Psalm 13

Psalm 13 (NRSV)

 

¹ How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

² How long must I bear pain in my soul,

and have sorrow in my heart all day long?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 

³ Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,

⁴ and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;

my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. 

⁵ But I trusted in your steadfast love;

my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

⁶ I will sing to the Lord,

because he has dealt bountifully with me.

 

Psalm 13 is an individual lament, the prayer of a sick person, uttered in the sanctuary where the psalmist presumes the Lord is present. The psalm is an expression of grief by an Israelite experiencing a sense of spiritual abandonment, as in the more famous opening line of Psalm 22.  It is also a plea for a restoration of the relationship with the divine that the psalmist had once enjoyed. In such individual laments, we have an expression of individuality that we do not usually find in the Old Testament, given its usual communal context. We find literature that expresses personal and private hope, fear, anguish, confusion, and rage. Such “spiritual laments of the individual” became the single most common psalm type by expressing for so many “the perennial misery of life.”[1] It has the theme of a person on the verge of death and harboring doubts about the goodness and presence of the Lord. 

The superscription to the psalm tells us little. It is found on 55 of the psalms, usually with an accompanying identification with David. To the leader refers to the choirmaster in the second temple (the temple built under Ezra and Nehemiah after the Babylonian exile), the period from which most of the psalms derive, based on their language, and during which the psalter was redacted more or less into its present form. A Psalm of David.  For most of the history of biblical interpretation, the identification with David was taken to mean Davidic authorship, and David was regarded as “the sweet singer of Israel.” Historical critical scholarship has made this attribution impossible in most cases, and the attachment of the psalms to David is honorific. 

Psalm 13: 1-2 are the lament. As is typical, we do not know the occasion of distress that has caused this lament. It opens with the invocation. The repetition of “How long” forms a refrain, emphasizing the long-standing sense of abandonment by the poet. ¹ How long, the concern is with the delay of the Lord in responding to the prayer, O Lord  [Yahweh]? It is difficult for modern readers of the Bible to bear in mind that “the Lord” and “God” are not simply synonymous in the OT, in which many deities are recognized, most notably the Canaanite weather-god, Baal, who is portrayed as a serious threat to the Lord. Will you forget (shachach, as in ignore) me forever? The question occurs in Psalm 42:9, 44:24, 74:19, 77:9. How long will you hide your face from me? Psalms 10:1; 22:1, 19; 35:22; 38:21; 71:22. The questions arise together in Psalm 27:9; 44:24; 69:17; 88:14 as well. To “hide the face” is a common poetic expression in the OT meaning to disregard or to ignore. The hidden face of the Lord here is the result of divine neglect. The concern is the relationship the person has with God. The expression is rooted in the actual physical gesture of a more powerful person looking away from a less powerful subject or supplicant, the full face hidden from the supplicant’s view. In the ancient world, to receive a monarch’s full attention, signified by the direct gaze, was a powerful and even overwhelming experience. Ordinarily it is used negatively and overwhelmingly in the complaint section of personal laments; in one instance it is used positively in the sense of “overlooking” sins (Psalm 51:9). Only once does the expression occur outside the psalter (Job 13:24), and there, too, it is in a poetic context. The sense of the expression is entirely relational, in distinction to any physiological sense in which human beings depend upon God’s face shining upon them for physical survival; the contrast is clear in Psalm 104:29. The corresponding desideratum is for God’s face to shine (e.g., Psalm 4:6; 31:16; 80:3, 7, 19; etc.). ² How long must I bear pain in my soul (Hebrew text reads “hold counsel in my soul;” NIV’s “wrestle with my thoughts”; “keep asking myself what to do”).[2] The psalmist is wrestling with his thoughts. He is having an internal conversation. I am not competent in translation matters to pass judgment, but I am puzzled by some translators wanting to grab for synonymous parallelism here. Personally, I like the idea of focusing upon the conversation he is having with himself. In any case, the NRSV makes the phrase in synonymous parallelism with and have sorrow in my heart. If we stay with the Hebrew text, in addition to the internal conversation, the psalmist expresses his internal sorrow as well. The writer in one phrase, if we follow the Hebrew text, expresses poetically an experience with which most of us can identify. Who has not an internal conversation about what is going at a moment in life? Who has not had internal sorrow, an ache that just will not go away? Will it last all day long? He longs for the internal conversation and sorrow to end. How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? The “enemy” is unnamed, as most of the enemies in the psalter are, but as a class they tend to be the rich, the powerful, the proud, the arrogant and the irreligious (see, for example, Psalm 14:1; 36:11; 54:3; 86:14; 119:21, 51). The poor are frequently identified as those for whom the Lord has regard (e.g., Psalm 34:6; 40:17; 41:1; etc.), and while the poor may not necessarily be righteous, their cause is unquestionably just. The effect of the repetition of the question regarding “low long” is to emphasize the psalmist’s perception of the delay of the Lord; the psalmist has apparently presented this petition before but without response. 

