[2] The psalm forms a regular part of Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and other Protestant liturgies.

A well known example is a stained glass window in Church of St Olaf, Wasdale in the English Lake District National Park, which quotes Psalm 121 as a memorial to members of the Fell & Rock Climbing Club who were killed in the First World War.

[12] In The Living Bible, writer Kenneth N. Taylor reads the opening verse in a slightly different many from most translations: Shall I look to the mountain gods for help?

[15] Musical settings for the Latin text have been composed by Orlando di Lasso, Hans Leo Hassler, and Herbert Howells amongst others.

Settings composed for the English text include John Clarke-Whitfeld, Charles Villiers Stanford, Henry Walford Davies, Mildred Barnes Royse,[16] and Imant Raminsh.

He also wrote a setting of a metred paraphrase of the psalm in German, "Ich heb mein Augen sehnlich auf", SWV 122, for the Becker Psalter, published first in 1628.

Felix Mendelssohn composed the famous "Hebe deine Augen auf" as a trio of his oratorio Elijah, Op.

Zoltán Kodály composed his Geneva Ps CXXI for mixed chorus a cappella), setting the psalm in Hungarian.

Du Bois wrote, “We make no ordinary sacrifice, but we make it gladly and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills.”[25] Several contemporary Israeli poets, such as Leah Goldberg and Haim Gouri, wrote poems named after the psalm's first words ("I will lift my eyes to the mountains") or a variation of them.