| Psalm 130 |
PSALM 130: A BRIEF OVERVIEW – this psalm begins heavenward—the petitioner cries to God from “the depths.” Verses 3-4 raise a rhetorical question about the petitioner’s shortcomings and sin: . . . if you should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? Forgiveness, however, is not far off from contrite, authentic praying and the psalmist appeals to God’s generous capacity to forgive. The third strophe reflects the psalmist’s response to the possibility of forgiveness and thus, the petitioner simply sits before God presumably for God’s saving action of forgiveness. The final thought of this psalm forms an instructive exhortation—that all would remain hope-filled for God’s saving actions. For with the lord there is steadfast love . . .
THE POWER OF PSALM 130—the really striking thing about this psalm is the conviction that “God is somehow present in the depths . . . This is the paradox of the prayer, since the depths represent the forces of all that oppose God and since the psalmist’s own turning away from God is at least partially responsible for his or her present despair. The good news is that God’s presence and power can be, must be reckoned with in every human experience—even in the depths, even on a cross! [1]
PSALM 130: ITS INFLUENCE HAS BEEN GREAT – Theodore Beza died with Psalm 130 upon his lips; John Wesley heard this psalm performed at St. Paul’s Cathedral on May 24, 1738 at St. Paul’s Cathedral—the same day that the truth dawned upon him that God in fact, had forgiven his sins. Psalm 130 was one of Martin Luther’s favorites; one of Luther’s well-known hymns is his metrical version of this psalm. Due in part to its clear and forthright awareness and admission of sin, yet tempered by an equal awareness of God’s saving grace, this psalm had become by the fifth century one of the church’s seven penitential psalms (see also Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, and 143).
This psalm emerges
from somewhere in the depths—perhaps from a hidden place. Richard Foster
comments that we “year for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it
and repelled by it.” One of the things that keeps us at arm’s distance from
God is what the psalmist had become painfully aware of—shortcomings on our
side of the relationship that we enjoy with God. What keeps you at arm’s
length? Where are you in this psalm? In the depths? In a new awareness that,
like Wesley, you have discovered God’s saving actions? Or maybe are you the
confident proclaimer we note in verse 7 and 8?
You might begin with
examples of how Christians have been helped by this psalm.
You could then move into the psalm for some moments of “discovery” or for basic understanding.
Shift to how you have been helped (if you have, that is!) by walking with the psalmist in Psalm 130.
Suggest a simple way of appropriating the truth-in-action of Psalm 130.
A helpful resource as you think about Psalm 130 would be Richard Foster’s Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1992).
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[1] The New Interpreter’s Bible IV (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1996), page 1207.
