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David shows us what happens to a man when his resurrection begins.
To Victory: A Psalm of David
1 How Far wilt thou forget me, O Lord?
How Far wilt thou hide thy face from me?
2 How Far shall I take counsel in my soul and sorrow in my heart all day?
How Far shall my enemy be exalted over me?
With these four agonizing questions, David lays bare a dying man’s soul and feels God’s anger. How Far? in Hebrew is purposefully repeated in fours, so that translations don’t try to alter that theme by trying to appeal to the English ear with something like: “How long?” It means “How far will you go in this anger, O Lord?” The poetic form is meant to make every word reflect the experience of this peculiar, ultimate suffering. It’s not only about delay, but also the depth of the wound David feels as he believes he is dying: “How far will you forget me, O Lord?” It’s one thing to feel the world is against you. It’s another thing to imagine that your friends have turned away, but David has suffered so much that he now believes God himself has become his enemy. So, David uses all the agonizing verbs: How far, O Lord, will you leave me, forget me, leave me hopeless, and turn your face from me.
How far will God go against me when my own body is dead? Luther notes that only someone like David, who has moved beyond the mind’s speculation and truly experienced this death, could write such a Psalm. The level of agony surpasses physical suffering. It penetrates into the “immortal parts” so that the pain he feels over his own sins ceases to be momentary and becomes spiritual, eternal, and even divine. Only God could be doing this! The pain overwhelms any bits of faith David had and turns him into an eternal sinner. In that state, a man becomes inconsolable. The soul dies to his old life, but it cannot stop dying the eternal life, until he can hear God again. David is in the throes of hearing one thing: God’s eternal condemnation.
Perhaps the only men ever to match David’s eternal despair are Job and Jesus. Neither Job, David, nor Christ can console themselves when they have fallen into this death by saying, “I deserve it!” Instead, they know that God does this “to the just or unjust, he can cast both down” (Job 9:22). The eternal tribulation thus comes from what we call “predestination sickness.” Who can be consoled even by the fact that Christ endured this same eternal death-of-soul: How far will you go, O Lord?
2a How far shall I take (or put) counsels in my heart?
This “counsel” means two things. First, there is no man on earth from whom a dying man could ever receive counsel—none knows his suffering. Thus, my own death is always suffered alone. No therapist, no doctor, no teacher, no loved one can commiserate. Second, David is crying out to say, “Only You, O Lord, can put counsels (your words) into me. No one knows my sorrow but God! I cannot communicate it! I am like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. My mouth opens, my eyes open, and no words come out. I can only get out of this horrible prison if you, O Lord, put words (counsels) in my heart.”
2b How far shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Once he knows the theological truth, that God is his enemy, David loses hope. Even if God uses others to deliver his death to him, God has permitted them to do it. Jesus felt this extreme state of suffering when he was assaulted on the cross by hecklers, “there is no help for him in his God!” (from Psalm 3:2 and Luke 23:35).
What did you think was happening to Christ as he hung on the tree? As Luther put it, Jesus himself was not an “unfeeling tree trunk.” He felt he was hated by his Father and called out as David did here: “How Far, O Lord?” In fact, this experience also fell upon Christ in the desert as Satan tried to take his baptismal promise away, and in Gethsemane, where Christ especially “proposes counsels to himself in his troubled soul,” saying:
- What can I say, my Father, to take this from me?
- Then he cries out, “Save me!”
- Then, Christ receives a third warning: “But it cannot end, since this is what I have come to do. This is my hour!”
- Finally, Jesus receives the final counsel: “Father, glorify thy name not my will but thine be done.” This is what David—and Christ—mean by “seeking counsels while his enemies are exalted over them.”
But look! With this last counsel, or word from God, a little ray of light enters David’s dark abode.
The Four Blessings
3 Consider and hear me, O Lord, my God; lighten my eyes, that I sleep not in death.
Here, the true “counsel” suddenly appears: God is allowing you to suffer to save you. The reason this death is happening is to save you from yourself. The glimmer of hope is not just a small feeling inside a person, but is somehow hearing a specific word from God (his “counsel”) from outside. This word, unlike the previous ones, gives David confidence that, although God has gone so far as to kill him, he is not finished with him yet. Death is not his ultimate goal. God has a very different purpose than the law’s job of punishing and killing. Instead, God’s purpose is to raise David from the dead. As awful as it sounds, David learns that God must kill him before he can resurrect him. Just then, the four evils from verses 1-2 are overcome with the four blessings of 13:3.
- Consider me!
- Hear me!
- Lighten my eyes!
- I will not sleep in death!
When David finally shouts out, “Consider me!” he responds to God in the way God desires: with confidence. His response says: “Have a little respect, O Lord!” This is more pitiful than the prayer to God: “Remember me!” (like the criminal on the cross who calls out to Jesus, “Remember me when you go into your kingdom!” in Luke 23:42). It is even more meaningful than the Staple Singers’ “Respect Yourself.” It’s a prayer that doesn’t just ask for God to notice, but to orally reply, and by praying these words, David shows he is in worse shape than even the criminal on the cross. Here, inspired by the Holy Spirit, David boldly demands that he receive not just God’s pity, but for him to “hear me!”
