama`ªlowt (H4609): in Psalms 121:1-8, lama`ªlowt (H4609)]. They all have a general, not an individual character, referring to Israel, the literal and the spiritual, whom God's providence ever guards (Psalms 124:1; Psalms 125:5; Psalms 128:6; Psalms 130:8; 131:8). The state of things in many of these psalms answers to that after the Babylonian captivity, when the building of the temple was interrupted by the Samaritans. The "sanctuary," in Psalms 134:1-3, is the altar erected at the return from Babylon (536 BC), for the daily sacrifices (535 BC, Ezra 3:2-4; Ezra 3:8). The temple begun under Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest, through the Samaritan opposition, was not completed until 515 BC, with the held of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah (Ezra 6:14). The Hebrew for "degrees" is the regular term for 'going up' to Jerusalem, which was regarded as on a moral elevation above all other places. Literally, 'A song for THE ascendings" - namely, the stated annual journeys of successive pilgrims to the Jerusalem great feasts (cf. Psalms 122:1; Psalms 122:4; Exodus 34:24; 1 Kings 12:27-28). The simple style, the brevity, and transitions formed by retaining a word from the previous verse, are appropriate to pilgrim-song poetry. Psalms 122:1-9 is the oldest, being composed by David to supply the northern Israelites with a pilgrim-song in their journeys to Zion, where Asaph had warned them to repair, now that the ark was transferred from Shiloh there (Psalms 78:67-69). Solomon wrote Psalms 127:1-5, round which, as a center, a third poet, on the return from Babylon, grouped with David's four psalms ten other psalms, seven on one side and seven on the other.
Psalms 120:1-7.-Israel in distress cries to the Lord, and anticipates that the foes' slanders shall recoil upon and burn themselves as hot coals (Psalms 120:1-4); Israel's lament over the perpetual war in which she is forced to dwell by peace-hating foes (vv. 5,6). The Samaritans, when rejected as brethren in rebuilding the temple, by slanders interrupted the work until the reign of Darius, King of Persia, when their lying charges of treason were foiled and the temple rebuilt, (Ezra 4:1-24; Ezra 5:1-17; Ezra 6:1-22.)
In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me. The Lord's deliverance of Israel out of Babylon, already accomplished, in answer to her prayer (cf. Daniel 9:1-27), is made the ground on which the prayer of faith (James 1:6) for the completion of the nation's establishment in Jerusalem rests.