Exegesis of Psalm 142 Is Complaint Against

Exegesis of Psalm 142

Is complaint against God a valid form of prayer? This seems to be a valid reading of Psalm 142. Bernhard W. Anderson classifies Psalm 142 as one of the Psalms of "individual lament" (223). This distinguishes it from those psalms which express collective lament, a sense of communal complaint to God on the part of the Jews. But in Psalm 142, the lament is by one man only, David. An exegetical close reading of Psalm 142 will demonstrate that David's lament here indicates that prayer need not be a form of unqualified praise of God only: complaint to God, or complaint against God, is in itself a valid form of worship. The paradox of prayer is that it may contain doubt.

We must begin with the descriptive heading for Psalm 142: "A maskil of David. When he was in the cave. A prayer." The specific Hebrew term "maskil" may give us pause, but Oesterley rather usefully illuminates the different aspects of the term itself"

In some contexts it means to 'ponder' (e.g. Isa.xli); elsewhere to 'have insight' (e.g. Jer.ix:23) and to 'give insight' (e.g. I Chron.xxviii: 9; Ps.xxxii:8), to 'show skill' (e.g. 2 Chron xxx:22) and to 'have success' (e.g. Isa.lii:13, Jer.X:21). When the contents of the psalms which have Maskil in their titles are examined, it is seen that they are not all of the same character, which suggests that either Maskil was understood in very different senses, or else that in one or two cases it has been erroneously or thoughtlessly added in the title…The most probably meaning of the term would seem to be 'instruction'; that, if not too rigorously applied, would suit most of the psalms with this inscription. (88)

As an individualized cry of the heart, the "Maskil" of Psalm 142 may definitely indicate a "pondering" of David's situation here, and certainly can be shown to have "insight." The ideas of "skill" or "success," however, are less obvious: the situation described in the Psalm's text is one where David's skill and success seem to have departed altogether. And the meaning that seems to suit Psalm 142 least obviously is the generalized term that Oesterley offers, of "instruction." The instruction in this Psalm would have to be implicit, from a reading of what David said under specific circumstances. We are, however, given those circumstances specifically: this Psalm is sung by David "When he was in the cave." This quite clearly refers to David's situation in I Samuel 21-22. At this point David has been rejected by King Saul with seemingly the same completeness that Saul has been rejected by God. Saul's jealousy and paranoia have now turned into an active desire to see David dead, and David is forced to part from his beloved Jonathan and flee as little better than a refugee. Indeed, in finding himself in the realm of Achish, King of Gath, David must defend his own life by pretending to be a madman, drooling and sketching incomprehensible writings on the gate (I Samuel 21:13). This saves him from Achish, but it leads him to the situation in I Samuel 22:1-2 -- having departed Gath, David finds himself hiding alone in the cave of Adullam. This is the background, then, of the lament uttered in Psalm 142 -- although it is designated as a "prayer." In this case, we must examine the text closely to determine what sort of prayer it is.

Verse 1 begins with a statement of David's own situation in composing this Psalm in the cave of Adullam. "I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy." (142:1) The parallel constructions that are often observed in the Psalms, and in Hebrew poetry more generally, are matched by the double address to the Lord in both halves of the verse: the only real difference is that the second phrase of the verse indicates a plea "for mercy." This implies, of course, that the adversity suffered by David at this point is in some way imposed by God. It also implies, perhaps, that the actual act of singing the Psalm -- making the complaint audible with "cry aloud" and "lift up my voice" -- indicates a sort of turning point. The solitude in the cave is David at his lowest, but it is also the point at which silence ends and audible prayer begins. It is in Verse 2, however, that David classifies this "prayer" as an actual "complaint": "I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell my trouble." Verse 2 matches point for point the parallel construction of Verse 1: in both halves of Verse 2, there are only three elements necessary to summarize the character of the Psalm that will follow. There is the individual voice, there is the God that will hear that voice, and there is the substance of the prayer: which is a "complaint," which is an expression of personal "trouble," and which is also apparently a plea for God's "mercy." The first two verses set the stage for the situation that will be described in the rest of the text.

In Verse 3, David now expresses his own situation, but ironically it is not one in which trial has strengthened his faith in God. Instead, David seems to be expressing the idea that in adversity faith may be tested, so therefore God's supervision is most attentive. This would seem to make sense -- after all, if adversity is in some ways a test of God's faith, then God's attention would naturally focus on the moment when that faith might conceivably be abandoned. David does not abandon his faith, but he expresses a sense of inner weakness as a result of his trials, which nonetheless is there for God to see:

When my spirit grows faint within me, ?

it is you who watch over my way.

In the path where I walk ?

people have hidden a snare for me. (142:3)

We can see in the second phrase of Verse 3, however, the complaint is no longer directed against God but instead against David's enemies, who are setting a trap for him. Yet if David's "path" here is one that include a hidden "snare," this is naturally something that -- like David's own inner spiritual weakness ("my spirit grows faint") -- would be evident to God. God may "watch over [his] way," David seems to be saying, but God himself can see the "hidden…snare" even when David cannot. The complaint against the human enemies is, implicitly, a complaint against David's omniscient patron, who knows what these enemies are plotting but leaves David to fight against them utterly alone. And in the cave of Adullam, it is no wonder that David might feel he is losing this fight. Patrick Miller notes that in some ways there is a distinct avoidance of getting too specific about the situation: in contrast to the marvelous specificity of the account in I Samuel 21 (where David fakes madness by drooling down his beard and writing nonsense on the gate) the language David himself uses to describe his foes is almost allegorically abstract, Miller implies:

