Excerpt From: “Wrecked Narratives, Meaning, and the Songs of Ascent”
By Benjamin Williams and Ian McLoud (April 2013)
Introduction
All of the psalms find themselves in a place between worlds. As Bonhoeffer
wrote, “The Psalter occupies a unique place in the Holy Scriptures. It is God’s Word
and…the prayer of men as well.”1 Just as the psalms form a bridge between the human
and the divine, they also stretch across generations. In particular, the Songs of Ascent
convey memory from one generation to the next and help to provide a way for
oppressed communities to tell their way out of the wreckage that has become the
narrative of the community. This paper will describe how the Songs of Ascent function
as memory for the oppressed Exilic community and then show how this same function
was co-opted by the African-American slave community as well.
Examination of Songs of Ascent
The Songs of Ascent are a collection within Book V, which itself is a collection
within the larger collection of the Psalter. Each of these psalms begins with the title,
, “A Song of Ascents.”2 The collection, psalms 120-134, follows after the
magnum opus dedicated to Torah contained within Psalm 119. After the last psalm of
ascent, two more great psalms of praise ensue. Psalm 135 & 136 swell in the telling of
YHWH’s historically great works from Egypt on forward. This elevated chorus
crescendos in the repetitive song of 136, and then crashes headlong into the despair of
Psalm 137. This psalm is an unspeakably deep lament that picks up the telling of
1
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community (New York:
Harper Collins, 2009), 44.
2
Ps 121 is inexplicably varied, but only slightly:
. Leslie C. Allen, Word Biblical
Commentary: Psalms 101-150 (Waco: Word Books, 1983), 193.
Israel’s story from the previous song, but in a different emotional key. The psalm begins
at the “rivers of Babylon” and ends with a prayer of blessing on those that take
Babylonian children and “dash them against the rock.”
To help make sense of this arrangement, Brueggemann builds on the work of
Ricoeur to divide all the psalms into classes of orientation, disorientation, and
reorientation.3 The psalms of orientation, into which category Brueggemann places
some of the Songs of Ascent (127, 128, 131, 133), reflect “domestic life that is in good
order. They are the voice of genuine gratitude and piety for such rich blessings.”4 They
are songs that set the stage for the devastating psalms of disorientation (such as the
crisis-lament of 137) and then those of a reorientation that give thanks for a new reality.
The collection allows the fractured memory of the past to create a language of hope for
the future.
As to the arrangement of the ascent psalms, several attempts have been made
to provide some type of rule that explains this collection. From a literary perspective, it is
possible that the “ascents” from which the title derives are the stair-stepping repetition of
words from early in each psalm.5 In Psalm 120 for example,
, “a deceitful
tongue,” is mentioned in verse 2 and then repeated in verse 3. Verse 6 repeats
had my dwelling,” from
, “I must live,” in verse 5, just as verse 7 repeats
, “I
from
verse 6. “However, the phenomenon is not restricted to this particular group of psalms,
nor does it appear consistently in all its members.”6 Other possibilities include a tradition
from the Mishnah that interprets the ascents as connected to the fifteen steps leading
3
15.
4
Walter Brueggemann, The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 8-
Brueggemann, 9-10.
This argument is made with the examples that follow by Mitchell Dahood, The Anchor Bible:
Psalms 101-150 (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1968), 194.
6
Allen, 193.
