Psalm 13:1-6 How long will you forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long will you hide your face from me?… It is quite unnecessary to point thus: "How long wilt Thou forget me? — For ever?" as if there were two distinct questions. It is natural to a perturbed and doubting heart thus to express itself in a confused and almost contradictory manner. In its despair it thinks, "God hath forgotten me"; and yet out of the very midst of its despair there rises up the conviction, "No, not forever"; and then its hopelessness is changed to expostulation, "How long wilt Thou forget me?" We may, if we choose it, paraphrase, "How long wilt Thou make as if Thou wouldest forget me forever?" God's anger, the hiding of His countenance, as Delitzsch observes, cannot but seem eternal to the soul which is conscious of it. Nevertheless, Faith still cleaves to the Love which hides itself under the disguise of severity, and exclaims, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." "When we have long been crushed by sufferings, and no sign appears that God will succour us, the thought will force itself upon us, God hath forgotten me. For by nature we do not acknowledge that God cares for us in our afflictions; but by faith we lay hold of His invisible providence. So David, so far as he could judge from the actual state in which he was, seemed to himself forsaken of God. But at the same time, because the Light of Faith was his guide, he, with the eyes of his mind, looked through and beyond all else to the grace of God, far as it might seem hidden from his sight." — Calvin. "Does he not portray in fitting words that most bitter anguish of spirit, which feels that it has to do with a God alienated, hostile, implacable, inexorable, whose wrath is, like Himself, eternal? This is a state in which hope despairs, and yet despair hopes at the same time. This no one understands who has not tasted it." — Luther. (J. J. Stewart Perowne, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.} How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?WEB: How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? |
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