Psalms 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This is a prayer of someone languishing, without strength, and in pain, asking the LORD not to correct him in anger but to have mercy and heal him. He asks how long the suffering will last, and argues that the dead cannot praise God. In the last three verses his tone changes: he tells those who do evil to leave, says the LORD has heard his weeping and accepts his prayer, and calls for his enemies to be shamed and turned back.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • The speaker asks the LORD not to rebuke him in the LORD's anger.
   • The speaker asks the LORD not to discipline him in the LORD's burning wrath.
2. 6:2
   • The speaker asks the LORD to be gracious to him.
   • The speaker gives as the reason that he is languishing and without strength.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to heal him.
   • The speaker gives as the reason that his bones are shaking with terror.
3. 6:3
   • The speaker's soul is greatly terrified.
   • The speaker addresses the LORD with the question 'how long?'
   • The question 'how long?' is left unfinished, with no stated completion.
4. 6:4
   • The speaker asks the LORD to turn back to him.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to rescue his soul.
   • The speaker asks the LORD to save him.
   • The speaker gives as the ground of that saving the LORD's steadfast covenant love.
5. 6:5
   • In death there is no remembrance of the LORD.
   • The speaker asks who will give thanks to the LORD in Sheol, the realm of the dead.
6. 6:6
   • The speaker is weary with his groaning.
   • Every night the speaker makes his bed swim.
   • The speaker soaks his couch with his tears.
7. 6:7
   • The speaker's eye is wasted away from grief.
   • The speaker's eye has grown weak and old because of all his adversaries.
8. 6:8
   • The speaker commands all workers of iniquity to depart from him.
   • The speaker gives as the reason that the LORD has heard the sound of his weeping.
9. 6:9
   • The LORD has heard the speaker's plea for mercy.
   • The LORD receives the speaker's prayer.
10. 6:10
    • All the speaker's enemies will be ashamed.
    • All the speaker's enemies will be greatly terrified.
    • The speaker's enemies will turn back.
    • The speaker's enemies will be ashamed suddenly.
    • It is ambiguous whether these statements about the enemies are a wish that it happen to them or a declaration that it will happen.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1

"Chasten" means to correct or discipline, the way a parent corrects a child, not simply to punish. "Hot displeasure" is literally burning anger. Notice what the speaker is and is not asking: not that God stop correcting him, but that the correcting not happen while God is furious. Also, wherever you see LORD printed in capitals, it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, which Hebrew writes with four letters and which readers traditionally did not say out loud.

6:2

"My bones are in agony" is a Hebrew way of saying the distress has reached the deepest, most solid part of a person. The bones stand for the whole physical frame, so the phrase covers sickness, exhaustion and terror together rather than naming one illness.

6:3

"Soul" here translates the Hebrew *nephesh*, which means the living self (a person's life, breath and whole being), not an immaterial part housed inside a body. In verse 4, "rescue my life" translates the same word. The question in the Hebrew of this verse is left unfinished: literally "And you, LORD… how long?" The speaker breaks off without saying how long what; translations supply the missing words.

6:4

"Turn back to me" pictures God as having turned away, so that the request is for his attention to swing round again. "Faithful love" translates *hesed*, the loyalty owed within a binding relationship, steady, committed kindness rather than a passing feeling.

6:5

The King James "the grave" translates *Sheol*, the Hebrew name for the place all the dead go, pictured as a dim silent region below the earth. The point being made is a practical one within that picture: the dead take no part in the worship of the living, so a dead worshiper is one voice God loses.

6:6

Flooding a bed with tears is deliberate overstatement, a standard move in Hebrew laments the way "I cried my eyes out" is in English. The "couch" is not furniture for sitting but the same sleeping place named in the first half of the line.

6:7

Eyes wearing out or growing dim is an idiom for the physical toll of prolonged weeping and for hope failing, the King James "waxeth old" means grows weak, not grows aged.

6:8

"Workers of iniquity" is a set phrase used all through the Psalms for people who actively do wrong and who are hostile to the speaker. It is a description of enemies in action, not a general label for sinful humanity. The tone of the psalm changes sharply at this verse, from pleading to confidence, without explaining what happened in between.

6:9

"Supplication" means a humble plea from someone with no leverage, the request of a person begging rather than demanding. "Receive" here carries the sense of accepting something offered, the way a gift or an offering is accepted rather than refused.

6:10

Shame in this culture is public standing lost in front of others, not a private feeling of guilt. "Turn back" is the same verb used of God in verse 4, here describing enemies retreating. The Hebrew verb forms are ambiguous and can be read either as a wish, "let them be ashamed", or as a confident prediction, "they will be ashamed"; translations divide over which is meant.