The hostility of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel at the end of 2023 drew my mind to Psalm 122.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
“May they be secure who love you!
Peace be within your walls
and security within your towers!” —Psalm 122:6–7
The recent attack on Israel did not take place in Jerusalem, yet the imagery in this psalm of secure walls and towers called to mind so many images of vulnerability and broken-down walls from that day.
It is obvious that we should pray for the state of Israel, as they seek to protect their people from a hostile enemy committed to their annihilation. But what does it mean to pray for the “peace” of Israel in alignment with the psalmist’s own prayer request in Psalm 122? What kind of peace is this, how will it come about, and when?
In this article, I offer a simple guide for how we might pray for the peace of Jerusalem and the nation in which it sits, the nation of Israel. We’ll do this by reflecting theologically on the content and context of the very passage that called on saints of old to do so.
But first, join me for a moment at a recent prayer meeting at our church.
Why Did I Flinch?
Hamas attacked Israel on a Saturday. At our Sunday prayer meeting the day following, one of our members requested prayer for the state of Israel. That was an appropriate and expected request. But why did I flinch and then so carefully select who should pray for Israel?
The role of the state of Israel in God’s plan is a matter on which Christians disagree.[1] Those who lean towards dispensationalism believe that there is a continuation between the old covenant people Israel and the modern nation-state. This view believes that God will fulfill his Old Testament promises in the modern nation-state of Israel, including the rebuilding of a temple in the millennium. For these believers, blessing comes to those nations that bless modern day Israel and curse to those that dishonor her (Gen. 12:3). While the church is a part of God’s plan, one day he will remove the church from the world and resume his plan for the nation of Israel centered in Jerusalem. This conviction has profound influence on how and why we pray for Israel today.
1. For a careful summary of views and examination of relevant texts, see Brent Parker’s essay, “A Biblical and Theological Perspective of National Israel,” Christ Over All (January 8, 2024).
It is the contention of this article that the people of Israel in the Scriptures are not the same entity as the modern nation-state of Israel or even the Jewish people broadly today (more Jews live outside of Israel’s borders than in them). The church, composed of Gentiles and Jews, is God’s one new humanity (Eph. 2:14–17), the true circumcision (Phil. 3:1), and the true children of Abraham by faith union with the true seed of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:16, 29; 4:28). Through Christ, her great high priest, the church has come to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22; cf. Gal 4:26). Indeed, she is the new Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven dressed as a bride described on the last pages of the Bible (Rev. 21:2). Israel’s land and Jerusalem her city were a shadow leading us to the substance of these greater salvation realities in Christ.
With the coming of the new covenant in Christ, neither unbelieving Jewish people nor Israel as a nation are in a special covenant with God. While there may be a great future ingathering and ingrafting of many ethnically Jewish people into the church as described in Romans 11, the geo-political state of Israel in our day is not awaiting the fulfillment of God’s promises in a geographical and national sense.
At that church prayer meeting, I tapped a recent seminary grad and Air Force retiree to pray for Israel. His combination of study and military experience made him an ideal leader for our church in prayer that evening. He did not pray for Israel as “God’s special people” or for America to bless Israel in order to be blessed as a nation by God. He prayed for the families, the nation, and for God’s saving purposes in Christ.
I want more of my members to pray for Israel in ways that adhere to God’s plan for his name. Where can we find help to pray for Israel in our day?
An Ancient Prayer Guide
Psalm 122 is more than an ancient prayer request. It is also a faithful guide to praying not only for the church but evangelistically for all nations, including Israel.
The journey of Psalm 122 unfolds in three stanzas. Examined from one angle, the psalm climaxes in the third stanza with the psalm’s only imperative, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Ps. 122:6). But from another angle, we observe that this psalm is organized as a chiasm with the first and third stanzas bookending the second and central stanza. To help us see this psalm’s powerful logic, we’ll take these stanzas in a particular order: the first, then the third, then the central stanza.
First, Give Thanks to God for Israel and Her Place in Redemptive History
In our prayers for the nation-state of Israel today, we can begin by giving thanks for the people of Israel on the pages of Scripture. Our story of salvation runs through Israel.
The first stanza of Psalm 122 reminds us of the treasure of God’s presence that we have received through her story.
I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the LORD!”
Our feet have been standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem! (Psalm 122:1–2)
The “house of the Lord” mentioned here referred to the tabernacle or the temple. The thought and sight of this building stirred the heart with glad expectation for God’s presence. There was no happier place to be in all the world than Jerusalem.
The temple court was open for company. In fact, the Lord called his people home once each year and this psalm was part of that journey. This “Song of Ascents” was used as part of a collection of Psalms sung as part of the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem of every Israelite man (Deut. 16:16)—and often his family. Psalm 120 marks the beginning of the journey in the midst of the world and all of its problems. Psalm 121 sets our faces to Jerusalem and points us to the Lord as our only help on the way to a better place. Psalm 122 is a song of arrival at the Lord’s house.
