As the first of the songs of Ascents, Psalm 120 might be seen as key to understanding the whole corpus, but its content remains poorly understood. This study suggests that its author was a smith-poet committed to the Edomite/Qenite traditional worship of YHWH, here complaining about participating, through the fabrication of iron weapons, in the demise of Edom (553 BCE). On this reading, the poem becomes a lament on the irremediable demise of traditional (metallurgical) Yahwism after the rise of iron metallurgy and its transformation of war. Introducing the Ascents, this song might express the search for an alternative form of Yahwism emancipated from the original metallurgical dimension. Expressed in Israel, this alternative Yahwism becomes praised in the other songs of Ascents. This interpretation corroborates the rise of a group of Edomite poets (Ezrahites) in Jerusalem in the early Persian period and its integration within the temple staff.

作为 Ascents 的第一首歌曲，诗篇 120 可能被视为理解整个语料库的关键，但其内容仍然知之甚少。这项研究表明，它的作者是一位铁匠诗人，致力于以东/Qenite 对耶和华的传统崇拜，在这里抱怨通过制造铁武器参与以东的灭亡（公元前 553 年）。在这种阅读中，这首诗成为了对传统（冶金）Yahwism 在铁冶金兴起及其战争转变之后无可挽回的消亡的哀叹。介绍 Ascents，这首歌可能表达了对从原始冶金维度中解放出来的另一种形式的 Yahwism 的探索。在以色列，这种另类的耶和华主义在 Ascents 的其他歌曲中得到称赞。