The Loudest Man in the Psalms Was Angry at God

He has been perfectly polite for about two years and it has been a complete waste of both their time.

He says the right things. He is not performing exactly, and he would not call it fake, but there is a version of the conversation he has and a version he does not have, and the second one has been sitting there since August of the year before last.

He was told once, by somebody who was being kind about it, that you do not talk to God like that. It was said warmly and it went in like a nail.

So there is a subject, and around the subject there is a shape, and every conversation goes carefully around the shape the way traffic goes around something in the road.

And after two years of that, the conversations have got shorter, because there is not much left to say once you have taken out the only thing you actually want to say.

The psalm opens with the same question four times

There is a psalm that begins the way a man begins when he has stopped being careful.

How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? (Psalm 13:1-2, King James Version)

Four times. How long, how long, how long, how long.

And the accusation in the first one is not soft. Wilt thou forget me. He is putting it on God directly.

That is in the songbook. It was written down, kept, collected, set to music, and sung by people in a public gathering.

Nobody edited it to make it more respectful.

You are not saying something the book left out. Psalm 13 opens with four accusations and got kept in the collection anyway, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old psalm feel like permission rather than an exception.

A whole book opens as a complaint

There is a book that starts with a man telling God the arrangement is wrong.

O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! (Habakkuk 1:2)

That is verse two. Not a low point halfway through, the second sentence of the book.

He argues for a chapter. God answers. He argues back. God answers again.

And the book ends with him saying he will wait, and never saying that he understands, and nobody in the collection treats the argument as the problem.

You are inside a form the collection has a whole book of. Habakkuk 1 opens as an argument and God answers rather than rebukes, and it is His Spirit who makes an old exchange feel like a way in.

God said the careful ones had it wrong

At the end of Job there is a verdict, and it goes the opposite way from how anybody expects.

Job spends the middle of the book saying things about God that would empty most rooms. His three friends spend the same chapters defending God carefully.

And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. (Job 42:7)

The careful ones are the ones He is angry with.

And the man who had been shouting is the one He says spoke rightly.

That should be read slowly by anybody who has been polite for two years on somebody's advice, because it says the risk is not where he was told it was.

You are not in danger for saying the true thing badly. Job 42 hands down the verdict against the defenders rather than the complainer, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old ruling reach a man on a bridge.

A prophet said something that should not be in there

There is a line in Jeremiah that translators have wrestled with for centuries because of how strong it is.

O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me. (Jeremiah 20:7)

Thou hast deceived me.

That is a prophet, in the middle of his own book, accusing God of something.

And it stayed in. Whoever assembled that book had the option of leaving it out and did not take it, which tells you what the collection is for.

You are not the first to put an accusation into the conversation. Jeremiah 20 keeps the line in the book, and it is His Spirit who makes an unedited sentence do more work than a careful one.

And the instruction is to pour it out

There is a line in Psalm 62 that says how this is done, and it has a timing clause.

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. (Psalm 62:8)

Pour out your heart.

Not summarize it. Not present the reviewed version. Pour is a word for emptying a container without controlling the rate.

And at all times, which specifically rules out waiting until the contents have improved.

You are invited to empty it rather than to present it. Psalm 62 uses a pouring word and adds at all times, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old instruction reach a man who has been going carefully around a shape for two years.