Psalm 13: 3-4 are a prayer. Again, the psalmist focuses first upon his relationship with the Lord, for he desires that relationship to continue.  Then he asks for the lightening of the sorrow he experiences, and lastly focuses on the enemy. ³ Consider or look at, reversing the hidden face so that the Lord gazes upon the poet, and answer me, O Lord (Yahweh) my God (Elohim)! Connecting Yahweh with Elohim is a stock phrase in the Psalms (e.g., 7:1, 3; 30:2, 12; 35:24; etc.), sometimes divided into separate elements in parallel poetic lines (e.g., 7:6; 18:2; 38:21; 40:17; etc.). In later periods of the history of the religion of Israel, when the divine name Yahweh acquired quasi-mystical attributes making it too holy for ordinary people to pronounce, the phrase “my God” simpliciter was used as a circumlocution for the name of the deity (see especially the book of Nehemiah 2:8, 12, 18; 5:19; 6:14; 7:5; 13:14; etc.). Give light to my eyes, specifying the type of response he desires from the Lord. Another beautiful poetic turn of phrase we find here. We find the phrase in Proverbs 29:13 as well, asking for a return to vitality, which has ebbed away dangerously. It suggests return to strength. Or I will sleep the sleep of death, a memorable poetic expression that occurs only here in the Bible. Here is one of the isolated instances in the Old Testament of the idea of death as a sleep.[3] It represents the separation between the Lord and humans that occurs in death, since one cannot offer praise to the Lord. The meaning of sleep as death is obvious in Kings and Chronicles, where such and such a king slept with his ancestors.[4] The OT, unlike the New Testament (e.g., Matthew 9:24; 27:52; John 11:11, 12; 1 Corinthians 11:30; etc.), does not blur the line between dying and sleeping; while sleep may adumbrate death in the OT, the genuinely dead will not, in general, awake. Only in the very latest stratum of the OT (e.g., Ezekiel 37; Daniel 12) is there a suggestion that death for some human beings is not final. ⁴ And my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken, or fallen, from the close relationship he had with the Lord.It is a classic illustration of the notion that in the poetry of the Old Testament, the second half heightens the first, as we move from the singular “enemy” to the plural “foes.” The psalmist returns to the theme of the exulting enemy, where the difficulty seems to be that the psalmist’s demise will prove his enemy right. What, exactly, the nature of the argument has been we do not know, but it clearly rests on the psalmist’s belief that misfortune and divine favor are incompatible, and the psalmist’s troubles reflect a sharp theological problem that remains thorny even today: Either God does not exist or God does not care. As long as the psalmist suffers, that question remains open, at least to the enemy.

