Psalm 130. If there were one particular psalm which speaks louder than others for me, it is these 8 verses found in Psalm 130. It is one of the 15 Songs of Ascent found in Psalm 120-134. Sung by Jewish men/families on pilgrimage to Jerusalem every year for the three sacred feasts/festivals set aside by the Lord for His people. They were sung on the “ascent” or the uphill road to the city of Jerusalem. They were meant to fill the people’s hearts with great joy, anticipation, and wonder for all God had done for them. The Songs of Ascent also played a key role of remembrance, prayer, and worship. The hope of these verses focused on the deliverance the Messiah would bring, rescuing his people from their captivity, and restoring Jerusalem to glory and peace.
Psalm 130 paints a vivid image to express the anticipation and expectation in waiting on the LORD. The city of Jerusalem had thick high walls around the entire city to protect them against enemies. And watchmen were wise men who were on watch with skill in discerning the enemy and protecting the city.
The Hebrew word for watchman is tsaphah meaning to lean forward, to peer into the distance; by implication means to observe, behold, spy out, wait for, keep the watch’.
The Psalmist speaks of the depths of despair, awareness, and guilt of sin. The Psalmist had a deep place of affliction and heart troubled of sin referring to both LORD (Yhwh, Eternal One) and Lord (Master) throughout these 8 verses. The awareness of sin created a deep chasm between him and longs for the LORD to turn His ear toward him and show mercy. Truly, if the LORD were to mark iniquities, who would be able to stand? The answer is none of us- for all have sinned (Romans 3:23) and the ultimate penalty of sin is death (6:23).
Now the Psalmist moves into the proclamation of expectant waiting in verse 5. In the original Hebrew, the words ‘wait’ and ‘hope’ overlap meaning and are often times synonymous. To ‘wait’ and to ‘hope’ seem to go together in Hebrew thought.
Yachal meaning to wait, await, hope
This word is used 48 times in Hebrew bible. Yachal almost always requires an object to be waited for and it is usually God, God’s Word, God’s law, or actions of God.
Qavah meaning to wait actively with anticipation. To look for, hope, and expect
The last four verses of this psalm mention hoping or waiting five times- making this a major theme. The waiting was not passive or inactive. Two times in verse five the psalmist indicated that he waits. The first time it says, “I wait” while the second time indicates “my soul waits”. This verse is a beautiful confession of the Psalmist's faith in expectation. The psalmist's patient and anticipatory waiting for the Lord is compared to the watchman's patient and anticipatory waiting for the break of dawn.
The Psalmist exhorts the nation to the same confident hope: "O Israel, hope in the Lord” and answers the question from verse 3. The subject (repeated twice in 130:7b, then 130:8) looped back to the petition of 130:4; just as the petitioner asked for forgiveness, so the nation will be pardoned. The Psalmist declares that God himself will redeem Israel from every kind of sin and wickedness. This is the confident conclusion to the Psalm: trusting that God will indeed bring the redemption and rescue which we know now as the Messiah Jesus Christ.
This is the word that most defines me in my 40s. I write this with tears in my eyes. I am still a suffering sinful sojourner. One thing is certain, had it not been for Jesus Christ and the hope found in the Gospel, I would be lost, blinded by love and care of the world, and on the wide path that leads to death and destruction. I have weathered many storms, cried many tears, and endured the LORD’s chastisement because of my own disobedience and rebellion. There is not one good thing in me- no, not one. I believe it is the Lord and His grace bestowed on me as His child and through the Holy Spirit which held me and continues to this very millisecond. The Holy Spirit continues to teach me, give me deep affection, and love/fear for the Word of God. For the inerrancy of scripture and the sufficiency of scripture. For the Glory of God. For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 2:6). And those for hunger and thirst for righteousness, will be filled.
Romans 5:3-5 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Had the Lord not redeemed me and drawn me to Himself, I don’t know where I would be in my loneliness and anxiousness. Do I still wrestle with my flesh? Yes, and on those days, I earnestly pray. I see my own depravity and sinfulness and beat my chest. And Christ also sufferedonce for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit (1 Peter 3:18). For truly, who could stand before a Holy God. I wait in expectantly on the Lord with the confident expectation of the blessed hope in Christ. To wait on the Lord is to rest in the confident assurance that regardless of difficulties we face in this life, He is sovereign. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits. And in His Word, I hope.
