Psalm 13: Singing the Psalms

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O LORD my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, "I have prevailed"; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken. But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me. (Psalm 13)

Psalm 13 is a painful song. It is the cry of one who feels abandoned by God, whose enemies are gloating, who demands action from God. The psalm is attributed to David. Do an internet image search using terms like "David playing harp" or "David psalmist." Often we see a figure (sometimes David the shepherd, sometimes David the king) sitting with a harp on his lap,his fingers on or near the strings. Sometimes David is shown with eyes cast upward. As you consider the images in your search results, do the images look like David was playing Psalm 13? Do any of the images convey the emotion you imagine psalm 13 might evoke? Certainly a performer need not be externally emotional in order to convey the meaning of the song, and perhaps David's gaze upward in indicative of a song addressed to God. Do the general images of David the psalmist convey the range of emotions found in the psalms?

Oswaldo Guayasamin was born in Quito, Ecuador, in 1919. His work titled "The Cry" seems to better capture the emotion of Psalm 13. This is not a calm, still, muted emotion. This is a cry that involves mouth and face and eyes and hands and head. How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? We can almost imagine the triptych as three stills from a movie clip following the facial expressions of the one crying out.

Oswaldo Guayasamin. El Grito (The Cry). 1983. Oil on canvas. Quito, Ecuador: Fundacion Guayasamin.

How often do we deny the emotion of texts like Psalm 13? Do we read them in a calm, neutral voice? Do we read this psalm with the same tone as we might read the creation story? Or the 23rd psalm? Psalm 13 gives us the opportunity to cry out to God honestly, to question God honestly, to beg (or demand?) that God show up. In the psalms we find a wide range of human emotions.

Sometimes those emotions are whispered in the middle of the night: How long, O Lord? Sometimes the words must be shouted so everyone can hear: How long, O Lord?!  The singer determines the tone and tempo of the song.