Daily Manna · Day 351 · December 17
Mountains Around Jerusalem
“As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.”
A ring of hills, and a city sitting lower than the ground around it.
That is the geography behind this verse, and it is worth getting right, because Jerusalem is not on a commanding peak. The Mount of Olives looks down on it. Anyone standing in the city could see high ground on every side, and any army arriving had to come over one of those ridges first. The pilgrims singing this on the road could see exactly what the psalm was pointing at.
And the picture it makes is about completeness rather than height. Round about. Not a guard on the gate that matters most, with the other approaches trusted to luck. All the way around, no seam, no blind side. Then the clock the psalm attaches: from henceforth even for ever, which starts now and does not stop.
But read the next verse, because the psalm is not naive. The rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous. Not rest. Which quietly concedes that it comes down on that ground, and that the promise is about how long it stays rather than whether it lands.
So the ring is not a thing you build by walking around it, and the psalm never asks you to. The mountains were there before the city was; they stand on every side with no seam in them, and the clock attached to them runs from henceforth even for ever. What the psalm concedes in the next breath is that the rod does come down on that ground. What it will not concede is that the rod gets to stay there.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 351 is The Tent Outside (Exodus 33:11).