Psalm 130
8 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Psalms 119×2Hebrews 5×1Psalms 42×1Psalms 69×12 Chronicles 6×1Nehemiah 1×1
Summary
Chapter summary
The De Profundis, sixth penitential psalm: 'Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Jehovah.' If thou shouldest mark iniquities, who could stand? 'But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.' 'I wait for Jehovah, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope', more than watchmen wait for the morning. 'O Israel, hope in Jehovah; for with Jehovah there is lovingkindness, and with him is plenteous redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 130The history
The depths in the first line are deep water, the standard Old Testament image for being overwhelmed by something you cannot stand up in. Israelites were not swimmers, and the sea was the edge of chaos to them.
The question at the center is bookkeeping. If God kept a record of wrongs — the word is the one used for a ledger of debts — nobody could stand up under the audit. Standing was the posture of a servant found acceptable and of a defendant acquitted.
The waiting is measured by the night watch. The night was divided into set watches, and men stood guard in rotation until dawn. At the temple, priests and Levites kept watch through the night, and the day's first sacrifice could not begin until an appointed man on the roof called out that light had reached the eastern sky. Those watchmen wanted morning more than anyone in the city.
The psalm says it twice — more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning — because repeating a line was how a singer leaned on it.
What it meant to them
Pilgrims were coming to a sanctuary where sin was dealt with by blood. This psalm makes them say what they were bringing before they got there.
Its hinge is a strange sentence: there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be feared. Israel's God was not feared because he punished everything but because he pardoned — and being pardoned by someone who could have done otherwise puts a person in awe.
Sources cited
- The Mishnah, tractate Tamid (Danby translation)
- Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David on Psalm 130
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 130. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Connections from this chapter
v. 5 · Written to them
My soul doth wait: more than watchmen for morning
topics/waiting→MannaFest topical index
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.