Psalm 13--Exegetical Thoughts

• Before I read the commentaries for the lament psalms, I hadn't realized that a lament is actually a "call for help" (Limburg 38). Honestly? I thought a lament was simply a complaint, a wailing, a plaintive cry. And while a complaint is certainly a part of a lament psalm, it's not the whole story--at least not in Psalm 13. Understanding the genre of lament as a call for help helps the reader to understand that Psalm 13 is a prayer that leads somewhere, both in the moment of prayer and in studying it. It offers both comfort and  theological instruction about the relationship between God and humanity.
  
• Scholars refer to the three characters of the lament psalms--God, self, and enemy-- in terms of theology, psychology, and sociology (see McCann 86, Mays 78, Strawn 71). In the lament, it becomes clear that something in these relationships has gone awry, something is troubling. In today's world, we tend to treat each of these areas (theology, psychology, and sociology) as their own distinct spheres, as if they don't intersect at all. What Psalm 13 points out is that these are deeply connected, and if there is an imbalance in any of them, there is an imbalance in all--we lose our identity as people of God, as ourselves, and as a member of a human community. We "sleep the sleep of death" (vs. 3).

• Though there is a radical turn in verses 5-6, I think it's important to point out the address of the lament: directly to God. This gesture lets us know that it's OK to come to God with our worst and at our worst. Crying out to God isn't a crime. But something about it seems strange to us. As McCann points out, there is a pointed avoidance of lament psalms in our culture (85-86), as if we cannot make sense of them. But I think the fact that texts that border of blasphemous are considered to be a part of our cannon is important. Being honest about our circumstances is just a part of being a faithful person, warts, complaints, and all (Mays 78, Limburg 38).
  

• I want to focus in on verse 2a: How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? When I read this, I am immediately transported to the time I spent answering a suicide hotline. Whether the voices were overflowing with pain or numbed by their struggles with it, their cries gave voice to the uncertainty of their plight, of knowing they were in the midst of suffering, but not knowing how begin see anything beyond it. It was like a tunnel vision of suffering. McCann's literal reading of the Hebrew here highlights the isolation these callers voiced: "How long must I hold counsel in my soul" and "sorrow in my heart" (91). Theirs were literally calls for help. They saw no way but the way of death before them. They needed light in their eyes, a way to see beyond their circumstances. One of the techniques we were instructed to use was to ask what coping mechanisms for difficult feelings had worked for callers in the past. Then, we would explore with them how those very skills might be available to them now. 

• This is how I read the turn in verses 5-6: a remembrance of God's faithfulness in the past illuminates their future. So often, we want our answers to appear out of the blue, illuminating a bright new future, divorced, somehow, from the suffering we have felt. Mays eloquently lays out how this thinking is incorrect, and how the "agony and the ecstasy belong together as the secret of our identity" (Preaching 168). The lightening of the eyes that occurs is not into a new reality, but is in a remembered reality of a faithful God. And in the remembrance, a new way of living emerges. Perhaps Psalm 13 is a lament of one who has taken the wrong "way" (Ps. 1). And perhaps it's a lament that helps the sufferer find her way back to he way of the righteous after all.