Open Wide And Say 'ah-H-H-Men!' Series

Imagine sitting in the waiting room at your doctor’s office and he comes in … with a very serious look on his face. “God must be really, really mad at you because you have cancer.” That was David’s reaction when he came down with a serious illness. “O LORD, do not rebuke me in Your anger, or discipline me in Your wrath” (Psalm 6:1). The fact that David thinks that the LORD is rebuking him and disciplining him indicates that he sees his illness as a punishment from God.

He begins to plead with God to take His hand away. “Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing … my bones are shaking with terror.” Not only are his “bones” shaking with terror, but so is his “soul” (v. 3). In David’s time, the “soul” was literally the throat area “where life was especially visible in the breath and heartbeat” (Clifford, R.J. Commentary: Psalms 1-72. Nashville: Abingdon Press; 2002; p. 61). David’s “bones” and “soul” are in terror because of the severity of his illness and the thought that it might get worse or go on forever … and it is apparently already pretty bad. “How long?” he cries (v. 3). His suffering would be somewhat more bearable if God would let him know that his suffering will eventually come to an end. We can relate, amen? Will it get worse? When will it end? The uncertainty of the future can add to our suffering when we are ill, amen?

And then David calls upon God to be “gracious” and remove His rebuke, His discipline from him, to end his suffering. “Look at me,” he cries. “I am languishing away here. My whole body, even my soul, is spent. Why make me suffer so? Whatever I’ve done, isn’t this punishment enough? Have mercy. Turn from Your wrath, O LORD. Stop this terrible punishment and heal me. Haven’t I suffered enough?”

David then appeals to God’s “hesed” … God’s “steadfast” love for him: “… deliver me for the sake of Your ‘hesed’ … Your ‘steadfast love’” (v. 5). “Hey, God, it’s me, remember? You chose me and made me king because you know my heart and I know Yours.”

Listen to the intimate and honest way in which David speaks to God. He mentions God’s holy and divine name … Yahweh or Jehovah … eight times. When he cries out to the LORD to “turn” in verse 4, the word “turn” is an imperative, a demand … in this case, an ardent and forceful wish or request. It doesn’t suggest authority … one doesn’t command God … but one of confidence.

David goes from pleading for mercy to appealing to God’s hesed to pointing out the pointlessness of his presumed death. Sometimes it feels that way, doesn’t it? If the only outcome is my death, why not end my life sooner than later? Why draw out my suffering if the only way my suffering can end is in my death? I have been at the bedside of many a sick and suffering soul who have prayed to die so that their suffering might end. I know this might sound, well … I know that some of you understand what I mean when I say that sometimes death is a mercy.

David’s not ready to go yet. “For in death there is no remembrance of You; in Sheol who can give You praise?” Sheol is a dark and shadowy place where the dead take no part in the activities of the living … such as praising and worshipping the LORD. If one is no longer among the living, one cannot praise and worship the LORD. This seems like it appeals to God’s vanity. “If You kill me then I can’t praise You” as if that’s why God made us … and it is, but it is not the soul reason by any means that He created us and takes such intimate and personal care of us. David’s point in verse 5, however, is that if he is dead, he, who loves the LORD with all his heart and soul and mind, won’t be able to worship and praise God or write more songs remembering God’s love for him and his love for God … and we, who also love the LORD with all our hearts and with all our souls and minds, won’t have David’s wonderful songs to help us praise God and remember Yahweh’s mighty acts of love. It is, as David tries to make the case here, in God’s interest to keep the poet and singer out of Sheol.

And then his pain, as pain does, breaks through his thoughts and returns him to the consciousness of his painful reality. “I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. My eyes waste away because of my grief” (Psalm 6:6-7). Again, this is an appeal for mercy as he describes his “languishing” in greater detail. He is not just physically weary, he is emotionally exhausted as well. His tears symbolize his interior anguish and is our body’s way of communicating emotional suffering and pain as well as physical pain and suffering. Since they didn’t know about “tear ducts” in David’s day, they could only assume that tears came from somewhere in the abdomen and made their way through a person’s eyes. His constant weeping makes his eyes “waste” away just as his illness is causing his body to languish and waste away. Some of you have cried those tears, amen? Have cried until there were no more tears left to cry. Have been in so much pain that you can’t speak but only moan.