²I was mute and silent, I refrained even from good, and my sorrow grew worse … ⁷”And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You … ¹³Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may smile again before I depart and am no more.

This psalm reflects an individual lament, but we have little information on the precipitating cause of the writer’s difficulty. He refers possibly to detractors, those harming or threatening him: “the wicked are in my presence” (vs. 1). But he also seems self-reflective about his personal shortcomings: “Deliver me from all my transgressions” (vs. 8). Possibly he is sick: “Remove Your plague from me” (vs. 10). This brings to mind the time late in his life that David sinned against God by taking a census of Israel, thus invoking Lord’s anger (2 Sam. 24). The result was a devastating plague from God that killed seventy thousand men. Whether any of these provides the background to Psalm 39 or not, the general nature of David’s writing here certainly relates to various situations of life we can relate to. (Note: for the meaning of words like “Jeduthun” and “Selah,” see The Book of Psalms Handbook.”)

David dives into his lament in the first five verses. Just as we struggle with controlling our speech, David knows the temptation to resort to sinful retorts as weapons against one’s enemies. He has resolved not to answer his enemies—”I was mute and silent” (vs. 2). So he asserts the effort to refrain, but that doesn’t seem to help, as his enemies seem to be getting the better of him and his emotional distress intensifies (vs. 1-3). In fact, this man of God begins to burn in silence and, in time, burst out to the Lord. There is no end to his predicament, so he turns his thoughts to the feeling of insignificance of his life before God. He is quite depressed!

What value is there for us in reading about David’s depression? The answer is this: the psalm gives us words to express before God when we are depressed with what seems like the futility of our lives. Remember, in David, we see how a godly man reacts to his life’s circumstances, and here we see it in how he deals with depression. Christians are not immune to similar struggles, and following David’s example, we should express them to God, no matter how down we feel. After all, God can handle our frustrations and sense of futility; it is far better to tell Him about them rather than hold them back in the facade of self-righteousness as though we would never feel like David. Humbleness requires us not to hide anything from God.

This godly man, David, tells the Lord that he hasn’t abandoned hope, for he confesses that his hope is in the Lord (vs. 7). His feeling of insignificance is ameliorated by the recognition that all life is brief. Our successes are short-lived (vs. 6). In the end, we all die, and we cannot take any of our accomplishments with us to the grave. In this, David attempts to bring his depression into balance and not let the earthly facts that everyone experiences deter him from his hope in God—he refuses to resign in hopelessness. He believes in God, and God alone, regardless of anything else.

David now repeats what he wrote in the earlier part, but with an overlay of hope in God. He recasts, for example, his silence: “I have become mute, I do not open my mouth, because it is You who have done it” (vs. 9, emphasis added). God is the moving force behind his misfortunes; therefore, he turns from fretting over his enemies and attributes what is happening to him as God’s activity in his life. He asks the Lord, “Remove Your plague from me; because of the opposition of Your hand I am perishing.”

Because of his faith and hope in God, David turns his prayer into a simple request that God would hear him, turn His judgmental gaze away, and give David reason to smile again before he dies (possibly a clue that he wrote this psalm later in life).

The application for us today is similar. We can easily find ourselves depressed and looking within for faults as we face life’s difficulties. Whether others or we ourselves have caused the problems in our lives, our hope remains in God alone. We must never give in to the vortex of depression that signs us over to a sense of futility. A godly person reacts to all this by turning to the Lord in the hope that He will once again give us a reason to smile! We must never give up on this hope. The apostle Peter expresses our hope for believers in this way:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. (1 Peter 1:3–4)

Lord, You have given me much to hope for because You are my hope—that roots me in eternity and not just in the tiny sliver of time here on earth that is allotted to me. Despite my adverse circumstances, I trust in You!