5
up to the court of Israel in the temple or possibly connected to the benediction of
Numbers 6:24-25 that was pronounced on the steps of the porch.7
However, the most popular explanation of this collection is that these psalms
“constitute a series of pilgrimage songs that stress trust in God and regard the Temple
as the locus of worship and blessing.”8 Some version of this view goes back at least as
far as Ewald: “In his Introduction to Die poetischen Bücher des Alten Bundes (1839),
and elsewhere, he translated it ‘Songs of the Pilgrim caravans’ or ‘of the homeward
marches,’ and explained these fifteen Psalms as old and new travelling songs of those
returning from the Exile.”9 Allen states the case for this interpretation based on the verb
, “go up,” being used in reference to pilgrimage in Psalm 24:3 and Isaiah 2:3.10
If the Songs of Ascent are understood in this way, it helps greatly to understand
the ambiguity found in trying to place them into an historical context. Israel’s history is
rife with opportunities to sings such songs as these:
“For example, three times a year the nation was called to Jerusalem for three
great pilgrimage feasts, Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Ingathering (Exod
23:14-17; Isa 30:29). These were some of the songs of the journey to these
feasts. The title may also represent the processional ceremonial ‘ascents’ to the
temple at the festivals, either by the pilgrims themselves, or the professional
choirs (cf. 2 Sam 6:12; 1 Kgs 13:33; 2 Kgs 23:2; Neh 12:37; Ps 42:4; Isa 26:2;
30:29; Jer 31:6 Mic 4:2). Then, these songs are likely to have been among those
sung by the returning exiles from Babylon as they ascended the mountains to
Jerusalem and home (Ezra 2:1; 7:7).”11
The persistent pilgrimage narrative that lives within essentially all of Hebrew history
allows the student of these psalms to appreciate them as timeless works. While the final
7
Allen, 193-4.
Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 2006), 677.
9
Franz Delitzsch and Carl Friedrich Keil, Psalms (1866-91, Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson
Publishers, 1996), 264.
10
Allen, 194.
11
David G. Barker, “Voices for the pilgrimage: a study in the Songs of Ascent,” Expository
Times 116, no. 4 (January 1, 2005), 110.
8
collection makes perfect sense as a post-exilic product, the content of the psalms would
reflect much earlier works, either merely in borrowed phrases or possibly in the form of
complete psalms.
Psalm 120 is a fairly literal expression of the sojourner ethos. It cries to God for
deliverance out of deceit and into peace, all while dwelling as an “alien.” Psalm 121 is a
conveyed memory of a God who “is your keeper.” The sojourner would feel that
sentiment personally, but would sing the song and long for memory of the Deliver to be
made reality. Psalm 122 has the tones of a pre-exilic song magnifying a city “bound
firmly together” where the tribes go up to give thanks. Jerusalem is a firm kingdom-era
memory in Psalm 122 that is passed to a generation for whom Jerusalem stood on less
solid footing. In turn, Psalm 123 returns to the cry of Psalm 120, looking upward for
mercy “for we have had more than enough of contempt.”
Psalm 124 is difficult to place in an historical context. It mentions success in the
face of enemies (124:1-5) which does not sound like the sentiment of the survivors of
586 BC. However, the end of the psalm expresses a strongly post-exilic sentiment: “We
have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we
have escaped” (124:7). One can then imagine this as an integrated song that combines
a song of past victory with a new stanza expressing the post-exilic reorientation. Psalm
125 expresses a memory of a safe and secure Jerusalem, while Psalm 126 is tells of
crisis and restoration: “When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like
those who dream” (126:1). Returning to the theme of heritage and memory, Psalm 127
divides neatly into two halves. The first half declares that a house can only stand if the
YHWH is its builder (127:1-2), a sentiment that by itself would neatly describe any
phase of building or rebuilding in Israel’s history. The second half turns that same
wisdom toward the great work of building up a family as heritage (127:3-5).
Psalm 128 carries a pre-exilic flavor like that of Psalm 1 and conveys the
memory of God’s promised blessings from a prior age: “May you see the prosperity of
Jerusalem all the days of your life” (128:5). The children of the exile had seen no such
thing, but they carried the memory of that promised blessing with them in song. Psalm
129 is another ambiguous text. It could be either the memory of prior victory – “they
have not prevailed against me” (129:2) – or an original work celebrating sojourning and
restoration – “he has cut the cords of the wicked” (129:4). Standing between those two
eras, Psalms 130 and 131 carry the strains of exile, praying for forgiveness and
declaring hope to come: “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope”
(130:5). Psalm 132 is another disoriented cry for God to remember his desperate
people, this time through the lens of YHWH’s relation to David, while Psalm 133 is an
orientation psalm, depicting an ideal world of unity and harmony “like the precious oil on
the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron” (133:2). Finally, the
collection culminates in the simple benediction of Psalm 134. Thus, the Songs of
Ascent – alternating between orientation, disorientation, and reorientation – can be seen
to combine these varied strands of memory to allow the community to sing and pray its
way out of oppression.