Psalm 13: 5-6 are an affirmation of trust and thanksgiving. He has now “seen” the Lord in the worship experience.  He affirms trust in the Lord first, and then shows the lightening of the burden on his heart. ⁵ But, nevertheless, in contrast to the enemies, as for me, I trusted in your steadfast love (Hesed, occurring 250 times, one of the defining characteristics of Israel’s God.) Hesed refers to moral obligation and duty. Hesed refers to the generously merciful disposition and behavior of a greater party to a lesser (rarely the reverse). In this sense, it is usually used to describe Yahweh’s attitude and behavior toward Israel, but it also describes behavior among human beings. Because it is “steadfast,” it is trustworthy. To believe in God in the OT is not to think certain thoughts about Yahweh, but to trust in Yahweh utterly and completely. My heart shall rejoice, his burden lightened, in your salvation, as the Lord brings him to safety within the realities of this world. In response to what the Lord will do, ⁶ I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me, and thus such trust is not the result of abstract thought. The Lord answered the prayer of the psalmist. On this basis, he vows to have joy and gratitude as he enjoys communion with the Lord and restores a new relationship with the Lord.

We learn again that doubt is not the enemy of faith. In fact, doubt and questioning can lead us deeper. Too many people of faith want to believe in things that are “beyond the shadow of a doubt.” Problem is, the Bible itself is willing to go into those shadows and ask the tough questions of the Lord. In this case, the Lord ignores the plight of the psalmist. The writer seems to care more about evil than the does the Lord. His repeated attempts to get the Lord to do something have gone for nothing. The Lord simply does not answer. His prayer is that the Lord will restore life and vitality. The alternative is the sleep of death. However, in the end, the psalmist reaffirms his confidence in the Lord and promises to praise the Lord for the assured deliverance.  In the biblical text, when people cry out in loneliness and pain, when the enemy lurks outside in the darkness, the Lord does not respond with lengthy explanations about theodicy or provide a bulleted list of ways to get around the problem. Instead, the Lord chooses to simply come alongside humanity with trustworthy love, taking on our suffering and redeeming it. Such an “answer” to the question of suffering, evil, and divine absence is admittedly frustrating. For the person of faith, it offers profound comfort that from the outside will be mystifying. Thus, having remembered the evidence of the trustworthy love of God in his own life, the psalmist quickly drops his lament, turning his internal conversation, lament, and pain into a song of praise. His meditation and prayer have lifted the burdened caused by the experience of divine absence amid suffering, evil, and enemies.

I would like to take a journey through Psalm 13 again, but this time as a classic case of a human plaintiff looking for justice from a divine defendant.  The psalmist, who acts as both plaintiff and prosecutor, calls God to the witness stand and accuses God of abandonment, alienation of affection, and apathy. The Lord has failed to intervene on the plaintiff’s behalf in a conflict with a third party, which is a human enemy. 

In this case it is not the fact that God causes the evil, but that God turns a blind eye and seems refuses to do anything about it. The psalmist’s repeated attempts to get God to do something have gone for naught — God simply does not answer. God is not on trial here; God’s absence is on trial. The plaintiff’s case in the psalm is stated as dramatically. Four times he asks, “How long …?,” each question heightening the tension even for those who have read this transcript many times over the centuries. The questions are rhetorical, the psalmist asking them in such rapid succession that the defendant has no time to answer. Has God forgotten him? Has God abandoned him? What about the pain and suffering he has had to deal with, and why does his enemy always seem to prevail over him? (v. 2). It is a compelling case that causes the reader to lean forward in the jury box; what is God going to say to that!? 

Just when the tension cannot get any higher, the psalmist slams his fist on the prosecutor’s podium. Like Tom Cruise’s character in A Few Good Men, the psalmist, in effect, cries out, “I want the truth!” “Consider and answer me, O LORD my God!” seems like an overly bold and risky demand to make to the Lord God, but his desperation for justice and resolution outweighs the etiquette of the court. In fact, cries the plaintiff, God’s answer is a matter of life or death. If God will not help, then the plaintiff will be at the mercy of the enemy waiting outside the courtroom door.

