The Israelites had lost their way.
Some might argue this began with the rise and fall of the many kings doing evil in the sight of the Lord. Some might push it farther back to Solomon who brought in idols from the nations of his wives and concubines. Some might say they began to lose their way when they requested a king instead of a judge. Some might even push if farther back to when the Israelites did not cleanse the land of its idols and inhabitants upon crossing the Jordan River, or even to the time when God spoke to them from Mount Sinai and they cried out in fear saying they didn’t want to hear from God directly. But I suspect each of these incidents is merely evidence that they had lost their way long before they were known as Israelites and even before there was a race of men from whom Abram was chosen. I suspect they lost their way in the garden when Adam and Eve sought for wisdom in creation, abandoning the God of Wisdom himself who walked with them in the garden in the cool of the day.
As I have ever more come to believe, the Psalms is a collection of individual poems and songs which, when read together as one work, tell the story of a people who have lost their way and then find it again. In Book I and II we find a person and a king struggling with the pains in this life who seeks the will of the Lord with Book II ending with a psalm anticipating the righteous and just rule of the coming king. But this king was just the beginning of a long string of kings who failed as Book III is full of laments about how the nation had become lost and the people were sent into exile. Book IV then returns the reader to the only unmovable truth upon which trust can be built, the God who created humanity and wants to be our salvation. Book V begins with praise and, in a very real sense, culminates with the beautifully constructed and worded Psalm 119 praising the word of God for being the source of life salvation. Following this we find this a section of fifteen psalms all given the title of Songs of Ascent.
There are a number of theories concerning why these psalms are named as such, among which the two most likely are 1) that they were sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem for one of the three major festivals (Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles), or 2) that they were sung by the Levites as they ascended the fifteen steps leading up to the temple in Jerusalem during the temple services. In either case it seems clear that these psalms are intended to lead the reader along a short pilgrimage, if you will, to an encounter with the presence of God on his holy temple in Jerusalem.
It should not be lost to us that these Songs of Ascent do not return the Israelite to the many places where we think they had lost their way. They do not ascend to the throne of a human king, to the hill upon which an idol’s temple was built, or even Mt. Sinai’s law and judgment accompanied by lightning, thunder, and earthquakes. Rather these steps ascend to the temple of the living God, the source of salvation, redemption, and life. This is the king the Israelites longed for in Book I and II, but not a king born of human parentage rather the King from the realm of eternity coming to earth to live with humanity. This King does not sit on a throne built by human hands, rather he fills the temple with his glory where all may go to worship and find life. In these fifteen psalms we will find many cries, confessions, and proclamations as we, along with the Israelites and the psalmists draw close to the throne of God finally finding our way again after being lost for so long.
