Illustration by Yoseph Savan based on The Zohar
Ariel Ben Avraham – JERUSALEM IN THE BOOK OF PSALMS (XXIII & XXIV)
XXIII
“Pray for Jerusalem of peace, in abundance those who love you.” (Psalms 122:6)
We refer often to praying and praising, not as a passive but a dynamic process by which we attune our consciousness with what we do.
We pray to evoke God as the ruler of the best in us, in order to allow goodness to be with us, and provide us with what we need us and for those who benefit from us. We certainly pray for goodness to be with us, not with a selfish approach but to make us better to ourselves, and as a source of goodness for others.
We praise, not to experience an emotional or passionate feeling of closeness and attachment to God, but to evoke His ways and attributes and emulate them in what we say and do.
We say “praise the Lord” as the invocation of His loving kindness to awaken our goodness, and be able to manifest it in what we are and do. In this sense praising is acknowledging, thanking and recognizing God’s presence in us, and to express it in our moment to moment engagement to life.
In this verse the Psalmist invites us to evoke the peace of Jerusalem as what makes it complete, wholesome, total, eternal and undivided. As we have said, peace in Hebrew means all these words, for this wholesomeness is the culmination of unifying our consciousness through goodness.
Loving the peace of Jerusalem is living in goodness as the abundance that makes us constantly fulfilled in plenitude. Thus we realize again that love and goodness belong to each other as the source of what we truly are, our essence and identity.
“Peace is in your bulwark, abundance in your strongholds.” (122:7)
Bulwarks and strongholds share the same qualities, whose function is to protect something. Peace encompasses these qualities as our strongholds, for these are our strength as well as the bulwarks that shield us against anything opposite to goodness, hence abundance is the outcome.
Once we achieve the committed and diligent process of unifying the diverse traits, trends, dimensions and aspects of our consciousness, the end result is peace as the functional harmonized unity that Jerusalem represents.
XXIV
“For the sake of my brethren and my loved ones, I will say now, ‘Peace be in you’.”
(Psalms 122:8)
King David tells us that in Jerusalem converges all that unites and bonds everything and everyone. In this unity and togetherness we live in the awareness of peace.
Our brothers, sisters and loved ones are those who in their own individual diversity share goodness as the bond that connects us with each other, and peace is its utmost expression. Hence we pursue peace as the encompassing and integrating awareness that makes us also connected to God.
“For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I seek goodness for you!” (122:9)
God’s house is the Sanctuary that He has established for Him to dwell among (in) us here in this world, and as King David has pointed out often, goodness is our bond with Him. Hence we pursue goodness for the sake of our connection with the Creator.
“Those who trust in the Lord are like mount Zion that is not moved, [for] it sits forever.” (125:1)
Trust is based on what we know or believe as something by which we live and conduct our life. Trusting God is living by what He represents that keeps us alive to prosper with it and for it. Therefore our Creator is the ethical ruling principle by which we exist to live it and experience it in this world.
The psalmist compares this principle to the unmovable mountain named Zion and to its eternal quality, for the fact that God’s eternity sits on it; as it is reiterated in the next verse.
“Jerusalem! Mountains surround her, and the Lord surrounds His people from here to eternity.” (125:2)
Mountains represent unshakable beliefs, ground rules and guidelines by which we direct our lives. As our connecting bond with God, Jerusalem is set on a mountain surrounded by a wall, and also by mountains that reaffirm the prevalence of goodness as the primordial principle in which all levels, aspects and dimensions of human consciousness are destined to be conducted.
In the same way that we are guided by goodness, and protected by its ethical qualities, God also guides His people eternally.
Here we must understand that His will, as well as His ways and attributes exist forever; and, as long as we live in their goodness, we are indeed protected by Him.
