The Hills

There are many types of hills.  There are hills that lead to valleys and there are hills that lead to mountains.  There are hills of green pasture and wooded hills.  There are even everlasting hills.  But the hills on which this discussion will focus are the hills that David looked to in Psalms 121.  

David begins this beautiful psalm with the words, “I lift my eyes to the hills.”  He follows this with a rhetorical question - “Where does my help come from?”  David indicates that he is looking for the source of his help, the place or the person who would help him.  

Of course, David knew from where his help was coming. He says in his very next sentence, “My help comes from the Lord…” (vs 2).  So obviously David’s reference to searching in verse one is for our benefit.  But why was he searching the hills?  Why look to the hills in your search of help?  

In the good old days, when David wrote this psalm, it was common for large villages and cities to be built with good lines of sight so that the inhabitants might see what was coming to the city.  It established what was in essence an advanced warning system using lookouts, or watchmen, and the terrain surrounding the city to prevent surprise attacks. It was also customary that all large villages and cities would have a wall surrounding them. The defensive structure of a wall was very effective when no one had airplanes to fly over them.  A walled city was a daunting obstacle to an armies advance.  

The obvious offensive action to be taken against a walled city was to tear down the walls.  But the cost of life and resources when taking on such a task was high, to say the least.  Walls had archers on them and archers shot arrows that killed people and destroyed stuff.  So attacking armies would devise plans to conquer walled cities with as low of a cost as possible.  The most common plan implemented was a siege.  A siege basically involved surrounding an enemy city, cutting off all sources of water and food to the inhabitants and waiting until the city got so desperate that they would surrender or try to fight their way out.

A siege could take some time.  People can last a little time without water and a little longer without food.  Villages would often stockpile for the eventuality of a siege, planning to outlast the enemy. Even if successful, an enemy was looking at several months of occupation at the siege before the will of the city’s inhabitants would crack.  A lot can happen in a few months.  This is what David was referring to in Psalms 121.  David was looking to the hills for help, an ally to come from the hills to break the enemy’s siege.  It was near impossible for an army to maintain a successful siege while also fending off an attack from an opposing force outside the city.  A friendly army on the hills was a sure sign of salvation and David was looking for one.  

In Psalms 121, David masterfully lays out for the believer a life lesson that is worth remembering.  He was speaking to Israel but I believe that the Spirit of God was speaking through his writings to all generations of God’s children to follow.  There is indeed an enemy.  And he most certainly lays siege on us in this fallen and sinful world.  In those times of desperation, David reminds us, to look, to see and to know from where our help comes.  Our help comes from the Lord.  

Our Lord was familiar with hills.  In fact He ascended one on a long and grueling march.   Our Lord carried a cross to a place of death and judgement known as Golgotha, or “the place of the skull”.  Our Lord suffered and died on that hill.  But our Lord, the same lord referred to in Psalms 121, could not be defeated at Golgotha.  David looked to the hills for his salvation.  Now we can look to a hill, once a place of death, but now a hill of salvation.  Golgotha has become Calvary.  It is a sign to every child of God under siege by an enemy, that there is a risen Savior on the hills.  Every believer can know even in the most desperate times that a Conqueror is on the way.  He is an ever present help in times of trouble.  He will indeed keep your life “from this time forth and forevermore.”  Salvation is on the hills, Christian.  Look and see.