Psalm 130Psalm 130 is an individual lament. It offers a personal petition in verses 1-6 and then addresses the community in verses 7-8. It is part of the collection of the Songs of Ascent, likely referring to the people or the priests going up to Jerusalem or the Temple. One of the best-known pieces of liturgical prayer, Psalm 130 is a plea for help — specifically, a cry for a divine hearing — that combines the deeply personal with the nationally corporate. It became one of the penitential psalms in the liturgy of the church. It reflects the psalmist’s awareness of the pervasive nature of human sinfulness in the face of the righteousness and justice of the Lord and the despair that such awareness can provoke. However, it is also a clear affirmation of the mercy of the Lord that overcomes human despair. The psalm is the confession of a devout person who was able to rise from the anguish caused by sin to assurance of forgiveness. John Wesley heard the psalm sung the afternoon before his transforming experience at Aldersgate. The Psalm offers a succinct and powerful expression of the human predicament and the dependence of humanity upon divine grace to bring healing and wholeness. Genuine redemption includes not only freedom from guilt, but also freedom from the prison in which sin captures a human life. [1]
Psalm 130:1-6 seek divine attention. 1 Out of the depths (ma`amakim), “Out of the pit of darkness I cry” or “From the nadir of despair I cry to you.” A reference to the underworld, a metaphor for being near death. In this case, figurative of emotional, spiritual, and psychological distress, chaotic forces that trouble human life. Many movies and television shows use darkness as a symbol of moral darkness, where people do awful things to each other that involve crime and death. Such darkness is as old as evil, pain, suffering, and despair. The reality of world is thus such darkness surrounds and invades us. We might have some thoughts like Charlie Brown, who once said to Lucy, after she dispensed some poor psychiatric advice, “Where do I go to give up?” I cry to you, O Lord (Yahweh). The writers of biblical poetry perceived relationship to God and life to be relative, rather than absolute. One could be more or less in the divine presence (and life) or one could be more or less away from it, that is, in death (or Sheol or hell or the Pit or the depths, all used relatively interchangeably). Yet, the overall testimony of Scripture is that God is never far from any one of us. We shout when we are angry. When two people are in love, they speak softly and tenderly with each other. They may whisper. They may even simply look into the eyes of each other and communicate all they want to say. Shouting suggests distance between the person speaking and the intended hearer. To cover the distance, we shout. Many studies suggest that parents who shout at their children scare them. Sometimes, of course, they may need to shout to get the attention of the child. Yet, if parents shout too much, the fear the child feels will put them into the standard fight, flight, or freeze response. Whatever you are trying to teach in your shouting, they will not learn. The parent is teaching them to listen only when the parent is yelling, which is not a good direction for the parent and child relation to go. Most importantly, shouting will push the child away. It will increase the distance. The parent loses influence.[2] 2Lord, (Adonai) hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive. We see here an example of anthropomorphism, the God of Israel perceived to be an excessively big Israelite male. The writer wants the Lord to give attention to the voice of my supplications! 3 If you, O Lord, (Adonai) should mark iniquities (‘ăwōnōwṯ), Lord (Yah), who could stand? The poet discovers the depths of sin. If the Lord were an accountant regarding our sins, we would all be doomed. The Hebrew noun has a complex meaning, encompassing iniquity (the sin itself), guilt (we are guilty, and we feel guilty) and punishment; the related Hebrew verb can mean to twist, to distort and to pervert. “Iniquities” is one of the deepest and most inward of the Old Testament words for sin. It represents the corruption of the heart.[3] Isaiah 59:2 is relevant, where iniquity has put a barrier between the people and the Lord, so much so that the Lord does not look upon them. Further, if Yahweh should take note of all human iniquities, no one would have the right to remain upright before the Lord. People, by rights, should throw themselves on the mercy of the divine judge (by throwing themselves face down on the ground, exposing the back of the neck for crushing, as by the foot of a victorious warrior). The chasm between the human and the divine presented here is vast. 4 However, there is forgiveness with you, so that people may revere you. Here, reverence or being in awe of the Lord comes from forgiveness rather than the threat of punishment. We must neither trivialize sin nor underestimate the love and grace of God. If you have ever been responsible for a division with a spouse, friend, or child, asked forgiveness, and the other person refuse to forgive, you know that forgiveness is truly a gift one can withhold from giving. Thus, this experience of the depths of sin makes it possible to see divine grace. God overcomes sin through forgiveness. This is what leads to repentance. The theological notion expressed is that the Lord must forgive since all people sin, and forgiveness rather than punishment causes people to hold the Lord in awe. No ritual is necessary for this forgiveness, and the sin is completely erased. 5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits. The poet may be waiting for an oracle. Beginning here, note the interplay between waiting and hoping that comes through here in eagerness to receive the generosity of the divine grace.
