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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
Psalm 13. This is an individual lament for circumstances where the worshiper is on the verge of despair, his powers of endurance spent.
13:1-2 How Long? The psalm begins with the question, "How long?" (repeated four times). The question is not asking for information but expressing the feeling of being unable to endure any longer. The questions move from God's apparent indifference (v. 1) to the singer's circumstances of anguish.
13:1 For God to forget and to hide his face from someone is to deliberately abandon that person, to withhold his loving care; it is not a description of God's own mental state. If psalms were theological treatises, they would affirm that God will not forget his people (cf. 9:12) and that the abandonment described here is only apparent. But a song, whose goal is to describe feelings, does not need the same level of precision and detachment as a treatise.
13:2 The enemy is typically one who hates. Often in the Psalter, the hatred leads the enemy to want to do violence to the singer; in other places, as here, it leads the enemy to gloat over the singer's misfortunes. Since the Psalms presuppose that their singers are faithful to the covenant, readers may safely assume that the enemy hates the singer's faithfulness.
