In The Waiting

Psalm 130

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.”

Psalm 130 (ESV)

I was recently reminded of the importance a single word can carry. One word can draw something out of the darkness and bring light to everything surrounding it. One word can provide the context necessary for understanding the other words next to it. A single word can carry far more weight than we give it credit for.

Over the past few months Psalm 130 has been etched onto my heart, particularly the third section beginning with “I wait for the Lord…” The word that makes all the difference for me is “wait.” Waiting is something I, along with many others, find challenging. In a culture that is all too familiar with instant gratification waiting is uncomfortable. It’s difficult.

But, what if waiting isn’t supposed to be that way? What if it’s supposed to look like the wide eyed child who can’t sleep on Christmas Eve because they are waiting with great anticipation for the gifts that will be under the tree come Christmas morning. Taking a look at the Hebrew behind the English translation of this passage sheds some light on the word “waiting.”

There are two words in the Hebrew of this passage that can be translated similarly, qāwâ and yāhal. Both of these carry a connotation of waiting AND hoping. Waiting with hope? How does one do that? How can we walk through the waiting with a hopeful heart?

Photo by pure julia on Unsplash

The Psalmist says that he waits for and hopes in the Lord “more than watchmen for the morning.” Some quick research explains that watchmen would have been posted throughout the night to keep an eye out for any potential danger, and as one might imagine, the break of day brought great relief. Robert Alter beautifully writes it this way in his Complete Hebrew Bible, “The force of the image is evident: the watchman sitting through the last of the three watches of the night, peering into the darkness for the first sign of dawn, cannot equal my intense expectancy for God’s redeeming word to come to me in my dark night of the soul.”

So, we wait with the knowledge that eventually there will be a sliver of light across the dark sky and the sun will rise until it is day. We long and we yearn, but not without hope. We struggle and cry out, but we do it knowing the Lord’s love is steadfast. It’s much easier said than done, as so many things are, but Psalm 130 is a reminder that even from the depths the Lord hears our voice and recognizes our waiting and He is still present and well worth putting our hope in.

Alter, Robert. 2019 The Hebrew Bible: a translation with commentary/ Robert Alter. W.W. Norton and Company.