For the music director; a psalm of David.
13:1 How long, Lord, will you continue to ignore me? 2
How long will you pay no attention to me? 3
For the music director; according to the tune “Morning Doe;” 5 a psalm of David.
22:1 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? 6
I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. 7
22:2 My God, I cry out during the day,
but you do not answer,
and during the night my prayers do not let up. 8
44:23 Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
Wake up! 9 Do not reject us forever!
44:24 Why do you look the other way, 10
and ignore 11 the way we are oppressed and mistreated? 12
77:9 Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has his anger stifled his compassion?”
40:27 Why do you say, Jacob,
Why do you say, Israel,
“The Lord is not aware of what is happening to me, 13
My God is not concerned with my vindication”? 14
49:15 Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? 15
Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne? 16
Even if mothers 17 were to forget,
I could never forget you! 18
1 sn Psalm 13. The psalmist, who is close to death, desperately pleads for God’s deliverance and affirms his trust in God’s faithfulness.
2 tn Heb “will you forget me continually.”
3 tn Heb “will you hide your face from me.”
4 sn Psalm 22. The psalmist cries out to the Lord for deliverance from his dangerous enemies, who have surrounded him and threaten his life. Confident that the Lord will intervene, he then vows to thank the Lord publicly for his help and anticipates a time when all people will recognize the Lord’s greatness and worship him.
5 tn Heb “according to the doe of the dawn.” Apparently this refers to a particular musical tune or style.
6 sn From the psalmist’s perspective it seems that God has abandoned him, for he fails to answer his cry for help (vv. 1b-2).
7 tn Heb “far from my deliverance [are] the words of my groaning.” The Hebrew noun שְׁאָגָה (shÿ’agah) and its related verb שָׁאַג (sha’ag) are sometimes used of a lion’s roar, but they can also describe human groaning (see Job 3:24 and Pss 32:3 and 38:8.
8 tn Heb “there is no silence to me.”
9 sn Wake up! See Ps 35:23.
10 tn Heb “Why do you hide your face?” The idiom “hide the face” can mean “ignore” (see Pss 10:11; 13:1; 51:9) or carry the stronger idea of “reject” (see Pss 30:7; 88:14).
11 tn Or “forget.”
12 tn Heb “our oppression and our affliction.”
13 tn Heb “my way is hidden from the Lord” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).
14 tn Heb “and from my God my justice passes away”; NRSV “my right is disregarded by my God.”
15 tn Heb “her suckling”; NASB “her nursing child.”
16 tn Heb “so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb?”
17 tn Heb “these” (so ASV, NASB).
18 sn The argument of v. 15 seems to develop as follows: The Lord has an innate attachment to Zion, just like a mother does for her infant child. But even if mothers were to suddenly abandon their children, the Lord would never forsake Zion. In other words, the Lord’s attachment to Zion is like a mother’s attachment to her infant child, but even stronger.