The opening lines of Psalm 13 are so beautiful in the original Hebrew, yet translations turn them into a dull list of random misery. Though the Hebrew for “LORD” never appears in this psalm, conventions of translation seem rigid and unyielding. As a result, whoever the psalmist is crying to seems, perhaps, a distant master ignoring his slave. Where is the intimate relationship of covenant, the soul’s desperate yearning for the divine touch seemingly lost?
The mysterious divine name, repeated, in Hebrew, so passionately on the lips of the psalmist, can have many renderings – and any of them would be better here than “LORD!” Since this psalm is truly a love song addressed to the Divine, why not use the name “LOVE?” Such a reading (literally more valid than “LORD!”) is more resonant with this love-song between the human and divine.
There is so much complex yearning in this psalm! All I can do in this brief reflection is offer my rendering of the lover’s cry. May our reading of the psalms forever challenge us to read between the lines, and to embrace the unstinting gift of the Beloved, who is always present to our call, even in our loneliest days.
“HOW FAR, O LOVE…?”
PSALM 13: 1-4 a
A Song to the Beloved.
How far, O LOVE! - and then,
you left me here, at the edge of time, alone.
How far, O LOVE, you hid
your face away from mine.
How far, O LOVE, did I
bury my grief deep within my mind,
and my days of sobbing deep within my heart.
How far, O LOVE, how high I was tossed by hostile rage -
until I begged of you, O LOVE, to glance my way,
—and give me back the power of your LOVE!
(Rendered from the Hebrew by Dr. Henry R. Carse)