Conveyors of Memory
Memory in Spirituality
Memory plays a critical role in spiritual life. Augustine devotes an entire section of
Confessions to plumbing the depths of his memory to learn more of God.12 He declares,
“I will soar, then, beyond this power of my nature also, still rising by degrees toward him
who made me. And I enter the fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as
treasures the countless images that have been brought into them from all manner of
things by the senses.”13 Hastings writes, “In the cavernous recesses of memory, as well
as in the vast universe outside, dwells the Divine Spirit, and if we cannot find Him in that
inner chamber, it will do us little good to find Him elsewhere.”14
Memory can also be obtained beyond the senses of an individual. This type of
cultural memory plays a critical role in the process of recording history and compiling
historically reflective texts. Especially in a time of crisis, communities reach beyond
individual memory to cultural memory, the preserved psychological heritage of a people.
Assmann explains this process as “mnemohistory”: “The past is not simply ‘received’ by
the present. The present is ‘haunted’ by the past and the past is modeled, invented,
reinvented, and reconstructed by the present.”15 The memories of others have the
capacity to live on beyond the person that experienced them, and as they do, the
receivers shape those memories into a history that creates meaning. “The reason for
this ‘living on’ lies in the continuous relevance of these events. This relevance comes
not from their historical past, but from an ever-changing present in which these events
12
Augustine, Confessions X.viii-xli.
Augustine, Confessions X.viii.12.
14
James Hastings, The Great Texts of the Bible: Deuteronomy to Esther (New York: Scribner,
1910), 5.
15
Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 9.
13
are remembered as facts of importance.”16 These constructed memories, shaped in the
image of their bearers, then in turn shape those that receive them as they become the
formative narrative of the community. As Assmann concludes, “If ‘We Are What We
Remember,’ the truth of memory lies in the identity that it shapes. … It lies in the story,
not as it happened but as it lives on and unfolds in collective memory.”17
In Light of Psalm 137
The effect of trauma on memory has been explored a great deal lately in the
context of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Caruth explains that trauma “registers the
force of an experience that is not yet fully owned. … The phenomenon of trauma …
both urgently demands historical awareness and yet denies our usual modes of access
to it.”18 Speaking of Lanzmann’s film, Shoah, and similar endeavors to tell the story of
the Holocaust, Caruth explains the power of the refusal to even attempt a strictly
historical retelling of a traumatic event: “In its active resistance to the platitudes of
knowledge, this refusal opens up the space for a testimony that can speak beyond what
is already understood.”19 This space that Caruth describes is precisely the space
created by the crisis of Psalm 137. The middle of this psalm contains a statement that
expresses precisely this issue of memory: “How could we sing the LORD’s song in a
foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling
to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my
highest joy” (Ps 137:4-6). Here, the inability to sing is paired with concern for memory.
The inability itself seems to stem from the tears and derision present in verses 1-3. The
16
Assmann, 10.
Assmann, 14.
18
Cathy Caruth and Georges Bataille, Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995),
17
151.
19
Caruth and Bataille, 155.
consequence of this inability manifests itself in a fear that the great things now lost
might also be forgotten, lost to the mind as well as the material world.
This psalm explains one function of all psalms. They are conveyors of memory,
and this is never more true or necessary than in the face of great crisis and trauma. As
Barker explains with a reference to the popularity of the prison poems of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer: “In these poems we hear the voice of the (recent) past which gives a living
voice to life and faith in the present. We do the same with the Songs of Ascents. Songs
of faith and pilgrimage from the past become expressions of living, present, and vital
faith and pilgrimage in the present.”20 Thus, one may easily imagine the Songs of
Ascents being compiled as a response to the pressing need expressed in Psalm 137.
They are vessels into which memory is poured and then redistributed both to self and to
future generations.
20
Barker, 112.