1 For how long, Jehovah, wilt Thou forget me for ever?
For how long wilt Thou hide Thy face from me?
2 For how long shall I brood on schemes (_i.e._, of deliverance) in
my soul,
Trouble in my heart by day?
For how long shall my foe lift himself above me?
3 Look hither, answer me, Jehovah, my God;
Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the death,
4 Lest my foe say, I have overcome him,
And oppressors exult when I am moved.
5 But as for me, in Thy mercy have I trusted;
Let my heart exult in Thy salvation:
6 I will sing to Jehovah, for He has dealt bountifully with me.
This little psalm begins in agitation, and ends in calm. The waves run
high at first, but swiftly sink to rest, and at last lie peacefully
glinting in sunshine. It falls into three strophes, of which the first
(vv. 1, 2) is the complaint of endurance strained almost to giving
way; the second (vv. 3, 4) is prayer which feeds fainting faith; and
the third (vv. 5, 6, which are one in the Hebrew) is the voice of
confidence, which, in the midst of trouble, makes future deliverance
and praise a present experience.
However true it is that sorrow is "but for a moment," it seems to last
for an eternity. Sad hours are leaden-footed, and joyful ones winged.
If sorrows passed to our consciousness as quickly as joys, or joys
lingered as long as sorrows, life would be less weary. That
reiterated "How long?" betrays how weary it was to the psalmist. Very
significant is the progress of thought in the fourfold questioning
plaint, which turns first to God, then to himself, then to the enemy.
The root of his sorrow is that God seems to have forgotten him;
therefore his soul is full of plans for relief, and the enemy seems to
be lifted above him. The "sorrow of the world" begins with the visible
evil, and stops with the inward pain; the sorrow which betakes itself
first to God, and thinks last of the foe, has trust embedded in its
depths, and may unblamed use words which sound like impatience. If the
psalmist had not held fast by his confidence, he would not have
appealed to God. So the "illogical" combination in his first cry of
"How long?" and "for ever" is not to be smoothed away, but represents
vividly, because unconsciously, the conflict in his soul from the
mingling of the assurance that God's seeming forgetfulness must have
an end and the dread that it might have none. Luther, who had trodden
the dark places, understood the meaning of the cry, and puts it
beautifully when he says that here "hope itself despairs, and despair
yet hopes, and only that unspeakable groaning is audible with which
the Holy Spirit, who moves over the waters covered with darkness,
intercedes for us." The psalmist is tempted to forget the confidence
expressed in Psalm ix. 18 and to sink to the denial animating the
wicked in Psalms x., xi. The heart wrung by troubles finds little
consolation in the mere intellectual belief in a Divine omniscience.
An idle remembrance which does not lead to actual help is a poor stay
for such a time. No doubt the psalmist knew that forgetfulness was
impossible to God; but a God who, though He remembered, did nothing
for, His servant, was not enough for him, nor is He for any of us.
Heart and flesh cry out for _active_ remembrance; and, however clear
the creed, the tendency of long-continued misery will be to tempt to
the feeling that the sufferer is forgotten. It takes much grace to
cling fast to the belief that He thinks of the poor suppliant whose
cry for deliverance is unanswered. The natural inference is one or
other of the psalmist's two here: God has forgotten or has hidden His
face in indifference or displeasure. The Evangelist's profound
"therefore" is the corrective of the psalmist's temptation: "Jesus
loved" the three sad ones at Bethany; "when therefore He heard that he
was sick, He abode still two days in the place where He was."
Left alone, without God's help, what can a man do but think and think,
plan and scheme to weariness all night and carry a heavy heart as he
sees by daylight how futile his plans are? Probably "by night" should
be supplied in ver. 2 _a_; and the picture of the gnawing cares and
busy thoughts which banish sleep and of the fresh burst of sorrow on
each new morning appeals only too well to all sad souls. A brother
laments across the centuries, and his long-silent wail is as the voice
of our own griefs. The immediate visible occasion of trouble appears
only in the last of the fourfold cries. God's apparent forgetfulness
and the psalmist's own subjective agitations are more prominent than
the "enemy" who "lifts himself above him." His arrogant airs and
oppression would soon vanish if God would arise. The insight which
places him last in order is taught by faith. The soul stands between
God and the external world, with all its possible calamities; and if
the relation with God is right, and help is flowing unbrokenly from
Him, the relation to the world will quickly come right, and the soul
be lifted high above the foe, however lofty he be or think himself.
