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!

–

Psalm 130: A Psalm of Ascent

William Ernest Henley penned his famous poem Invictus in 1875. The proud ballad features a man who despite darkness, violence, death, and punishment describes himself as a fearless captain of his fate and soul. Nothing can conquer him. More than two millennia earlier, a humble Hebrew composed Psalm 130 with the opposite message. He laments his circumstances and sin but rests in a loving power wholly outside himself for deliverance. We wish Henley’s prideful poem was trustworthy, but human experience says otherwise. No matter how confident, humans remain finite and frail.

In contrast, Psalm 130 provides a message of true hope. Even better, the promise to which it looked forward came in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Ironically, God’s people can show a similar confidence to Henley’s captain in the face of fear. However, our hope rests in God’s promises and his faithfulness, not ourselves.

The psalmist makes the context clear from the very beginning. Overwhelmed by his circumstances, verse 1 cries to God for mercy, begging to be heard. The phrase “out of the depths” connotes being overwhelmed by chaotic waters – a common metaphor in the Old Testament. The author cries out to the God who shows mercy.

Looking For God’s Forgiveness

Verses 3-4 clarify how the author arrived in his bleak state: sin. Previously, Psalm 129 lamented the pain of oppression. Here, the psalmist turns his eye inward and laments his sin and brokenness. The author knows full well he cannot stand before God. God’s justice will crush him unless there is forgiveness—and forgiveness there is. God’s patience and faithfulness show his capacity to forgive surpasses any sin. This posture is appropriate for God’s people of all times: lamenting our sin while clinging to God’s forgiveness. The final phrase of verse 4 about fearing God may seem odd, but we needn’t look far to find help.

Just two chapters earlier, Psalm 128:1 defines those who fear the Lord as those who walk in his ways. God forgives us because he desires his people to live a life of wisdom, starting with an appropriate reverence for him. Were God to “mark iniquities,” our condemnation would lead us to be afraid of God (a different kind of fear) and without hope. Instead, forgiveness leads us to revere God and follow in his wisdom.

Having established that God forgives, verse 5-6 describe how the author waits and watches for God. The promises of God, i.e. his Word, serve as the basis for his hope. Let us take great comfort in knowing that God’s word proves reliable and trustworthy. It is right to lament sin, but our hearts must not stay there. Eventually dawn will break, and God’s forgiveness comes. Using the night watchmen as a metaphor, eventually the fear and darkness of night give way to the security of daylight. In the metaphor, the Lord himself is daylight. The repetition serves to emphasize the point and a reminds us many years later that these words were originally sung by the community.

Finally, the psalmist changes the focus of the conversation from himself to the community, admonishing them to place their hope in God as well. He will redeem Israel, forgive sins, and deliver them from their self-inflicted plight. The author uses a familiar word chesed translated “steadfast love” as the basis for such a hope. This word also refers God’s loyalty to his covenant promises – the very promises that say he will eventually forgive his people and renew their hearts (Deut 30, Ez 26, Jer 31).

But, what is Forgiveness?

It’s important to note that forgiveness wasn’t an abstract idea. The psalmist wasn’t waiting and watching for God to simply say “I forgive you” in the way we might encourage a child to do when they’ve been wronged by a sibling. The author waits and watches for God himself because that signifies his forgiveness. The presence of God and our proximity to him means something. That is what the whole psalms of ascent are about – prayerfully ascending towards God’s presence in the temple. Yet for those who have broken God’s command, removal from God’s presence justly followed. Adam and Eve experienced it, as did the Israelites going into exile. So “waiting for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning” is not simply a potent metaphor. Based on God’s promises, the psalmist looks forward to nothing less than the return of God’s presence to his temple, signifying God’s mercy, forgiveness, and the end of exile. “The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice; together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the Lord to Zion” (Isaiah 52:8).

Jesus, the Embodiment of Forgiveness

With great joy, the New Testament authors see how Jesus himself literally embodies God’s forgiveness as well as his return to his people. Jesus the Christ answers their patient prayers. In the Gospel of Luke, when Zechariah realizes his son would announce the arrival of the promised Messiah, he exclaims, “…to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death…” (Luke 1:76-78, emphasis added). It’s almost as if Zechariah read Psalm 130 right before blurting the blessed Benedictus!

The character in Henley’s poem doesn’t necessarily err because he shows confidence in the face of death and judgment. His damnable error results from where he places his confidence and the basis for it. In contrast, Psalm 130 acknowledges the reality of human brokenness with brutal honesty. Yet its confidence is far more robust because the basis for our hope resides outside ourselves. Rather, God demonstrated his steadfast covenantal love for us in that while we were still sinners, the Christ we’d been waiting and watching for died for us.

God forgives us because he desires his people to live a life of wisdom, starting with an appropriate reverence for him. Click To Tweet