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Has His Steadfast Love Run Out?
The complaint inside the song of praise (Psalm 77; 89)
10 min read
Who is like You?
the verb of comparisonmi va-shachaq ya'aroch la-YHWH"who in the skies can be compared with YHWH, who is equal to YHWH among the sons of God?"
Ps 89:6Ethan, in Psalm 89
None of the gods of the nations ever let themselves be approached like that; they had to be appeased with gifts and fear, and not one of them ever let itself be woken at night by a crying child.
There is an exhaustion that does not pass when you lie down. You are tired to the bone, and just as the light goes out, your head switches on: the same thought, lap after lap, a treadmill that will not stop. Three in the morning, and you stare at the ceiling; the dinner plate sits half-full in the fridge, because eating no longer works; by day you move through your own life as through syrup. Whoever knows it recognizes it. Some call it burnout, others depression. The Bible puts no label on it and describes it from the inside, in Psalm 77.
Asaph writes it down without making anything pretty of it. In the day of my distress I sought the Lord, he says; my hand was stretched out all night and did not grow tired, and my soul refused to be comforted. Refused. Every comfort that came by bounced off; nothing reached the bottom. I think of God, he writes, and I groan; I meditate, and my spirit faints. After that comes the line everyone recognizes who has ever lain awake at four in the morning: You hold my eyelids open. God Himself, he says, keeps my eyes open; I cannot even sleep to escape the night. Sometimes faith looks like an exhausted man who has run out of words, far from any song of praise.
Flat on his back in the dark, he asks the questions a devout person is not supposed to ask. He asks them anyway, out loud, in a song God preserved in His own hymnbook. Will the Lord reject forever, and never again be favorable? Has His steadfast love ceased forever? Has His promise failed for all generations? Has God forgotten to be gracious, has He in anger shut up His compassion? A question cannot get heavier than this: has the faithfulness on which the whole covenant rests run dry like a well in summer? The psalm is not ashamed of it, and God did not strike the question out. Apparently it may be asked, and out loud.
He comes out of it, by a road you would not expect. No voice falls from heaven to explain his night; no "why" is ever answered. He forces his gaze away from his feelings, toward God's past. I will remember the deeds of YHWH, he says; I will call to mind Your wonders of old. As he pages back, he arrives at the sea, and suddenly the song becomes film. The waters saw You, God, the waters saw You and trembled; the clouds poured out water, the skies thundered, Your arrows flashed back and forth; the thunder rolled like wagon wheels, the lightning lit up the world, the earth trembled and shook. In the middle of that storm lies a path, straight through the sea, with walls of water on the left and right, and an entire nation crosses over on the dry seabed. The line that carries everything stands right there: Your way led through the sea, Your path through the great waters, and Your footprints were not known. God went ahead, straight through the impossible, and left no trace you could follow. That is the image Asaph reaches back for, there in his sleepless dark where he could find no sign of God anywhere. The greatest rescue in all of Scripture left no footprint. So the absence of traces is not the absence of God. He still does not know why this night is so long. But he knows again Who is walking ahead of him, unseen.
Another psalm goes further than Asaph dared. Psalm 89 is built on the word of the mountain, chesed, and it falls there seven times. Ethan begins with the most beautiful hymn to God's faithfulness there is: I will sing of YHWH's acts of steadfast love forever; who is like YHWH among the sons of God? Verse after verse he sings back the oath God swore to David. My steadfast love I will keep for him forever, My covenant with him will stand firm; his throne shall be like the sun before My face, firm as the moon, that faithful witness in the sky. For nearly 40 verses he piles promise upon promise, until you come to believe that nothing could break this.
Then a string snaps. "But You have spurned and rejected him," and with that one small word the psalm tips over. The covenant renounced, the crown in the dust, the walls torn down, David's descendant carried off in chains. Everything the first half promised lies in pieces in the second. The psalm ends without a resolution, with a raised fist: Lord, where are Your former acts of steadfast love, which You swore to David in Your faithfulness? No answer comes. Yet the last thing that stands there, said almost through gritted teeth, is a doxology: praised be YHWH forever, amen, amen. It sounds like a man clinging with both hands to a door that seems slammed shut. God preserved this too in His hymnbook, with the crack running clean through it. Ethan knew only the shards, and he sang his amen over them.
