Psalms 13
Big idea: Six verses, and the fastest turn in the Psalter. Four how longs stacked in two verses — the last one being will you forget me forever, which is not a question anyone asks calmly. Then a request small enough to be honest: give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death. And then, with nothing resolved and no news reported, but I trust in your loving kindness. The psalm does not explain how it got from verse 4 to verse 5. It just shows that a person can.
Psalm 13 ends singing without an answer. Psalm 14 steps back and looks at the whole human race.
13:1–6 — How long, Yahweh? — but I trust
Six verses, and the whole poem is the distance between the first and the last — 'will you forget me forever?' to 'he has been good to me' — with almost nothing in between to explain the journey. Four 'how long's, one request, and then a 'but'. No new information arrives, no rescue is reported. What the psalm demonstrates is that the turn can happen without the circumstances moving, which is the reason it must be read whole.
1 For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David. How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me? 3 Behold, and answer me, Yahweh, my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death; 4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him;” lest my adversaries rejoice when I fall. 5 But I trust in your loving kindness. My heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing to Yahweh, because he has been good to me.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).