Psalm 121 · a question people ask
Does Psalm 121 promise that nothing bad will ever happen to me?
Its words are wide: "The LORD will keep you from all evil. He will keep your soul" (121:7) (tap evil, soul). The songs around it speak from inside trouble. The Song of Ascents before it begins, "In my distress, I cried to the LORD. He answered me" (Psalm 120:1). Another says, "many times they have afflicted me from my youth up, yet they have not prevailed against me" (Psalm 129:2), and another, "Out of the depths I have cried to you, LORD" (Psalm 130:1). One psalm puts trouble and rescue in a single verse: "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all" (Psalm 34:19). And one walks through the dark without fearing the evil of 121:7, the same Hebrew word: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (Psalm 23:4). The Psalms set the LORD's keeping and his people's troubles side by side. Psalm 121 doesn't say how its promise fits with the troubles other psalms describe, and these notes don't choose a way of holding them together.
The verses
“The LORD will keep you from all evil. He will keep your soul.”
“A Song of Ascents. In my distress, I cried to the LORD. He answered me.”
“many times they have afflicted me from my youth up, yet they have not prevailed against me.”
“A Song of Ascents. Out of the depths I have cried to you, LORD.”