Deeper Commentary

Psa 13:1 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?- By the end of the Psalm, David is rejoicing (:5,6). This doesn't have to mean that half way through the prayer, an answer came. Rather is this absolutely true to the experience of prayerful men. We begin prayer in desperation, but in the course of that prayer we are persuaded of God's action, and conclude the prayer in grateful peace with Him. "How long?" is the cry of the exiles, so the Psalm was likely reused in their context.

Psa 13:2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me?-

'Taking counsel in our own soul' is typical depressive human response (Ps. 13:2). We think our best and only counsellor is ourselves, in our self talk, we ask ourselves the questions and get often wrong answers. The spiritual mind takes counsel in God; David speaks in Ps. 119:24 of God's words being his counsellor, and describes God's words as His "counsel". If those words are in our hearts, then that will be the response we get. Otherwise we are mired within ourselves, bogged down with endless self talk and introspection which leads to no good answer, and often to very contorted and wrong self advice. "There are many advices [Heb.] in a man's heart; but the counsel of Yahweh shall stand" (Prov. 19:21). Job 18:7 says that a man's "own counsel [s.w.] shall cast him down". God's comment on Job is that he had "darkened [God's] counsel by words without knowledge" (Job 38:2). Job did this by doing what David is here tempted to do, taking counsel in his own soul. Job had refused the "counsel" of the friends, which was wrong; but had turned into himself for counsel and thus had "darkened" or obscured the light of God's counsel. Job agrees with this when he confesses that indeed he has hidden, or hidden himself, from [God's] counsel, and he was without knowledge. That is my paraphrase of the difficult Hebrew of Job 42:3: "Who is / how is he that hides counsel without knowledge. Therefore have I uttered that I understood not".

We must factor in Ps. 16:7 "I will bless Yahweh, who has given me counsel. Yes, my heart instructs me in the night seasons". In Ps. 13:2, David took counsel with his own soul and ended up depressed, because he had not listened to God's counsels in His word. In Ps. 16:7, David seems to have matured. For now he feels that the self talk of the spiritually minded person becomes effectively God advising them.

"My enemy" is clearly Saul (1 Sam. 18:29; 19:17). The David who had once triumphed over his enemy Goliath now felt that Saul was triumphing over him. This, in the bigger Divine picture, may have been to keep David from pride at the amazing victory and triumph. David was indeed to triumph / be exalted over Saul (Ps. 18:48), but he saw it as God triumphing / being exalted (Ps. 18:46). His praise Psalms are full of this word and idea- of the exaltation of God (Ps. 57:5,11) and not himself.

Psa 13:3 Look, and answer me, Yahweh my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death- David was persuaded that he would one day be slain by Saul (1 Sam. 27:1), yet here in Ps. 13:3 and often in the Psalms he persuades himself, in the course of the same prayer, that in fact God will save him and keep His promise to make him king in Saul's place. By the end of the prayer, David is in quite another mood. But there is no record of any revelation to him during the prayer. He has asked that God "look" upon him... and surely as his prayer progressed, he realized that of course God sees and knows all things, and was indeed looking at him.

Psa 13:4 lest my enemy say, I have prevailed against him; lest my adversaries rejoice when I fall- Typical of the shame-based mentality in which he lived, David seems to fear more than death the thought that his enemies would rejoice over his dead body. Saul sought to "prevail against him" (Ps. 13:4), but Saul used the same word in telling David (in a rare moment of reality and humility) that he knew that David would prevail against him (1 Sam. 26:25). Those flash moments of reality and humility which Saul had are to be our warning. The Psalms condemn him as generally proud. We must live life in a spirit of humility, rather than just experiencing a few flash moments of it.

Psa 13:5 But I trust in Your grace. My heart rejoices in Your salvation- As explained on :1, David rallies himself to the joy which comes from faith in grace. Perhaps there was a significant gap in his prayer between verses 4 and 5. He may have in view final salvation. For he didn't ultimately know whether God was going to save him out of his immediate crisis; but he was assured that God would finally save him eternally. And it is that which gave him perspective and peace. He grasped the link between grace and salvation, in an almost Pauline sense. I testify to the same experiences, praying to God as every man does when facing extreme danger, and during the prayer becoming convinced that I shall live eternally, I shall be saved. And that puts into context the immediate crisis. This is what David was experiencing here.

Psa 13:6 I will sing to Yahweh, because He has been good to me- Like us, our faith that God will finally come through for us in the future should give us joy now. This faith in God finally 'being good' to David led him to be the same to Saul- the word is used of how David was 'good' rather than evil to Saul, not slaying him when he had the opportunity (1 Sam. 24:17). Although quite possibly David was also looking back in his life to all the times God had historically been good to him, and took them as an encouragement that He would again be good to him and save him.