teps—offered a place for teaching, for visiting, or for a simple descent.
Photo: Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands. (BiblePlaces.com)
The Psalms Of Ascent As Reminders
Three times a year worshippers would enter the Temple from these steps, after a customary cleansing in the nearby ritual baths, or mikvot.
God required these pilgrimages, as written by the hand of Moses:
“Three times in a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread and at the Feast of Weeks and at the Feast of Booths, and they shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed.” —Deuteronomy 16:16
Over the years, a songbook developed that served as the pilgrims’ traveling songs. Psalms 120-134 all bear the superscription, “A Psalm of Ascents.” These are the songs the Jews sang as they ascended to Jerusalem every year for their feasts.
· Some propose that these fifteen psalms were sung on the fifteen wide steps we see today in the Southern Steps excavations.
· A popular activity for tourists often includes reading each psalm—or the first verse of each psalm—on each wide step, moving up two steps to the next wide step for each successive reading.
However, the Mishnah notes that these fifteen psalms were sung by the priests who stood not on the Southern Steps, but on the fifteen steps from the Court of the Women ascending to the Court of Israel:
“On the fifteen steps which led into the women’s court, corresponding with the fifteen songs of degrees, stood the Levites, with their musical instruments, and sang.” — m. Sukkah 5:4-5
Devotional Thought For The Southern Steps
Read Numbers 10:10; Philippians 3:1; 2 Peter 1:13; 3:1.
Think about Christmas carols and patriotic songs like, “God Bless America.” Sung on holidays, these tunes are familiar to all and stir up critical reminders of basic life themes.
The first-century Jewish culture recognized the necessity of reminders and repetition—the need of rehearsing truth when the world around them countered God’s Word at every step. The Psalms of Ascent that the pilgrims of old would recite from memory several times a years served as reminders of faith, forgiveness, family, children, peace, hope, brotherhood, sacrifice, and right attitudes toward God and people.
What was true then remains true for us:
Without simple reminders, we would forget essential truths. (Tweet that.)