Psalm 40 — Waiting Patiently

During the attack, as you suffer the afflictions and wish to learn the advantage of steadfast patience, sing Psalm 40.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

This one has been long regarded as praise and patience as one waits for an answer to prayer. Peter Kreeft points out that waiting is the first step in finding out what God wants from us.

"I have waited, waited for the Lord." The Psalmist says it twice because waiting always feels too long and tries our patience. But we must never, never, never, never, never give up. because God will always respond.

The second thing the Psalmist tells us is what God does in response to our waiting for him: he "heard my cry." Waiting is a "cry," a cry from the heart. Waiting is an active, passionate, and painful thing, not a passive, easy, comfortable thing. If we wait for God in this way, he will always hear us and answer us. And in answering us, the Psalmist says, he "stooped toward me," as a tall adult stoops to talk to a tiny child. He humbled himself. He came down to our level, since we cannot raise ourselves up to his level by ourselves.

Food for the Soul, Year C, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Look at this image to see under just what conditions the psalmist is imagined patiently waiting. Yikes!!!! But it does go along with what the psalm tells us.

There are two kinds of patience being mentioned here. The first is patient endurance for a long time. The second is enduring hope and expectation that doesn't fade. God doesn't always act quickly but He's worth waiting for.

"I waited patiently for the Lord"
Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Musée Condé

This is lengthy but I was fascinated by all the possibilities that the language indicates. All of these kinds of muck and mire are familiar. All make us long even more for a secure rock with firm footing.

Stuck in the Muck

The psalmist is seeking deliverance from sin, so it is interesting to see how its consequences are described as being mired down in a slippery place, with no secure footing or ability to escape. Several images are attached to the vocabulary used here. (1) One appears to refer to the clay pounded out into a smooth surface in building village streets. While in most circumstances this must have provided a relatively hard surface, on occasions of rain or perhaps the spilling of blood in battle, the clay could become slippery and muddy (cf. Zech. 10:5).

(2) A second image connected with the slippery mire is the shifty sediments of the sea bed. Isaish 57:20 describes the restless sea that tosses up slimy seaweed and mud. Similarly, Psalm 69:14 describes the desperate plight of one who is sinking into the mire while the sea waves crash over him.

(3) The final image associated with slippery mud refers to the sediment left in the bottom of an abandoned cistern or pit. Jeremiah 38:6 describes the circumstances in which the prophet was abandoned to die by his enemies in a cistern having "no water in it, only mus, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud." When the kind learned of Jeremiah's fate, he sent men with ropes to draw him up out of the muck and mire of the pit. Similarly Joseph's brother threw him into an empty cistern before drawing him out in order to sell him to passing Midianites (Gen. 37:19-28). Lamentations 3:53 describes the poet being thrown into a cistern and left to die while the "waters closed over my head." Apparently these accounts draw on a common practice of using cisterns for imprisonment. ...

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

An index of psalm posts is here.