I invite you to reflect upon the onerous problem of having to wait — for anything. Waiting seems like such wasted time, especially if you are in a line at a branch of the Post Office, or at the grocery store or bank. You are no doubt irritated when you are forced to wait at the doctor's office, your appointment notwithstanding. But at least at the doctor's office you can read a 3-year-old magazine. Still, this kind of waiting is not as difficult as the waiting that's involved when trying to heal a broken relationship.
In the case of the psalmist, and in his word, I hope. The divine word for the poet was far more than a codified book of laws, but the living oracle of deliverance. It was the guiding principle, worked out in the fluctuations of historical existence, that determined all of reality for ancient Israel collectively and ancient Israelites individually. This understanding of the word of the Lord is what links the first half of the psalm, the personal portion, with the second half, the corporate portion. The same deity who responds in mercy to the individual responds also to the nation as a whole and with the same redemptive power. 6 My soul waits (qawa) for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning. The Hebrew has the sense of eagerly awaiting, expecting, looking for, longing for, and hoping for, something. See Isaiah 40:31. We have a reference to the behavior of sentinels who are desperately eager for morning to come, to bring relief from the terrors of the night.
Of course, in the New Testament, in Christ was the Word is also life that brings light to all people. This light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it (John 1:4-5). It is helpful to remember that for the time being, the biblical promises are not about the light of God obliterating darkness. True, darkness has not overcome the light, but neither has light overcome darkness. We might even think, along with ancient thought, that life is a battle between the forces of light and darkness, and that we participate in one side of that battle or the other.[4] Children are afraid of darkness. Sadly, too many adults seem afraid of the light.[5]
Psalm 130:7-8 are a call for Israel to have confidence. As in many psalms, the personal becomes communal. 7 O Israel, hope (yahal,[6] confident anticipation or trust that the Lord will act) in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love (hesed), and with the Lord is great power to redeem. We are among those who eagerly await the Lord’s forgiveness and confidently anticipate that the Lord will affirmatively answer our cry for help. In Jeremiah 29:11, God offers “a future with hope.”[7] In the Lord’s Word, the psalmist hopes (see Psalm 119:74); thus, the Lord will do what the Lord promises about forgiveness. The psalm ends confidently, for 8 the Lord will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.Many passages in the Old Testament assume that sin deserves punishment, but here, sinners receive redemption through forgiveness of their sins. The word “redeem” goes back to the ancient world when armies would routinely conquer neighboring countries and take people as prisoners. The family members left behind would recover from the invasion, and then pull together money to use as a ransom to buy the freedom of their loved ones. The redeemer, in these cases, would be the person who travels abroad to buy back what the enemy confiscated, to rescue the people who the enemy had taken into captivity. There was nothing necessarily religious about this redeemer. He was simply doing a job. However, from this ancient work, we get an image for God — the one who is, for us, the ultimate redeemer.
We find the theme of this Psalm reflected in the hymns of the church.
In “It Is Well With My Soul,” Horatio Spafford wrote:
“My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!”
In “Rock of Ages,” Augustus Toplady wrote:
“Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.”
The aphorism can be traced to page 6 of The Washington Post, October 25, 1911: “Nor would a wise man, seeing that he was in a hole, go to work and blindly dig it deeper.” We have idioms, such as adding fuel to the fire, pouring gasoline on the fire, adding insult to injury. We could expand this to do not dig holes for others, for you will likely fall into it yourself. However, if you are in a pit/hole out of which you have no hope of climbing out, the best thing you can do is cry for help.