Almost half the psalms are focused on God’s apparent absence and on the writers’ cries for help. We are not used to praying this way, preferring instead to focus on sending petitions to God and being quietly disappointed when we do not get that for which we have asked. By contrast, the forceful prosecution of the psalmists makes a lot of pious people uncomfortable. That is because we are afraid of how God might respond. 

Take the book of Job, for example. After Job’s long lament to God about his problems, God responds, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). Sounds like the equivalent of Jack Nicholson’s character Col. Nathan Jessop shouting, “You can’t handle the truth!” at Cruise’s nervous Navy lawyer. When it comes to questioning God, we think it might be better not to know the answer.

But the bigger reason we often skip over this part of the psalter has to do with how we perceive faith and doubt. Doubt about God and God’s existence is what sells books these days. Books like Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Greatand Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion are popular because they deal with the issue of doubt head-on, albeit from an atheistic perspective. Any time an atheist speaks or writes, many Christians gird their loins for battle because at some level there is a fear that any expression of doubt is the opposite of faith. Most people of faith want to believe in things that are “beyond the shadow of a doubt.” Problem is, the Bible itself is willing to go into those shadows and ask the challenging questions of God. 

Job aside, God does not say a whole lot from the witness stand in response to these accusations. Instead, God seems to want to let the evidence speak for itself. When people cry out in loneliness and pain, when the enemy lurks outside in the darkness, God does not respond with lengthy explanations about theodicy or provide a bulleted list of ways to get around the problem. Instead, God chooses to simply come alongside humanity with “steadfast love,” taking on our suffering and redeeming it. Having remembered the evidence of God’s “steadfast love” in his own life, the psalmist quickly drops his case, turning his diatribe into a song of praise.

Many people of faith have learned that God is one who is with us always and everywhere. God does not care occasionally. Many people of faith have learned that God is present in the deepest depths of our sorrowing and questioning hearts, as well as in the heights of assurance. When things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when it seems God has ignored our struggle and our prayer, many people of faith have discovered that God is present in a deeper and more profound way than the person ever knew before. We need God most when we are stumbling along and in pain.[5]

It may well be that the Christian today knows something about God the psalmist could not know. God has dealt with human evil, sin, and suffering by becoming human, thereby taking our questioning and sorrow within the divine life. At some level, the cross tells us where God is when we suffer and have questions of abandonment. Here is the supreme statement of the steadfast love, the loyalty of God, to humanity. 

---

[1] German biblical scholar, Hermann Gunkel.

[2] The Hebrew text of verse 2 reads “hold counsel in my soul,” which has been amended in the NRSV, following the Syriac, to “bear pain in my soul,” yielding a somewhat closer parallel to “have sorrow in my heart” in the second half of the verse. The emendation is not really necessary; as Gunkel observed long ago (his book on Psalms was originally written in 1930), the poetry of the personal laments is sometimes inferior to their piety (Gunkel, 34). The NRSV translation of verse 2a — “How long must I bear pain in my soul” — is based on the Syriac; the Masoretic Text reads “How long must I take counsels.” Only a slight modification of the Hebrew yields the Syriac translation, which is a closer poetic parallel to the second half of the verse (“have sorrows in my heart”). Other modern translations are based on the Syriac as well (e.g., the English Heritage Version’s “experience worries”). Some translations retain the sense of the original Hebrew (e.g., NIV’s “wrestle with my thoughts”; Complete Jewish Bible’s “keep asking myself what to do”).

The poetic parallelism of soul/heart simply denotes the inward being of the psalmist (captured in CJB’s “myself”). Again, over-literalization of the words will undermine the poet’s attempt to convey the spiritual anguish he is experiencing: the poet feels completely bereft of the divine presence.

[3] (Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 1998, 1991) Volume 2, 346.

[4] I Kings 14:31; 15:8; II Kings 21:18; 24:6; II Chronicles 14:1; 33:20). 

[5] Madeleine L’Engel in Two-Part Intervention.