Thy Keeper: the LORD who watches over you

Thy keeper is a name for God in Psalm 121:5: The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. "Thy" is the old English word for "your," so the name means "your Guard," the One who watches over you. It comes from a song travelers sang on the long walk up to Jerusalem.

A song for a hard road

Psalms 120 through 134 each carry the heading "A Song of degrees" in the King James (a few add the name of David or Solomon). Other versions call them songs of ascents, which means songs for going up. Many Bible students believe these were the songs of pilgrims, ordinary families who traveled to Jerusalem for the great yearly feasts. Jerusalem sits high in the hill country, so from almost anywhere in the land the trip was a climb.

It was not an easy walk. Travelers went on foot for days. The roads ran through rocky, empty country where robbers could hide. The sun beat down by day, and nights in an open camp were cold and dark. One bad step on a steep path could leave someone hurt, far from any help.

Psalm 121 opens with a traveler looking ahead at all of that:

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:1-2

The hills could feel like a threat, a long climb with danger hiding in it. In those days many hilltops also held shrines to other gods, so a worried traveler might wonder if help would come from one of them. The second verse settles the question. Do not look to the hills. Look to the One who made the hills, and the sky above them too.

Then the voice in the psalm changes. The first two verses say "my." From verse 3 on, someone speaks to the traveler and says "thy," as if a parent, a priest or a fellow pilgrim were putting an arm around them and saying, "Here is what you can count on."

The word shamar: a guard on duty

The Hebrew verb behind "keeper" is shamar. It is one of the most common verbs in the Old Testament. Strong's dictionary, a standard word list for the King James Bible, says it properly means "to hedge about," as with thorns, and so to guard, protect and pay attention to something. Picture a thorn hedge planted around a field, or a watchman standing on a city wall at night. That is the feeling of the word.

In Psalm 121:5 the form is shomer, "one who keeps," with an ending that means "your." So the Hebrew is close to saying that the LORD is your own personal guard.

Here is something English readers usually miss. In the King James of this psalm you read "keepeth" twice, "keeper" once, and "preserve" three times. In Hebrew, all of those come from the same verb. Read the psalm out loud and the same promise keeps coming back like a drumbeat: He keeps you. He keeps you. He keeps you.

The word has history. God put Adam in the garden to dress it and to keep it (Genesis 2:15). Cain, after killing his brother, asked God a bitter question: Am I my brother's keeper? (Genesis 4:9). And the priests blessed Israel with the words The LORD bless thee, and keep thee (Numbers 6:24). All of these use the same Hebrew verb.

Verses from Psalm 121 to hold on to

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

Psalm 121:3-4

"Suffer" here is an old word for "allow." On a steep, stony path, the first worry is your feet. God watches the very next step. And He never dozes off. On Mount Carmel, the prophet Elijah mocked the priests of the false god Baal, saying that maybe their god sleepeth, and must be awaked (1 Kings 18:27). The God of Israel needs no waking. His watch never changes shifts.

The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

Psalm 121:5-6

The word for shade, tsel, means a shadow. In a hot land, shade on the road could be the difference between finishing the trip and collapsing. The right hand was a person's strong hand, the side where a bodyguard would walk. God is that close.

The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

Psalm 121:7-8

Thy going out and thy coming in is a Hebrew way of saying all your comings and goings: leaving the house in the morning, coming home at night, starting a trip and ending it. The keeping does not stop at the end of the road either. It reaches even for evermore.

When you are the one lying awake

Most people know the feeling of lying in bed with a list running through their head: grades, bills, a sick parent, a friend who is not answering. It can feel as if you have to stay on guard, because if you stop worrying for one minute, something will fall apart. Without meaning to, you have made yourself the keeper of your whole world.

Psalm 121 takes that job back. The One who made heaven and earth is already on watch. A later song in the same group says it plainly: for so he giveth his beloved sleep (Psalm 127:2). You can rest because He does not have to.

This does not mean you stop being careful. The same psalm group says except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain (Psalm 127:1), and the watchman still stood on the wall. Pilgrims still traveled together in groups. Being kept by God is a reason for peace, not a reason for foolish risks.

A few ways to put this name to work:

• Pray Psalm 121 out loud before a trip, a first day at a new school or job, or a move to a new city. It was written for leaving home.
• Parents and grandparents, pray it over the kids by name. They will go places you cannot follow, and they will have a Keeper there.
• Tonight, name the worry you are guarding, hand it over in prayer, and go to sleep.

Thy Keeper is name 43 of the 70 in the book. It sits beside Our Dwelling Place from Psalm 90, and the next name, A Sanctuary, shows God as the safe place to run when a whole nation panics. All the names are listed on the names of God in the Bible page.