At the same time, Psalm 122 is a song of longing. The psalmist was glad to go to Jerusalem. Yet worshipers did not arrive at a city marked by peace, especially after their return from exile when this psalm would have been compiled and used by Israelites. Jerusalem was anything but secure in those years. The gladness that began the journey to Jerusalem would have ended in tears. After the exile, Jerusalem was a city wrecked by sin, judgment, and curse. This reality itself was owing not merely to external forces on the people, but God’s judgment for their own idolatry and sin. Israel, with all her advantages, was not a transformed people (Rom. 3:19–20). And this is why Jerusalem did not live up to her name as the “city of peace.”
But these hard days did not stop the pilgrims from calling to their companions to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!” This prayer reveals a great need, but also great hope in the hearts of faithful Israelites.
So, with great affection, we can give earnest thanks to God for the people of Israel on the pages of Scripture. The Apostle Paul, an Israelite himself, spoke fondly of his “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:3). To Israelites, he wrote, “belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (Rom. 9:5). Most precious among them? Jesus, our savior from sin. Emmanuel, God with us! For as Paul continues, “from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” (Rom. 9:5).
Thank God for Israel!
But this heritage in salvation’s story does not guarantee an inheritance of salvation itself.
Having given thanks for Israel, how should we pray for her?
Second, Pray for the Physical Seed of Abraham to Know the Peace of Complete Salvation
In our own day, headlines might lead us to pray simply for an end to war, to pray for “peace in the middle east,” and to stop there. But a mere negotiated peace is not the sum of what God had in mind for the city of Jerusalem.
The psalmist has a certain kind of peace in mind.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
“May they be secure who love you!
Peace be within your walls
and security within your towers!”
For my brothers and companions’ sake
I will say, “Peace be within you!” (Psalm 122:6–8)
This “peace,” from the word shalom (mentioned three times in the song’s climax), involves more than an end to war. Read in context with the rest of the psalms of ascents (Psalms 120–134), this peace is nothing less than the complete stability and security of the people of God resulting in the untold gladness (Pss. 125; 126:1–6; 128:5-6), uncommon harmony (Ps. 122:6–8), and unbridled worship (Pss. 124:6, 8; 126:2–4; 130:7; 134:1–3). The point is not the strength of walls, but the safety of the people. Jerusalem as a city is a stand-in for the people of Jerusalem: God’s people. The security pictured here is only possible with the transformation of the people inside those walls into those who love the Lord with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. In short, this peace is the very coming together of God and humankind in reconciled and joyful fellowship. This is a prayer for the peace of the fullness of salvation promised through Abraham and his children. Prayed today, this is a request for God to secure the children of God, those whom the Lord loves in Christ. As Romans 8:39 promises, no one can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Who is the ‘us’? Those who are now citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem.
Still, to get to that final citizenship requires a bit more work, for when Psalmist entered Jerusalem he did not yet see this peace, nor did Jesus when he made his pilgrimage to the holy city. What Jesus saw in the place of peace was only sin and rebellion. In Luke’s gospel account we read:
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41–44, emphasis added)
So much for peace in Jerusalem! Jesus’s prediction was fulfilled in 70 AD with the destruction of the temple. Yet, in his own day, he would lay down his life in order to bring peace to the city of Jerusalem. And this brings us to the second and central stanza.
Third, Pray for Israel to Repent and Receive the King of Peace
Each of the stanzas in Psalm 122 mention the city of Jerusalem. But with a closer look, we see that the psalmist has more than the city of Jerusalem in focus: namely, the two houses for which the city came to be known.[2]
2. I am indebted to David Camera for this observation.
Recall the invitation of stanza one: “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” (Ps. 122:1). The third stanza concludes, “For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good” (Ps. 122:9). Yet the peace and joy that flow from the temple depend on the justice of the second house from the second stanza:
Jerusalem—built as a city
that is bound firmly together,
to which the tribes go up,
the tribes of the LORD,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
There thrones for judgment were set,
the thrones of the house of David. (Psalm 122:3–5)
What was this second house in Jerusalem, mentioned at the center of this psalm?: the palace, the house of the king, the house of David.
Now, step back and look at the shape of this psalm, abbreviated here.
“Let us go to the house of the LORD!”
Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!
Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together,
There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you!
For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.
Here’s what this means: there is no peace for anyone apart from the king who makes peace possible. Where God’s justice does not reign, there is only the reign of sin’s terror. But where Jesus is king there is security and harmony and gladness and submission. There is no peace where there is no justice. Put differently, there is no peace apart from King Jesus, and the peace that his cross will afford.
