A Stranger in a Strange Land

Your statutes are my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.  Psalm 119:54  NASB

Pilgrimage – Have you walked the Camino de Santiago?  It takes about thirty-five days to complete.  It’s made up of trails, streets, roads, and paths that, according to legend, is the route taken by James.  Thousands of people travel this journey every year in search of spiritual enlightenment.  Why is this fact relevant to an investigation of Psalm 119:54.  Because as you travel this route, you will be a stranger in a strange land.  That is the meaning of the word translated by the NASB as “pilgrimage.”  The Hebrew is māgôr.  It means a place of temporary lodging.  The root is gûr, an important word in the Tanakh.  “The root means to live among people who are not blood relatives; thus, rather than enjoying native civil rights, the gēr was dependent on the hospitality that played an important role in the ancient near east. When the people of Israel lived with their neighbors they were usually treated as protected citizens; foreigners in Israel were largely regarded as proselytes.”^[1]

There are a few other facts about our word that we need to know.  First, it occurs only in the plural, mĕgûrîm.  It is never about a particular place.  This has a deep implication.  “The point seems to be that wherever man lives, his existence is essentially transient, and dependent on the grace of God. But when he lives in obedience to the divine will, his life is full of expectancy and assurance of that eternal life to come.”^[2]  I’m not sure we can draw the conclusion that mĕgûrîm presupposes an olam ha’ba.  That seems to be developed long after the psalmist wrote this line.  But the plural certainly does suggest the first point, that we are essentially transient and dependent.  We might not go so far as to say, “This world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through,” but we can certainly say that life here is fleeting and impermanent.  We are, in fact, strangers on earth, pilgrims trudging across the stage of our destinies, always aware that the curtain will fall.  Perhaps “doomed” is the appropriate verb.

Except . . . on this journey there is a song in the air.  When everything appears to end in the ubiquity of the second law of thermodynamics, how can we sing on the way to extinction?  Not because we have the certainty of another life or another world.  At least not in the tenth century B.C.E.  No, we sing because of God’s scratches.  You remember ḥōq?  Cutting in or engraving on stone.  In this case, what God wrote with His finger on the stone tablets.  God told us what it means to live in harmony with the divine—here and now!  That is reason to sing.  I might be a stranger in this world.  I might often feel as if I really don’t belong.  I might stare at the dark night ahead and ask what was the point of it all.  But then I hear heaven’s music, the voices of the angels in melodious chorus, “Holy, holy, holy.”  And I realize that I mattered so much to my Creator that He told me what to do, how to live, who to worship.  My minor pentatonic blues are turned into major diatonic.  Eric will have to wait.[3]

Topical Index: song, pilgrimage, , mĕgûrîm, sojourner, Psalm 119:54

^[1] Stigers, H. G. (1999). 330 גּוּר. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 155). Moody Press.

^[2] Stigers, H. G. (1999). 330 גּוּר. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 156). Moody Press.

[3] https://youtu.be/ModAbM9ToY0