Psalm 121 opens with this much-loved line, 'I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help.' The whole psalm assures us of the Lord's continual help; He helps, holds us safe, keeps us, shades us, and preserves us.

Natural images and sensations are used to describe spiritual ones: our eyes and feet, sleep, shade, hills, sun, and moon. They remind us of the correspondences between the natural and spiritual planes of life, helping to express these higher ideas in familiar words.

Spiritually, our eyes represent our understanding. Hills are high places; we look up to them, and we can see long distances from their summits. When we lift up our eyes to the hills, we're consciously trying to elevate our minds to new levels of understanding. Note that here, we're not told to look up to majestic mountains, since they can sometimes be too far, too remote, from our daily life. We just need to look up to nearby hills, to raise our minds above our normal ways of thinking. In the Bible, hills represent good that comes from charity. That kind of good -- a love towards our neighbours - also turns us toward the Lord, who then can more readily deepen and infill that neighbourliness. (Apocalypse Explained 374[5])

Our feet are in contact with the ground, and they hold us up. They represent our natural life. The 'foot not to be moved' is our life's intention, to be standing firm with the Lord's support. (Heaven and Hell 96, 97)

To say that the Lord never sleeps is to state the obvious, as Divine influx must be perpetual to maintain all things. This an important reminder for us, though, because sometimes we feel that the Lord is not with us. However, the Lord is, in fact, always with us and is actually closer to us at such times. (See True Christian Religion 774)

Next, we see that the Lord's presence is active. He is our keeper and our shade. He continually knows what our state is, and provides and protects accordingly. He even withholds spiritual things from us at times, so that we don't spoil them. (See Arcana Caelestia 59[2], and 959 at the end.)

The word 'shade' gives us a good feeling that the Lord is over us, keeping us safe. It can also mean that we occasionally require shade — that is, less sight and clearness — for our own sake. (See Apocalypse Explained 401[34])

The sun and moon often represent the Lord's love and His truth. In this psalm, though, they are used in the opposite sense. They stand for our evil love of self and the false ideas that reinforce it - and those will harm us - unless we accept the Lord's power to constrain them.

At the end of this psalm the word 'preserve' is used three times to express holiness. The repetition is important. It represents our need for preservation in every conceivable way — from now to eternity - throughout our "going out and coming in" - the changing states in our lives. (See Arcana Caelestia 1050)

4295. 'And Jacob asked and said, Tell me, I pray, your name' means the angelic heaven and the nature of that heaven. This becomes clear from the representation of Jacob' as the Lord's Divine Natural, dealt with already, and from the meaning of 'God' whose name he asked for, and also of 'men', with whom he contended as a prince and prevailed, as truths and goods, and so as those who are governed by truths and goods, dealt with above in 4287. And since the angelic heaven is heaven by virtue of truths and goods it is that heaven specifically which is meant by God and men with whom the Lord prevailed. Angels are also sometimes called 'gods' in the Word, it being by virtue of truths and goods that they are called such, as in David,

God stands in the assembly of God, in the midst of the gods will He judge. I said, You are gods, and sons of the Most High, all of you. Psalms 82:1, 6.

Here it is quite plain that 'the assembly of God' and 'the gods' are the angelic heaven. In the same author,

Who in the sky will be compared to Jehovah? Who will be likened to Jehovah among the sons of gods? Psalms 89:6.

In the same author,

Confess the God of gods; confess the Lord of lords Psalms 136:2-3.

From these quotations it is evident - as it is also from the fact that no one can contend as a prince with God and prevail, and likewise from the fact that the one who is called a god was unwilling to reveal his name - that it was the angelic heaven with which the Lord fought. It is quite plain from the actual words themselves 'Why is it that you ask my name?' that an arcanum lies within them, for if he had been Jehovah God he would not have concealed his name. Nor would Jacob have asked 'What is your name?' for asking the name implies some person or persons other than God Himself.

[2] The truth that the Lord at length fought with actual angels, indeed with the whole angelic heaven, is an arcanum which has not been disclosed up to now. But the implications of this are as follows: Angels do indeed possess supreme wisdom and intelligence, yet all their wisdom and intelligence comes to them from the Lord's Divine. They have no wisdom or intelligence at all that originates in themselves, that is, in their proprium. Therefore it is only insofar as they are governed by truths and goods received from the Lord's Divine that they are wise and intelligent. The fact that angels have no wisdom or intelligence at all originating in themselves they themselves openly confess. Indeed they are also quite angry if anyone attributes to them any wisdom or intelligence at all, for they know and perceive that it would be taking away from the Divine that which is His and it would be claiming for themselves that which is not theirs, and so would be engaging in the crime of spiritual theft. Angels also say that their entire proprium consists in evil and falsity, both because of their heredity and also because of their own conduct in the world when they were men, 1880. Nor, they say, is evil or falsity separated - that is, wiped away - from them, whereby they are made righteous; rather, the whole of it remains with them, though the Lord withholds them from that evil and falsity and keeps them in good and truth, 1581. These things are confessed by every angel, and no one is allowed into heaven if he does not know and believe them. For otherwise they cannot dwell in the light of wisdom and intelligence coming from the Lord, nor consequently in good and truth. From this one can also know how the words in Job 15:15 stating that heaven is not pure in the eyes of God are to be understood.

[3] This being so, in order that the Lord might bring the whole of heaven into proper heavenly order, He even allowed angels into Himself to tempt Him, who, insofar as they acted from their proprium, did not do so from good and truth. These temptations are the inmost of all, for they go to work solely on the ends one has in view and with a subtlety such as can by no means be detected. But insofar as angels do not act from their proprium they act from good and truth and are unable to tempt anyone. What is more, angels are being perfected constantly by the Lord, and yet their perfection cannot ever reach the point when their wisdom and intelligence can be compared with the Lord's Divine wisdom and intelligence, since they are finite whereas the Lord is Infinite, and no comparison of finite with Infinite is possible. From all this one may now see what 'God with whom Jacob contended as a prince' is used to mean, and also why he was unwilling to reveal his name.