David is telling the God who is killing him, “Stop being the God of death, which you are not. Become the Lord, My God! Mercy me! Stop casting shadows on me, and ‘lighten my eyes.’” Otherwise, God turns his face away, and a man dies the eternal death from Psalm 6: “For in death there is no remembrance of thee.” In death, there is only hatred and blasphemy against God. Still, at this moment, David receives the light of this entire Psalm, and God stops promoting evil and begins doing what he wants to defeat David’s enemies, including his sin, his death, and Satan.
4 Lest my enemy should say, I have prevailed against him, and those that trouble me will rejoice if I be moved.
Do you know what is worse than death? It is the boast of my enemies afterward. That was the bitter gall for Christ on the cross, when his crucifiers mocked him: “Save Yourself!”
Mercy Me
5-6 But I have hoped in thy mercy; my heart has rejoiced in thy salvation so that I will sing unto the Lord, who has bountified me [rewarded me] with much fruit; and I will sing praises unto the name of the Lord Most High.
This verse is a single long sentence in Hebrew comprising four “members” or “clauses”: 1) I have hoped! 2) in thy mercy. Then, this is repeated in the Hebrew style—with heightened feeling: 3) my heart has rejoiced 4) in thy salvation.
The first step of any resurrection from death is not something you do yourself, even though David makes it sound like he is the subject of the verbs. Still, saying the phrase, “But I have hoped” is possible because David finally has something to hope in: “thy mercy.” God spoke to David! God silenced David’s critics! Then he gave David a word that brought hope when all else seemed dead and gone. That hope was not for David to fix what he had left undone. It was hope only in God’s pure, unearned, unmerited mercy. Mercy (Hesed) means that God has spoken a word outside the law. That law was used as God’s tool to torment David all the way to the grave. Instead, David finally heard the word, “I save you!” (Jeshua). Jesus! Those words suddenly revived his heart. He went from hearing his enemies say, “Save yourself!” to hearing God say, “I save you!”
David shows us what happens to a man when his resurrection begins. The first words from his mouth are: “I will sing unto the Lord.” And what does he sing? He sings to God: “You are now no longer killing me, you are ‘bountifying me’ with much fruit.” David’s resurrected man no longer listens to or counts his own works or merits against the law. David’s previous days of the law are now over and done. What happens then, post-nomos? The law was what God used to kill David, and the gospel is the only word God used to raise him. David found (as Luther put it), “that there is no one who is not found a damnable sinner before God…no matter how holy and full of good works soever he may be.” To die is to despair of your own merits, and to live again is to sing, “not to ourselves, but to God alone.”
The End of all Merit: of dignity, or condignity, or congruent
The restored David is the man who eliminates all “merits” (the primary term in Scholastic, Roman Christian teaching) whether these are supposed to be a merit of direct “dignity” (those merits the Nominalists claimed you could earn yourself), or “condignity” (the merits achieved with God’s support), or “congruent” (the merits which Aquinas said God grants as mercy—undeserved rewards given freely because God wants to uphold his law, even when no one is actually doing what it requires).
The only reward a person truly earns from their merits is death. Conversely, the reward of resurrection occurs by losing all merits.
David’s death demonstrates that, when God finally raised him, it was not due to his merits but to mercy. Resurrection is not based on the law but happens outside of it. If we examine the Latin Vulgate translation, “God, who has rewarded me…,” we see the key lesson of resurrection: “returning” to us, “saving” us, or even “rewarding us” does not depend on a system of merits. The only reward a person truly earns from their merits is death. Conversely, the reward of resurrection occurs by losing all merits. When Christ raises us, he removes us from the law. We give up all merits. This changes everything. We first face a “bitter lesson” that teaches us that even if we are David, we are simply sinners. What does God do with sinners? He takes everything away from them as he did with David. Why? To justify him! Saving and justifying are mainly about separating you from the law and its merits: “He takes away all things from me so that he (not I) will return everything to me. In that case, he rewards me with all that he has.”
That final part of your death—the moment when you leave the tomb or experience your resurrection—becomes a “happy exchange”: he takes my rewards away, and Christ gives me his. What do I gain from this harsh treatment by a “How-Far-God”? For my dung, I receive his crown. Once again, we highlight the beautiful words of the receiver in 13:6: “He has bountified me with much fruit.” In Hebrew poetry, the Psalm concludes with the words “for me” (Hebrew, Alai) or “all over me” (Latin, super me). The Hebrew language pours all the words of Psalm 13 into the very last word, as a sort of “motion to a place.” The “motion” or “mover” of the entire Psalm is God’s work from start to finish. He kills before he raises me. He took my merits and gave “to me” his own.
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