To the questions of Asaph and Ethan God answers elsewhere, and almost word for word. To the question whether He hides Himself forever and whether His love has run out for good, He says through Isaiah: "For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In a flood of wrath I hid My face from you for a moment, but with everlasting steadfast love I will have compassion on you [...] For the mountains may depart and the hills be shaken, but My steadfast love shall not depart from you" (Isa 54:7–8, 10). And whoever complains that God has forgotten to be gracious receives a question in return that only a lover can ask: "Can a woman forget her nursing child, and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even if she forgets, I will not forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands" (Isa 49:15–16). The complaint is not polished away. It receives an answer, and that answer sounds like a mother's heart.
The book of Psalms keeps, alongside the sunny days, Asaph's sleepless night and Ethan's shards. Their questions are sung straight into God's face, and so they have an address. You do not ask "where is Your faithfulness?" of someone from whom you expect nothing.
So you too may come. In a palace full of servants who tiptoe and whisper and wait to be addressed, there is one who simply walks into the king's bedroom, in the middle of the night, and wakes him because he is thirsty and wants a cup of water. That is not the courtier; he would lose his job. That is the child. It knows nothing of protocol; it knows only that this is its father. The complaint prays like a child who dares to wake its Father at night with a raw "why," and who, by coming at all, shows that it believes it is welcome. Who is like YHWH? None of the gods of the nations ever let themselves be approached like that; they had to be appeased with gifts and fear, and not one of them ever let itself be woken at night by a crying child. This God wrote down that child's complaint, and sang along with it.
ExpertOne psalm, two voices
The key word chesed occurs seven times in Psalm 89 (89:1,2,14,24,28,33,49). It opens in the plural ("YHWH's acts of steadfast love, chasdei, I will sing forever"), and returns in verse 49, shortly before the close, as an accusation: "Lord, where are Your former acts of steadfast love (chasadecha), which You swore to David in Your faithfulness?" Between them lies the whole psalm as a courtroom case: God has sworn chesed, and reality contradicts that oath. At the heart of the hymn, before the break, the question stands twice, first with the verbs of comparing, mi va-shachaq ya'aroch la-YHWH, "who in the skies can be compared with YHWH, who is equal to YHWH among the sons of God?" (89:6), and two verses later in its classic form, mi kamocha, "who is like You?" (89:8). The same psalm that calls God incomparable also asks Him whether He still keeps His word. What is at stake is the tension in which the poet's faith lives rather than a contradiction he overlooked. The question "do You still keep Your word?" can only be put to Someone Whose word is known.
ExcursusThe psalms that do not resolve
Nearly a third of the book of Psalms consists of complaint, and by no means always the kind that ends neatly. Psalm 88 is the extreme example: it begins in the dark and ends in the dark, with no turnaround, its last word literally "darkness" ("my only companion is darkness"). No psalm ends more bleakly, and yet there it stands in the Bible, among the hymns of praise, uncensored. That says something about the God who had this book written. He does not require of His children that they first make their darkness prettier than it is before they may bring it to Him. He has made room in His own hymnbook for the night that does not pass, so that whoever sits in it would have words and would know that he is not the first, and not shut out.
HeartPraying with the crack still in it
There is a piety that thinks you may only come to God once you have recovered: once the smile is back, the doubt gone, the faith in order again. The psalms teach the opposite. They come to God with the crack still in them, angry, confused, disappointed, and coming anyway. For the alternative to the complaint is not rest; the alternative is distance. Whoever swallows his "why" also swallows the conversation, and quietly withdraws from the arms that could have carried him.
If you are sitting in such a long night and are no longer sure whether His love still applies to you, then not pretending is the most devout thing you can do. Tell Him, out loud, with all the sharpness that is in it. Such a question is faith that refuses to break off the conversation. If the night becomes too long to carry alone, bring in a trusted person or a counselor; that too can be a hand God reaches out. You do not need to know why this night is so long. Perhaps, as with Asaph, the answer will come not as an explanation but as a memory of a way through the water, where no way could be and no one saw the footprints.
*A note on the source text. Psalm 77 (Asaph): the comfortless night (77:1–4); "has His steadfast love run out?" and the series of questions (77:7–9); the turn in remembering and the way through the sea (77:11–20). Psalm 89 (Ethan): the hymn and "who is like YHWH" (89:1–8), with chesed seven times (89:1,2,14,24,28,33,49); the oath to David (89:19–37); the break "but You have spurned" and the unresolved complaint (89:38–51); the closing doxology (89:52), which also closes the third book of Psalms and may belong to the collection rather than to Ethan. Psalm 88 as the darkest complaint. God's answer to the questions: Isaiah 54:7–10; 49:14–16. The divine Name as YHWH; where the source text has אֲדֹנָי (Adonai), "Lord" is used.*