In the fullness of time, when Jesus came to Jerusalem, the city rose to war, but by such violent opposition, Jesus would make peace. Jerusalem’s rejection of Jesus included the conspiracies of Jew and Gentiles alike, yet behind all human machinations was the predetermined plan of God to bring peace and salvation to a sinful world (Isaiah 53; Acts 2:22–24; 4:27–28). As with all Scripture, the cross of Christ should be the driving feature of our theology and the burden of our prayer.
As we pray for peace in Israel today, therefore, we must pray for her people to acknowledge Jesus as the rightful king on David’s throne. Jewish people today do not need to confess the sin of crucifying the Lord of glory.[3] But Jews today, like Palestinians, Greeks, Ghanaians, and every other Gentile, must confess that there is no salvation apart from Christ and his cross (Acts 4:12). Likewise, the way of salvation for the world does not come by blessing the nation of Israel in order to be blessed, but by blessing the son of Abraham, the true Israelite, the son of David, Jesus Christ. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Ps. 2:12; cf. Gen. 12:3).
3. See Kevin DeYoung’s chapter, “The Infinite Extensibility of Guilt,” in Impossible Christianity: Why Following Jesus Does Not Mean You Have to Change the World, Be an Expert in Everything, Accept Spiritual Failure, and Feel Miserable Pretty Much All the Time, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2023).
The Jews with many others thought that Jesus’ crucifixion would bring peace by the putting down of a man who, in their eyes, made trouble. Little did they know, however, he was the one making peace by his cross. Today, praying for the peace of Jerusalem is a prayer for all those who wage war to bow the knee to his once-crucified king. Even more, for those in places like Israel, where the war drums are beating, we should be praying for the church, that they might bring peace to their neighbors—whether in Jerusalem or any of the cities of Israel.
Finally, Thank God for His Answer to This Ancient Prayer
God’s people went up to Jerusalem “to give thanks to the name of the LORD” (Ps. 122:4). How much more should we give thanks!
The ancient temple in Jerusalem is rubble. Jesus predicted it and brought it to pass. Israel, as a nation in covenant with God, trusted in the stones of the temple rather than the Lord of that house. She also rejected her servant (Isaiah 53), who is now her Lord and the cornerstone of a new temple. Indeed, as Jews demanded a sign from Jesus, he predicted the destruction of yet another temple: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).
From this day, the day of his resurrection, forward God has not abandoned his purposes for Jerusalem and its temple. Rather, through the destruction of his own body, Jesus brought about salvation peace to Jerusalem, and then from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). The temple itself was to be a “house of prayer [for all nations]” (Luke 19:46; cf. Isa. 56:6–7). In the person and work of Jesus Christ, God has answered those prayers and the prayer of Psalm 122. In the sending of his Spirit at Pentecost, Jesus extended the blessing of this peace to all who receive him by faith, from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.
Where can this peace be seen today? Where do we find God’s people joined in worship under the rule of heaven’s king? The Apostle Paul shows us where:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Ephesians 2:13–16)
What, then, becomes of the temple? This peace has dawned in the church, God’s true temple, a people “being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:19–22). Having come to Jerusalem’s king we have come “to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering” to worship with gladness and harmony, with security and submission, with reverence and awe (Heb. 12:22, 28; cf. Gal. 4:26).
Saints of old journeyed to Jerusalem to “give thanks to the name of the Lord” (Ps. 122:4). Today, the church calls out one to another, “let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (Heb. 12:28). Such is the peace and security of those who have come to heaven’s king.
So, let us pray for peace in the Middle East and for the justice of God through nations and governments against evil in this age. But above all, let us pray that many sons of Ishmael and sons of Isaac would become true sons of Abraham by faith in the Lord Jesus.
So Let’s Pray
At our church prayer meetings, we do more than share requests or talk about praying. We actually pray.
Having considered how we might faithfully pray for the peace from Psalm 122, let us pray now specifically for the people in the state of Israel.
Father, we delight in your presence. We rejoice in the astonishing truth that we can know your presence by the Spirit in a way never possible for the pilgrims who journeyed to Jerusalem in the days before Christ came. Those believers too had to look past their immediate circumstances in hope of a day when Jerusalem would live up its namesake as a place of peace, ruled by a righteous Davidic king, and marked by justice. We look to the trouble in the Middle East, and we may be tempted to pray only for the kind of peace achieved through peace deals between nations. But the psalmist had so much more in mind for sinners. May the people of the present-day nation of Israel find peace in the Prince of Peace promised in her Scriptures. May they take refuge in the king promised on the pages of her sacred book. And may we all look to the day when Christ’s righteousness and justice will make for a true and lasting peace in the new Jerusalem, a new heaven and a new earth for which we eagerly wait. It is in the name of the Lord Jesus we pray.
Amen.
