Catholic Commentary
The Psalmist's Solitary Commitment to Peace
7I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.
Psalms 120:7 expresses the psalmist's fundamental identification with peace, declaring "I am peace," yet immediately notes that his peaceful words are met with hostility and aggression from those around him. The verse captures the tension between a soul committed to peace and a world predisposed toward conflict and violence.
Peace is not a negotiating position—it is an identity, and claiming it means standing alone if necessary.
The spiritual sense also points toward the Church herself. The Church, like the psalmist, is a pilgrim community perpetually in via, journeying toward the heavenly Jerusalem, declaring herself for peace in a world that reaches for weapons. The Psalm of Ascent framework reminds us that this is not a comfortable or triumphalist peace, but a hard-won, costly peace of the cross.
The Catholic theological tradition brings extraordinary depth to this half-verse. First, the concept of shalom — peace — is not merely the absence of conflict in the Hebrew and Catholic traditions. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, drawing on Sacred Scripture and the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes, teaches that true peace is "the tranquility of order" (CCC 2304, quoting St. Augustine, City of God XIX, 13): an interior harmony that extends outward into right relationships with God, neighbor, and creation. When the psalmist says "I am peace," he claims this comprehensive shalom as his identity.
Second, the verse foreshadows the Beatitude of the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9): "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." Catholic tradition (cf. CCC 2305) teaches that this beatitude does not mean conflict-avoidance, but active, even costly, pursuit of reconciliation. The psalmist's lament — that his peace-speech is answered with war — is precisely the condition Jesus later blesses. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 29) defines peace as the fruit of charity, ordered first to God and then to neighbor; the psalmist's identification with peace is therefore a theological claim about his orientation toward God.
Third, Pope Paul VI's oft-cited maxim, "If you want peace, work for justice" (World Day of Peace Message, 1972), and Pope John XXIII's Pacem in Terris both resonate here: peace is not passive acquiescence but an active commitment rooted in truth, justice, love, and freedom. The psalmist's singular "I am for peace" is itself an act of moral courage — a refusal to be drawn into the logic of retaliation — and a model for Catholic engagement in a polarized world.
The contemporary Catholic encounters the psalmist's dilemma with striking regularity — in polarized families, fractured parishes, hostile workplaces, and a culture-war media landscape that rewards belligerence and punishes nuance. "I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war" could be the lament of anyone who has attempted a measured, charitable word in an online argument and received fury in return, or who has sought reconciliation in a divided community and been accused of weakness or capitulation.
The spiritual discipline this verse invites is not mere niceness or conflict-avoidance. It is the harder work of making peace one's identity — ʾănî šālôm — so that it is not a strategy deployed situationally but a consistent orientation of the self. Practically, this means: choosing not to answer provocation with provocation, committing to honest dialogue even when it is unrewarded, and finding in the Eucharist — the sacrament of the Church's own shalom — the source and summit of that identity. The Sign of Peace at Mass is not a social gesture; it is a ritual enactment of this verse: I am for peace, spoken with the body, offered to the neighbor, before the altar of the One who is Peace himself.
Commentary
Literal and Narrative Meaning
Psalm 120 is the first of the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120–134), sung by Jewish pilgrims climbing toward Jerusalem for the great feasts. Its opening verses (1–4) describe a cry to God from a place of affliction — the psalmist is surrounded by liars and deceivers. Verses 5–6 deepen the anguish: he compares his dwelling to "Meshech" and "Kedar," symbolic places of barbaric foreignness, peoples notorious for violence and enmity. By verse 7, the psalmist has reached the emotional and theological climax of his lament.
The Hebrew of verse 7 is arrestingly terse: ʾănî šālôm — literally, "I [am] peace." The verb "to be" is absent in Hebrew, making the identification even more absolute. The psalmist does not say "I want peace," or "I seek peace," or even "I love peace." He identifies himself with peace as a state of being. This is not a political posture or a diplomatic preference; it is a declaration of personal identity.
The second half of the verse, often printed separately or elided in liturgy, reads: wĕkî ăddabbēr hēmmâ lammilḥāmâ — "but when I speak, they are for war." The contrast is shattering. Every attempt at dialogue is met with aggression. The psalmist's very act of opening his mouth in the desire for reconciliation provokes the hostility of those around him. This is not passive suffering; it is the suffering that comes specifically from peacemaking in an environment of belligerence.
Typological and Spiritual Senses
The Fathers of the Church and the medieval exegetes read this psalm — and particularly this verse — in a strongly Christological light. Christ, as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), is the one who is ʾănî šālôm in its fullest sense. He enters Jerusalem — the destination of every Psalm of Ascent — as the one who embodies shalom: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you" (John 14:27). Yet the world responds to His words of peace precisely as the psalm describes: with war. The Passion narrative is the ultimate fulfillment of verse 7's contrast — Christ speaks peace, and they cry out for His crucifixion.
St. Augustine, in his Expositions on the Psalms, reads the Psalms of Ascent as describing the soul's ascent toward God, each psalm representing a step of spiritual growth. Psalm 120 is the beginning of that ascent, and its final note — "I am for peace, but they are for war" — names the fundamental tension of every soul that turns toward God in a world disordered by sin. The soul committed to shalom will always find itself in conflict with the world, precisely because it refuses to participate in the world's logic of violence and retaliation.