On Psalm 13
Christ the Psalmist
The psalms are a unique book, even within the canon of Scripture. That's because the psalms are God inspired speech to us, that is intended also to be God-given speech from us to God. The shape and content of the psalter is God teaching people how to speak to him.
The psalms are also Christological texts. They find their ultimate locus of meaning in Christ, and because the psalms are Israel's hymnbook and prayerbook, and Christ is the true Israel, they are also Christ's prayers and Christ's songs to the Father.
This year has been a very hard year, and one of my comforts has been the psalms. I have made it my practice to be reading them daily, and in particular I've recently made the turn to read and pray them in Greek. Today I want to offer the kind of triple reading that I describe above, for Psalm 13.
Psalm 13 (Greek 12)
Regarding Completion. A Psalm that pertains to David.
How long, Lord, will you forget me completely?
How long will you avert your face from me?
Until when shall I entrust my deliberations within my soul,
torments in my heart by day?
how long will my enemy be exalted over me?
Look at me, listen to me! Lord my God,
Grant light to my eyes,
otherwise I shall sleep to death.
Never let my enemy say, “I prevailed against him”,
those crushing me will rejoice, if I am shaken.
But I have hoped upon your mercy,
My heart will rejoice upon my deliverance,
I will sing to the Lord my benefactor,
and psalm to the name of the Lord most High.
Reading the text as OT scripture
We are first introduced to the psalm by the superscription, which tells us that it is a Davidic psalm. The psalms rarely tell us if they are by David, or merely relate to David, but I think in this case we may take it that the speaker is David.
David's prayer is initially one of overwhelming sorrow and abandonment, in particular the sense that God is neither present nor acting. The metaphors of 'forgetting' and 'hiding the face' contrast with God's act of remembering and act of seeing, which are "preludes to action" [1]. The psalmist experiences an inner turmoil mirrored by an outward circumstance - the success of his enemy. We may read this historically as Absalom's success, which sorely tests David.
The second movement of the psalm is entreaty. Out of the pain and anguish of defeat, there is one hope, and David turns to God in request, for succour and for success. It is not a prayer for any particular outcome, in terms of what might happen to 'the enemy', so much as the desire to stand firm and not be destroyed.
The third movement of the prayer is declarative. As with so many psalms, there is a turning point, a pivot which sometimes expresses an unseen moment of deliverance or, as here, a performative turning of the psalmist to God. It declares both what the speaker has done, that is trusted/hoped in God and his mercy, his steadfast love, and what he knows that he will, someday, do: rejoice in deliverance. That deliverance, that salvation, is yet future, but it is expressed with certainty.
The fourth movement is promissory. The sure expectation of future deliverance looks forward to future praise. Even though the psalmist may yet, and may continually feel, the despair and turmoil of the first movement, and call out in the entreaty of the second, the psalm and the psalmist repeatedly affirm future hope and future praise.
Reading the text as Christ's prayer
Although Theodoret understood the psalm as of David, after his adultery with Bathsheba, I do not think that is the general tenor of the text. And when we turn to consider it Christovocally, we must ask, "when do we see Christ under the aspect of sorrow, grief, and abandonment?" Those experiences, for the incarnate Jesus, are primarily bound to the passion. Jesus, abandoned by his closest friends, betrayed by his disciple, rejected by his own people, and suffering divine judgment and punishment on the cross, truly knows what it is to cry out "My God, my God" (Ps 22:1). This psalm echoes that one. The triumphant enemy should be understand as that rival and usurper king, Satan, whose delight is the downfall of the Son, the King of Israel.
Christ, in going to the cross, lives this psalm. He enacts its prayer, in the garden of Gethsemane. He endures the pain, for the glory set before him, the glory with which he will glorify the Father.
Reading the text as our prayer in Christ
Our unity in Christ, with Christ, and with other believers, means that this is a psalm for every season, even though we will rarely feel like all of it applies. So long as my experience is of being crushed, of wondering "how long?", then I speak the opening verses out of the depths of my heart, knowing that Christ has suffered all such things for me, and so with me, and was truly the man of sorrows on my behalf. In these times, I sing the later parts of the psalm in anticipation, and in a declaration not that my sorrow is ended, but that it will one day end.
This psalm ought to be ours too when we are not in the depths of its opening lines. For if we do not have sorrow, we may either look back on past sorrow, or else look especially to those of others that we may "mourn with those who mourn". The fellowship of believers means that there are those suffering now, and I ought to join them in their suffering, not as a psychological exercise or an emotional sympathy, but as an act of genuine and practical love. With them I weep, and with them I rejoice, and we do so together, with Christ, our comfort and joy.
This psalm is even ours when we are in joy. For then we may look back on sorrow, and rejoice that God was faithful in the midst of dark times. We may fulfil the oft-repeated promise in the psalms, to declare God’s praises in the midst of the of the congregation. When we have known God’s deliverances, his fresh mercies, we are not to rejoice in a contextless joy, but to declare specifically and testify heartily to how God has worked in our lives.
[1] Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary (1973), 94.