PSALM 121

Here is an example of a minor error in Bible interpretation that turned out for the better. The famous agricultural scientist George Washington Carver was also a devout Christian. At one point early in his life he was pondering what to do for a career so he turned to his Bible and opened it up at random to this passage from Psalm 121: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence comes my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.” So he looked at the hills outside, saw a field of peanut plants, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, he was reading the KJV which obviously has some problems with it. Why would the Psalmist think that God lives in the hills? That was a pagan concept of the time as evidenced by the prophets ranting and railing against the “high places” where the apostate Jews started to worship.

 The problem is one of adding the proper punctuation since there was little to no punctuation in either the early Greek or Hebrew manuscripts. And in this case, even the NKJV realizes that the Hebrew is better rendered in this manner: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills – from whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD who made heaven and earth.” The context of this particular psalm is that it is a pilgrimage song sung by those on their way to Jerusalem for one of the feast days. They have to traverse mountainous regions before they reach their goal. They look at the mountains in dismay and cry out, “Who will help me?” and the answer is God. I am personally glad that Carver trusted a faulty translation. Otherwise, we might not have peanut butter today.