Prayer matters – Advent Psalm of Thanksgiving, Part 3

As we learned in the previous post, when King David was in The Depths, his life, emotions and faith felt very dark.  The reality of life in The Depths brings us to the next matching pair in Psalm 30. 

Look at verses 2-3.  David remembers when he called to God for help.  He remembers how God brought him up from the grave and spared him from going to the pit.   That word “grave” is the Hebrew word “sheol”, which is one of the ways the Hebrew people talk about the place people go when they die. 

Next, the word “pit” is the word for “cistern.”  A cistern would be dug into the ground, maybe into rock, and the walls would be plastered.  It was a place where people would store water or grain.  David is using the word figuratively to talk about the place of the dead. 

What is David remembering?  God healed him, perhaps from a time he was deathly ill.  God saved his life.  He was on death’s door, and God brought him back to life.

Like we did for the first matching pair, let’s look for a second matching pair.  If there is a match, it should be a memory about how David called to God and God saved David from death’s door.  And it should appear in the psalm right before the conclusion.

Look at verses 8-10.  What does David mention there?  He remembers how he called to God for mercy. In his calling to God he mentions about going down to the pit.  Both sections, verses 2-3 and verses 8-10, are about crying out to God and mention the pit.  It’s another match!

In this section, verses 8-10, David is not only remembering when he previously called out to God, he is now calling out to God again.  As he calls out to God for mercy, he also, in verse 9 provides what he hopes is compelling logic to convince God to be merciful.  Notice his three questions in verse 9.  They are rhetorical questions, meaning that though David does not need to answer the questions, because all three have obvious answers.  All three questions imagine what would happen if David, who is on his death bed, would actually die.

“What is gained if I am silenced, if I go down to the pit?”  Obvious answer: Nothing.  If he dies, his body function ceases, meaning there will be no ability for David to proclaim God’s glory.

“Will the dust praise you?”  Obvious answer: No.  If his dead flesh and bones turns to dust, there will be no praise to God.

“Will it (the dust) proclaim your faithfulness?”  This is basically a repeat of the previous question.  Obvious answer: No.  Dust cannot talk. 

This is precisely the same method that another Israelite king will use many decades later.  King Hezekiah.  Let me summarize a situation in Hezekiah’s life that is very similar to what David is writing about here in Psalm 30.  In 2 Kings 20 (also repeated in Isaiah 38), Hezekiah is deathly sick.  The prophet Isaiah visits the king with a message from the Lord.  The message is this: “King Hezekiah, get your house in order because you are about to die, you will not recover.”  As Isaiah leaves, Hezekiah prays, reviewing his faithfulness to God.  In response, God gives Isaiah a new message for Hezekiah, “I have heard your prayers and seen your tears, and I will give you 15 more years of life.” 

Then using words that sound very much like David’s words in Psalm 30, Hezekiah writes a psalm of his own, and he says, “For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness.”  Hezekiah is not using rhetorical questions, but he is making the same point, “It is living people who praise God, not dead people, so thank you God for saving me, as now I will praise you.”

In this section, and illustrated by Hezekiah’s situation, we see the relationality, the personalness of God, and thus the reality that prayer is a genuine conversation with God.  God told Hezekiah that his life was over, that Hezekiah would not recover.  God was not lying.  God was not testing Hezekiah.  He was telling Hezekiah the truth.  But God also views the future as open to change based on our relationship with him.  Our desires, our hearts, our perspectives matter to him.

This is not a guarantee that if you pray, you will always get what you want.  There are plenty of times when God does not give us whatever we ask.  He’s not a spiritual vending machine.  Most famously of all, perhaps, is when Jesus prayed in the Garden the night before he was crucified, “Father, please let there be another way.”  But there was no other way, and God essentially replied, “No.” Jesus was quite prepared for God to answer “No”, so he concluded his prayer, “But not my will, but yours be done.” 

In the same way, in Psalm 30, David desperately wants God to save his life so that he can serve God and praise God, which is precisely what happens, as we already learned in verses 11-12.

What we have seen in the parallel structure so far are two points about David promising to praise God if God will save him from death.  That brings us to the third coupling, which we’ll study in the next post.

Photo by Brian Lundquist on Unsplash