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."