When People Live in Unity
"A song of ascents. Of David. How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore."
— Psalm 133:1-3
Fifteen poems in a row carry the same heading about going up, and this is one of them. What the heading meant is still argued: music for travelers on the road to Jerusalem, songs tied to the temple steps, songs of the return from exile, or a name for the stair-like build of the lines. The road fits either way, because the city sits high in the hill country and every approach to it climbs. The word behind brothers covered far more than sons of one mother. It reached across a whole clan, which in a small village meant the very people you could not avoid. Oil on the head was an everyday thing there, used on guests and for grooming. One blend was not. The law of Moses set down its recipe by weight, myrrh and cassia in the largest measures, with cinnamon and fragrant cane, all worked into olive oil. Mixing the same thing for private use, or putting it on anyone outside the priesthood, carried the penalty of being cut off from your own people. Aaron was the first high priest, and it was poured over him on the day he was installed. The closing image joins two places whose weather never meets. Hermon rises on the far northern edge of the land, more than a hundred miles from Zion, holding snow through winter and spring, while the southern hills go from late spring to autumn with almost no rain. The blessing this song names comes down where the people are together, and it does not stop at one person.