Translations
A Song of degrees. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
A Song of Ascents.
I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come?
A Song of the Steps.
I lift up my eyes toward the mountains, where does my help come from?
A song of ascents. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?
Footnotes
The superscription "A Song of Ascents" heads Psalms 120–134, a collection of fifteen pilgrimage hymns sung as worshippers climbed toward Jerusalem for the three annual festivals—Passover, Weeks, and Shelters. Ma'alot means "steps" or "ascents," possibly evoking the fifteen steps of the Temple's Court of Women on which the Levites stood to sing. The opening question, "from where will my help come?" is charged with irony: the mountains were precisely the high places (bamot) where surrounding nations worshipped their gods. The answer that follows subverts any pagan expectation entirely. Both F.O.G. and F.O.G.M. preserve the rhetorical force of the question, though F.O.G. follows the Hebrew word order more closely.