The individual laments are in many ways strongly stereotypical. That is, in moving from one lament to the other, one can encounter much of the same structure and content repeated, with some variation in the images and primary metaphors used. The enemies themselves are talked about in very typical stereotyped language. Cliches of all sorts are used throughout the psalms. The opponents are described in stark terms, usually with strong language and negative imagery. This stereotypical language should suggest caution in assuming that there is a single referent for the enemies or evildoers. (50)

Indeed, the imagery in the second half of Verse 3 here can be found virtually throughout the other Psalms -- in Psalm 9:15, for example, the idea of hidden traps set by evildoers is recast in the opposite direction, and the very act of laying hidden traps is something that, in a thanksgiving Psalm expressing victory or triumph, naturally comes back to haunt the evildoer, like the machinations of Haman in the Book of Esther. But in the desolation of Psalm 142, the hidden traps laid by evildoers are generalized -- we are not meant to assume that either Saul or Achish is meant here, but instead following Miller we should exercise "caution in assuming that there is a single referent for the enemies."

In fact, the intense solitude of Psalm 142 suggests an almost painfully direct communication between David and God -- to some extent the specificity of evildoers is irrelevant. Verse 4, after all, specifies this total isolation:

Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me.

I have no refuge;

no one cares for my life. (142:4)

The anxious underlying logic here suggests that if God's own chosen David can feel this isolated, perhaps God might feel this isolated as well if he were abandoned by David. David may be destined to be king, but he is a king with no attendants ("no one at my right hand") or counselors ("no one is concerned for me"). He is not only exiled from his own future kingdom, but even from a place like Gath that might treat him with respect ("no refuge") and indeed David's own existence seems worthless ("no one cares for my life"). There seems to be an underlying complaint about God here -- one wonders if the end of Verse 4 is almost expected to provoke a reaction from God. This seems to be the idea lurking in the transition from Verse 4 to Verse 5, where David reverses the logic here and admits that God will have to serve as substitute for all that David has lost:

I cry to you, LORD;

I say, "You are my refuge, ?

my portion in the land of the living." (142:5)

If we are inclined to view the representation of David in the Old Testament as a prefiguration of Christ, this would seem to be an admission like "my kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). At the point of utterance, David's only "refuge" and "portion in the land of the living" would seem to be the cave. Rather than admit this, David turns his trust to the Lord -- although this seems to be an implicit complaint: the love of God and an isolated cave and nothing else is not much of a "portion in the land of the living."

It is only by recollecting that David's story, and God's plan for him, does not end at the cave of Adullam that we recognize this is not an insult. Instead it is a prayer, from the Lord's beloved to that Lord who has seemingly abandoned him. Verse 6 then states the outright prayer for deliverance -- it is a confession of weakness, not only in comparison to God, but also in comparison to those earthly powers who seek David's destruction:

Listen to my cry, ?

for I am in desperate need;

rescue me from those who pursue me, ?

for they are too strong for me. (142:6)

Again, the specific situation is worth recalling. If we are meant to read Psalm 142 with I Samuel 21-2 in mind, then we know that David's solitude will not last long. His brothers and his followers will eventually come down to the cave to meet with him -- and with them "all those who were in distress or debt or discontented" -- and from this tiny remnant of "about four hundred men" David's eventual triumph will be built (I Sam.22:2). We, as readers of Psalm 142, are expected to know the outcome because it puts the desperation of the language into sharp perspective: Psalm 142 is not merely a prayer, it is an answered prayer. And if David's followers in I Samuel 22:2 come from those who were "in distress" and "discontented," then we can see that David himself in the cave of Adullam was in precisely the same situation. He feels overpowered.

It is in the final verse of Psalm 142, however, that we encounter the most paradoxical thing about this prayer. Verse 7 expresses David's unwillingness to abandon faith in God -- but shockingly he implies that his praise is, to a certain extent, conditional: "Set me free from my prison, / that I may praise your name. / Then the righteous will gather about me / because of your goodness to me." (142:7) Ronald Allen characterizes this conditionality as to make it seem like a Psalm not of praise, but one that promises future praise: "God has not yet responded, so the last section of that Psalm will be seen to contain a vow to praise God when the psalmist will have been delivered" (38-9). But it seems here that David's faith in God is being expressed in a peculiar way, when it involves the utter isolation of one who should be God's anointed king: the cave is described as a "prison" but it is one in which God has placed him. If God would consent to "set [him] free" from the "prison," then David would be able to "praise [God's] name." He also reminds God that he will have followers as a result of God's goodness -- something which the reader is expected to remember does, in fact, happen as a result of this prayer. David's lonely moment of doubt in the cave -- described in this Psalm -- is followed by the return of his family and of the faithful. But it is worth observing the way in which complaint against God and praise of God are paradoxically joined in this final verse, just as doubt in God and faith in God seem to paradoxically meet here. Claus Westermann notes of the structure here that "even the Psalms that are open petition, petition before the turning point in the situation, and end with the vow of praise or a petition, as Pss. 141; 142; 55; 9:13-14;61; etc., do not only stand on that side of the turning point but already anticipate it in the certainty of being heard or in a confession of confidence" (80). In other words, David's prayer comes from an absolute low point in his career -- but this low point allows a direct relationship between David and God, where issues of complaint and doubt can anticipate a certainty in God's goodness. The reader has access to what David does not (but God does) -- knowledge that, according to I Samuel 22:2, this prayer will actually be answered.