I am for peace

I attended the inaugural singing from the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp on September 13 and 14, 2025. On Saturday, living composers with songs that are new to the book had the opportunity to lead the songs they had composed.

To my surprise, the song that made me weep was Thomas Ward’s KEDAR on page 357. There is even video evidence, since I was in the camera’s view (I’m the gray-haired man in the blue shirt in the bottom right corner, sitting by the pole). Ward uses several verses of Isaac Watts’s paraphrase of Psalm 120, which Watts superscribes as a “Complaint of quarrelsome neighbors, or a devout wish of peace.” Here is the complete text of Watts’s poem; the bolded verses are the ones in the book.

Thou God of love, Thou ever blest,
Pity my suffering state;
When wilt Thou set my soul at rest
From lips that love deceit?

Hard lot of mine, my days are cast
Among the sons of strife,
Whose never-ceasing brawlings waste
My golden hours of life.

O might I fly to change my place,
How would I choose to dwell
In some wide lonesome wilderness,
And leave these gates of hell.

Peace is the blessing that I seek,
How lovely are its charms;
I am for peace, but when I speak,
They all declare for arms.

New passions still their souls engage
And keep their malice strong;
What shall be done to curb thy rage,
O thou devouring tongue!

Should burning arrows smite them through,
Strict justice would approve;
But I had rather spare my foe,
And melt his heart with love.

This seems like a hymn for the era of social media, which is purpose-built to enrage and enflame the enmity between us and our neighbors! It does seem like a hard lot to be caught wasting our “golden hours of life” in “never-ceasing brawlings,” especially because we willingly cast ourselves into those brawlings. We might prefer a “lonesome wilderness[1]” to the continually renewed and passionate malice we find ourselves in.

Watts’s bitter response is to “smite them through” with “burning arrows.” This is what they deserve.

But he is called to a better way, which is the way of forgiveness and love. Only this has the hope of melting the hearts of his enemies. This is his Christian response. Surely, Watts is also thinking of Christ’s call to forgiveness and love, and Christ’s life of forgiveness and love, which led to Christ’s death, but also showed a new way of living. It is better to live the blessed, flourishing life as a person of charming peace than “declare for arms.”

Why is this song called “Kedar”? The answer is in the original psalm. Here is the text of Psalm 120 in the King James Version:

1 In my distress I cried unto the Lord,
 and he heard me.
2 Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips,
 and from a deceitful tongue.
3 What shall be given unto thee?
 or what shall be done unto thee,
 thou false tongue?
4 Sharp arrows of the mighty,
 with coals of juniper.
5 Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech,
 that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!
6 My soul hath long dwelt
 with him that hateth peace.
7 I am for peace:
 but when I speak, they are for war.

Psalm 120 is the first of the so-called psalms of ascent, which were most likely collected and used as hymns as worshippers ascended into the temple in Jerusalem. Verse 5 mentions Mesech and Kedar. The IVP Bible Background Commentary says, “since these places are in opposite directions from Israel, they are probably paired as representatives of remote and barbaric places.” Thomas Ward pointed out to me that “Kedar” is used to mean a refuge in John Bayer’s HYMN OF THE DUNKERS (367 in The Shenandoah Harmony), which uses a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier: “Praise be His name who deigns to bless/Our Kedar of the wilderness!”

According to the principles that Watts used for his psalm paraphrases, it’s not surprising that Watts left out the names of Mesech and Kedar; they would be unfamiliar to his audience. But Samuel Crossman, writing in 1664, feels free to use Kedar in a verse that points towards Psalm 120:

Ah me! ah me! that I
In Kedar’s tents here stay;
No place like this on high;
Thither, Lord! guide my way.

Oh happy place! When shall I be,
My God! with thee, To see thy face?

So, although it’s not directly referenced in Watts’s paraphrase, the idea of being in a small, safe tent, even in the midst of all the troubles of the world is hinted at in Ward’s choice of a title, the way Crossman and Whittier use the image, and, of course, in the psalm itself. Inadequate, but better than nothing.

According to Joseph Belcher[2], the Reverend John Adams, after being dismissed from his position after 30 years in Durham, New Hampshire, requested his people to sing the first three verses of Watts’s poem to the “praise and glory of God, and to their own edification,”. This is quite a burning arrow, which, perhaps, “strict justice would approve.” But it’s just the opposite of Watts’s intent. Also, according to his principles of paraphrase, he keeps the lament of the psalm, but also shows a new response of love.

I hope I will remember this, the next time I want to send a burning arrow to smite some fools, and I hope they will remember it the next time they want to send a burning arrow my foolish way.

[1] Incidentally, I think this is the first time “lonesome wilderness” appears in print.

[2] Historical Sketches of Hymns, their Writers, and their Influence, 1859.