I wonder how many Americans experience the anguish that arises from sinfulness. I think many of us think of ourselves as quite good people. We are not perfect, but we are good enough. We may feel some shame and guilt on occasion. Normally, that feeling passes quickly. Do we really experience the breadth and depth of sin that influences our thoughts, words, and deeds? We confess that we have not loved God with our whole hearts, not been an obedient church, have not done the will of God, have broken the laws of God, have not loved our neighbors, and have not heard the cry of the needy. The words can roll so easily off our lips. Do we really understand the desperate condition in which we find ourselves? Do we realize that we cannot save ourselves?
Two images come to my mind.
All of us must decide what to do with things we no longer need. We call it trash. One of the enjoyable things about computers is the delete button. You can trash items all you want. You can even retrieve them if you want.
Another image is the restoration of old things, such as paintings or homes. Such projects are difficult. One can even use bacteria to restore old paintings.[8]
Regardless of the difficulty of the task before us, there is always room for great hope. For at every event that may lead to despair there is the possibility of giving up. Amid every dimension of delusion there are sparkles of sanity. Giving up in some circumstances takes the form of faith. It becomes a form of leaping forward into a belief that one is loved, accepted, forgiven, and redeemed just as one is, with nothing special needing to be done. Giving up for too many people in too many circumstances comes from despair. However, out of despair can come the wisdom of realizing that no amount of continuing effort, no amount of fixing, will enable one to ‘get it all together.’ Despair can be a doorway to life.[9]
I would like to say that we know what the writer of this psalm feels. I am not so sure. William James wrote Varieties of Religious Experience. He was a psychologist in the early 1900’s. He describes the healthy-minded as having a sense that all is well with the world and/or that they are on the right side of God. Against this are the sick souls who cannot help but see the pain, loss, evil, and suffering in the world. One might think that as a psychologist, James is recommending the healthy-minded, but instead, he recommends the sick soul. You see, one may have a sick soul due to loss of significance, to a powerful sense of evil and suffering in the world, and to a keen sense of personal sin. As James sees it, the individual must die to unreal life before he or she can experience rebirth into real life. Such is the heart of religion, because this experience meets our most dire spiritual need for significance, facing suffering, and personal deliverance from sin.
I wonder how many of us look at ourselves as being such good people, that we never experience the sick soul, drowning in our sinfulness, struggling with meaning in life, and yes, deeply affected by the suffering of the world. The sick soul is willing to face honestly the way in which one’s own actions have contributed to the sin and evil in the world.
If we do not take care of our garbage now, its rotting presence in our lives will continue to affect our spiritual and emotional environment for years to come. It could also damage those who are around us. Just like at a physical garbage site, the damaging waste can leak out.
We have become even more secular than the world William James knew. Without God, how much awareness of sin and evil do we even have?
What are we to do?
I would commend anyone for his or her attempts at self-improvement and becoming a better person. Frankly, that is a life-long project. Yet, in some areas of our struggles, we need to relax, pray, and let God save us. When we try to climb out, we simply lose our balance and fall deeper into the pile. The debris of our sinful actions creates a kind of quicksand that sucks us ever deeper in. We are in our personal trash too deep, in over our heads, and we need to cry out for help. We need the grace to desire the Lord with our whole heart. If we desire like that, we will seek seriously and find the Lord. When we find the Lord, we will love the Lord. Finally, if we love the Lord, we will hate those sins and iniquities that have alienated us from the Lord and each other and from which the Lord seeks to redeem and liberate us.[10]
[1] James L. Mays, Psalms, in the Interpretation commentary series, 405, 407.
[2] --Laura Markham, "10 steps to stop yelling," Psychology Today, psychologytoday.com. February 14, 2013. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
[3] Leslie S. McCaw and J. A. Motyer ( “Psalms,” The New Bible Commentary: Revised, 533).
[4] Zoroastrianism was one such religion.
[5] We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. —Plato.
[6] “Hope” (vv. 5 and 7) is the Hebrew word yahal, with a hard h. The Septuagint translated the verb yahal by elpixw, used frequently in the NT to refer to our confident hope/trust in God’s promises to us in Jesus Christ.
[7] Using the noun-form of the Hebrew root.
[9] Gerald May, Simply Sane: Stop Fixing Yourself and Start Really Living (Paulist, 1977), 47.
[10] St. Anselm (11th century) put it this way:
O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire thee with our whole heart, that so desiring, we may seek and find thee, and so finding thee we may love thee, and loving thee we may hate those sins from which thou has redeemed us, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Good take on this psalm
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