Bellarmine on Psalm 120 : Verses 5 & 6

Verses 5 & 6

The Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy protection upon thy right hand. The sun shall not burn thee by day: nor the moon by night.

Dominus custodit te, Dominus protectio tua super manum dexteram tuam. Per diem sol non uret te, neque luna per noctem.

The prophet has said a little earlier that a pilgrim who trusts in God will be protected lest he stumble on the journey; he now adds another consolation, namely, that he will be protected lest he wearies beneath the heat of the sun during the day or beneath the light of the moon during the night, since God will be like a shade to him that he can hold in his right hand, to protect his head or any other part of his body. “The Lord,” says the Prophet, not only “keeps safe Israel,” that is, His people generally, but He keeps you personally safe; He keeps you safe because He is your protection, like a covering against the shade, and the Hebrew sense says properly, “upon thy right hand;” hence it is that such a shade in your right hand serves as a roof so that the sun does not burn thee by day nor the moon by night. The Greek employs the future tense: The Lord shall be thy keeper; but in the Hebrew, it is not properly a verb in the present or future tense, but a participle: The Lord being thy keeper, or thy guardian; but the sense is the same. The Lord is thy protection upon thy right hand:  these words may contain a metaphor, as some would argue, to wit, of an armed man standing on the right hand, so that the sense is: The Lord will be your protection because He stands like an armed soldier on your right hand. But what we have said conforms more to the literal sense firstly, because for the word protection the Hebrew has shade, or sunshade; secondly, because the Hebrew and Greek have upon (thy right) hand, not to the right hand: hence it seems the Prophet had in mind a sunshade carried in the hand and 

adjusted by the hand; finally, because the line continues with: The sun shall not burn thee by day: nor the moon by night; but against the heat, or the brightness of the sun and moon, an armed soldier standing on the right offers no protection, unlike a shade held in the right hand over the head. Furthermore, the metaphor of a shade, of the sun and the moon, the day and the night, refers to the grace of God, which protects a pilgrim in time of prosperity and in time of adversity; for on the journey, the daytime of prosperity is not wont to cause harm any less than the night time of adversity. In his mystical way of reading, St. Augustine explains that God protects the right hand side but not the left, because often He permits man to be injured in wordly things, referring to the left hand, and He does not permit him to be harmed in spiritual things, signified by the right hand side.

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.