"How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?" In Hebrew 'ad-anah, "until when?", four times in two verses.
"Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved."
"But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me."
The lament pattern
Form critics (Hermann Gunkel, Claus Westermann) identified the elements of the individual lament: address, complaint, petition, motive ("lest mine enemy say…"), confession of trust and vow of praise. Psalm 13 contains all of them in order: complaint (1–2), petition (3–4), trust and praise (5–6).
"Lighten mine eyes"
Dim eyes were a sign of weakness and approaching death (1 Samuel 14:27, 29: Jonathan's eyes "brightened" when he ate honey). The speaker asks for life to return.
Four times "how long"
The first two verses repeat "How long" ('ad-anah) four times: forgotten, God's face hidden, counsel in the soul, the enemy exalted. The repetition is the poem's form of protest. Franz Liszt set the psalm for tenor, chorus and orchestra ("Der 13. Psalm," 1855), and the "how long" cry recurs in Revelation 6:10.
The heading
Hebrew: "To the chief musician, a psalm of David," counted as verse 1. Lamnatseah, "to the chief musician" (or "for the director"), heads 55 psalms and appears again in Habakkuk 3:19; its meaning is uncertain. The Greek understood it as eis to telos, "to the end" (the library's Vulgate: "In finem").
Hesed
"Thy mercy" in 13:5 is hesed, God's steadfast covenant love or loyalty, one of the Psalter's central words (about 130 occurrences). English versions vary: mercy, lovingkindness, steadfast love, faithful love.
The versions
Greek and Latin Psalm 12. The Greek and Latin add at the end a line not in Hebrew: "and I will sing to the name of the Lord most high" (Vulgate "et psallam nomini Domini altissimi"), probably borrowed from 7:17. The library's Vulgate includes it.
What the evidence shows
- The Greek and Latin of Psalm 13 add a final line not in the Hebrew. Visible in the library's Vulgate; to be confirmed in Rahlfs.Source: The site's library: Westminster Leningrad Codex, KJV, Clementine Vulgate (Gallican Psalter), Giguet's French of the Greek, Douay-Rheims
- Psalm 13 contains every element of the individual lament form.
Continue the journey
Connected in this bookPsalm 22: My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?Psalm 22:1: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"More from this lesson
Why this matters to the rest of Scripture
- "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
- "O LORD, how long shall I cry?"