The agitation of the first strophe is somewhat stilled in the second, in
which the stream of prayer runs clear without such foam, as the
impatient questions of the first part. It falls into four clauses, which
have an approximate correspondence to those of strophe 1. "Look hither,
answer me, Jehovah, my God." The first petition corresponds to the
hiding of God's face, and perhaps the second, by the law of inverted
parallelism, may correspond to the _forgetting_, but in any case the
noticeable thing is the swift decisiveness of spring with which the
psalmist's faith reaches firm ground here. Mark the implied belief that
God's look is not an otiose gaze, but brings immediate act answering the
prayer; mark the absence of copula between the verbs, giving force to
the prayer and swiftness to the sequence of Divine acts; mark the
outgoing of the psalmist's faith in the addition to the name "Jehovah"
(as in ver. 1), of the personal "my God," with all the sweet and
reverent appeal hived in the address. The third petition, "Lighten mine
eyes," is not for illumination of vision, but for renewed strength.
Dying eyes are glazed; a sick man's are heavy and dull. Returning health
brightens them. So here the figure of sickness threatening to become
death stands for trouble, or possibly the "enemy" is a real foe seeking
the life, as will be the most natural interpretation if the Davidic
origin is maintained. To "sleep death" is a forcible compressed
expression, which is only attenuated by being completed. The prayer
rests upon the profound conviction that Jehovah is the fountain of life,
and that only by His continual pouring of fresh vitality into a man can
any eyes be kept from death. The brightest must be replenished from His
hand, or they fail and become dim; the dimmest can be brightened by His
gift of vigorous health. As in the first strophe the psalmist passed
from God to self, and thence to enemies, so he does in the second. His
prayer addresses God; its pleas regard, first, himself, and, second, his
foe. How is the preventing of the enemy's triumph in his being stronger
than the psalmist and of his malicious joy over the latter's misfortune
an argument with God to help? It is the plea, so familiar in the Psalter
and to devout hearts, that God's honour is identified with His servant's
deliverance, a true thought, and one that may reverently be entertained
by the humblest lover of God, but which needs to be carefully guarded.
We must make very sure that God's cause is ours before we can be sure
that ours is His; we must be very completely living for His honour
before we dare assume that His honour is involved in our continuing to
live. As Calvin says, "Cum eo nobis communis erit hæc precatio, si sub
Dei imperio et auspiciis militamus."
The storm has all rolled away in the third strophe, in which faith has
triumphed over doubt and anticipates the fulfilment of its prayer. It
begins with an emphatic opposition of the psalmist's personality to the
foe: "But as for me"--however they may rage--"I have trusted in Thy
mercy." Because he has thus trusted, therefore he is sure that that
mercy will work for him salvation or deliverance from his present peril.
Anything is possible rather than that the appeal of faith to God's heart
of love should not be answered. Whoever can say, I have trusted, has the
right to say, I shall rejoice. It was but a moment ago that this man had
asked, How long shall I have sorrow in my heart? and now the sad heart
is flooded with sudden gladness. Such is the magic of faith, which can
see an unrisen light in the thickest darkness, and hear the birds
singing amongst the branches even while the trees are bare and the air
silent. How significant the contrast of the two rejoicings set side by
side: the adversaries' when the good man is "moved"; the good man's when
God's salvation establishes him in his place! The closing strain reaches
forward to deliverance not yet accomplished, and, by the prerogative of
trust, calls things that are not as though they were. "He has dealt
bountifully with me"; so says the psalmist who had begun with "How
long?" No external change has taken place; but his complaint and prayer
have helped him to tighten his grasp of God, and have transported him
into the certain future of deliverance and praise. He who can thus say,
"I will sing," when the hoped-for mercy has wrought salvation, is not
far off singing even while it tarries. The sure anticipation of triumph
is triumph. The sad minor of "How long?" if coming from faithful lips,
passes into a jubilant key, which heralds the full gladness of the yet
future songs of deliverance.