"A Song of degrees."
This is the first "song of degrees” or "song of ascents.” It opens up a beautiful chain. Each of these psalms is full of signposts for the worn traveler. Each is full of smallness and beauty, full of comfort, and full of sympathy, deepest sympathy. O to know that Jesus feels what we are going through! "He knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness” (Deuteronomy 2:7).
"Song” means that it is meant to be sung. And "song” means that there is a joy meant to be imparted, straight from the heart of God to the traveler’s heart. Reading the Bible is not about merely reading; it is an exercise in encountering the deepest feelings of God’s heart, and then learning to live in them, to sing them out. We must encounter the depths of God’s heart, and then make them our heart. We have the mind of Christ.
"Of degrees” speaks of the steps, the points of ascent, the stairs, the rungs on the ladder, as the believer travels to Jerusalem. "But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 4:18). What an ascent! Each "degree” is floodlit. These are songs of pilgrimage as the Israelites would travel to Zion, and they are songs of pilgrimage as ingrafted Israel travels to the heavenly Zion. We should always have the physical and the spiritual dimensions of these songs before us.
The believer’s life is packed with pain and sorrow. The believer passes through a land that is not heaven, a land that reeks of hell, a waste howling wilderness. The believer must be realistic, then. The songs of degrees teach us to be real. No emotion is wasted on the journey. No emotion has not been prophesied. You are living in what the Psalmist has prophesied. Your life is incredibly rich, because you are living out what God has fore-spoken for you, and what God has mapped out right here in the pages He has preserved ”“ pages which you now read. And moreover, now you get comfort because you see your life described with such accuracy. It is the accuracy of a God who searches your heart, who foreknew your heart, who is presently attentive to your pilgrim heart. O glory!