Psalm 120:7
back into the desert
The Lord keepeth thee from all evil: may the Lord keep thy soul. (Psalm 120:7 DR)
The reality of this life is that it is a constant source of temptation and trial. One can have notions that by simply getting away from it all one can avoid most of them, but as the experience of the Desert Fathers proves, this is simply not the case.
They were men who often abandoned great wealth, property, etc., to live secluded in the deserts of Egypt so as to fast and pray. One might be tempted to see this as an escape from the complexities of the world, but they themselves saw it as arming for battle, leaping into the fray of spiritual combat. In imitation of our Lord who went into the desert to face his temptation, so they went into the desert to face off against the evil one.
Their experiences relate that temptation didn’t cease when cut off from the world; in many cases it dramatically increased. For while temptations abound in our world, sometimes the necessities of daily life are pressing enough to keep our mind from evil for a time; it is not without reason the aphorism exists: idle hands are the devil’s playground. The Desert Fathers weren’t by any means idle, but that amount of time alone with one’s own thoughts means that while temptation may not come from without as it may in the world, it will now come from within. And when that happens, there is nowhere to escape or to hide; all that remains is to face it down.
This is why they constantly recited the Psalms, meditating upon these words in the face of the enemy’s attacks. Some of the more severe fathers would recite the entire Psalter every day, which seems mind-boggling at first glance. But when you are in a battle for your soul—which we all are— you need constant recourse to the One who can deliver and preserve you.
The Psalmist continues the theme of protection in this penultimate verse, for not only will the Lord protect the one who trusts in Him from the heat and the cold (both literally, metaphorically and theologically), but further from all evil. The expansion of this thought in the parallelism brings out what he is getting at—for the one who places his trust in God and commends himself to Him in the midst of temptation, evil will not overtake the soul. God is said to keep the soul, a reference to verse 5.
There can be a number of meanings to this. He can mean evil generically to include physical evils (such as sickness, attacks, etc.) which is then expanded to encompass the evils of sin and temptation that afflict the soul. The other is that the expansion of the thought is meant to modify and clarify the first half of the couplet; that is, that the keeping from all evil is meant specifically about the evils of sin and temptation. Thus, while God may choose to preserve one’s physical life in the face of evils, the promise here is in respect to the soul. St. Augustine notes that the example of the martyrs leads to the second reading:
Not your body; for the Martyrs were consumed in the body: but “the Lord preserve your soul;” for the Martyrs yielded not up their souls. The persecutors raged against Crispina, whose birthday we are today celebrating; they were raging against a rich and delicate woman: but she was strong, for the Lord was her defense upon the hand of her right hand. He was her Keeper. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 120, 8.)
Our hope, ultimately, is not in this life or the pleasures and joys that it brings. Instead we are meant for that heavenly Jerusalem to which we are on pilgrimage in this vale of tears. For the man who hopes in the Lord and commends himself to His providence and succor, evil cannot touch him, as the Psalmist confidently declares elsewhere
Because Thou, O Lord, art my hope; thou hast made the Most High thy refuge. There shall no evil come to thee, nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling. (Psalm 90:9-10 DR)
I was a little pressed for time with this animation, and so I thought it’d be nice to do something with Trapcode Mir, which generates these nice meshes. After adjusting the various parameters I thought it’d be cool to make some of it shiny, and so I added in a Light in the composition and cranked up the Specular highlights. I think it gives a nice impression of the tumultuous nature of this life and the temptations we face, although to be fair that’s me totally retconning what I was thinking here, which at the time probably was: I just want to make something cool.
And that, my friends, is the essence of art.
Enjoy.
The Lord keepeth thee from all evil: may the Lord keep thy soul.
(Psalm 120:7 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: