"O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger,
nor discipline me in your wrath.
2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.
3 My soul also is greatly troubled.
But you, O Lord—how long?
4 Turn, O Lord, deliver my life;
save me for the sake of your steadfast love.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of you;
in Sheol who will give you praise?
6 I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
7 My eye wastes away because of grief;
it grows weak because of all my foes.
8 Depart from me, all you workers of evil,
for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled;
they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment."
Psalm 6
The Psalm has a more general application also. Here is a soul in distress, com- passed about by pressures from foes. We may take this in the most general sense as see- ing in it a reflection of our own frequent experience of trouble and trial, with the soul's plaint (1-3), the distress, the fear of divine displeasure, and the wondering whether sin had brought this pressure upon us. There is the threefold cry for deliverance (4, 5): re- turn, deliver, save. Someone has pointed out that the words 'O Lord' occur five times in the first four verses and says 'Is not this a proof that the glorious Name is full of consolation to the tempted saint?' But there is also a distressing sense of the absence of God: in 6, 7 commentators point out that God is excluded in these verses by the very intensity of grief and distress, with the soul inverted and inturned upon its own woes. Brooding upon his misery, all is dark for the Psalmist. 'All sad hearts are tempted to shut out God, and to look only at their griefs. There is a strange pleasure in turning round the knife in the wound and recounting the tokens of misery'. This, however, constitutes a temptation: we must refuse ourselves this luxury of self-pity. It is precisely here, in the darkness that God meets with the Psalmist. One recalls the striking words of Exodus 20:21, 'Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was'. This was the Psalmist's experience: in the midst of the bitter darkness there comes a sudden flash of light, and he realises that God has come and has answered his cry. Circumstances are as yet unchanged, but everything now is different, since God has spoken (8, 9). His loving kindness has broken through the midnight of the soul.