Psalm 116: 10,11 – “Speaking”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁰I believed, so I said, “I am greatly afflicted.” ¹¹I said in being alarmed, “The all of humanity [is] a lying one!”

I am so glad I finally got to study these two verses. I have enjoyed verse 10 for years but never knew quite what to do with v11. I think now the two together make a lot more sense to me.

Verse 10 is a cool verse. I noticed it years ago from this perspective: I asked myself, if I were to complete the sentence, what would I write – “I believed, therefore I said …” Said what? Well, certainly it would be something like, “I believed therefore I said,” … “God is good,” or “I know all things will work together for good,” or “I know the Lord never gives us more than we can bear,” etc., etc. But how does the sentence actually read? “I believed, therefore I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted!’” “Greatly afflicted!” That certainly doesn’t sound like any expression of faith! Sounds more like faithless whining, doesn’t it? “I am greatly afflicted!” Faith doesn’t talk like that, does it?

Here is a place where I found the Psalms to be an enormous encouragement to my heart. The fact is they are full of this kind of “whining,” are they not? Just open your Bible to Psalms anywhere and start reading the first few lines of the Psalms your eyes fall on. Many of the Psalms are cries from afflicted and troubled hearts, are they not? This is what it taught me: It is not a lack of faith to feel the pain of our troubles, to cry bitter tears, to call out to God. It might be. Certainly there is a faithless whining of which we are all quite capable. But this passage (and the whole book of Psalms) teaches us that there is also a whining of faith. To feel very deeply the pain of our troubles is not (necessarily) somehow failing to see the hand of God in them. “I believed, therefore I said, ‘I am greatly afflicted!’”

I feel like the Psalms have freed me to be human. I think early in my Christian walk, I developed the misguided notion that faith should raise me above my human emotions, that it should enable me to simply bear patiently and joyfully whatever circumstances I met. I should be able to simply “count it all joy when I fell into various temptations” and stoically go on through life without any extremes of any emotion at all. That sounds like “All things work together for good,” and seemed to make sense. Faith should just make me this completely stable, contented person, I surmised. But somehow I sensed that view turns us into something unhuman. Then I began to notice the Psalms. Emotions? The Psalms are full of them!

The Psalms teach us that, rather than suppressing emotions, faith actually liberates them! Yes it is possible to be sinfully angry, sinfully happy, sinfully whatever. But the Psalms teach us that it is equally possible to be living faith as we feel deeply the full range of our human emotions. I think this particular verse, Psalm 116:10, probably pulled it all together for me. That probably happened when I was studying through II Corinthians and came to 4:13, where Paul quotes this very verse and says, “It is written, ‘I believed, therefore I have spoken.’ With that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak.” In his particular case, what he was speaking was the Gospel, but that was the point I realized, that the truth of Psalm 116:10 is that faith speaks and it may say a lot of things! … But it is faith that is speaking! Again, back in the Psalms faith may speak and praise the Lord, or it may speak and express the very depths of doubt and discouragement. It may speak and express great joy or just as likely speak and express deep fear or disappointment.

I don’t know if it makes sense to anyone else, but it is enormously liberating to me to realize that I am free to feel the full range of human emotions and to take those very emotions, good or bad, into the very Throne-room of God. He invites me to come not as “Mr. Got-it-all-together” but as a human being, created in His image, realizing that that very image is one of an emotional being. He wants me to come to Him real.

In the Psalmist’s case, on this particular day, he was feeling very deeply some pain or trouble, and so, because he had faith, because he believed, he was free to cry out, “I am greatly afflicted!”

But then there is verse 11, “I said in my alarm, ‘All men are liars!’” Here’s some more liberating reality: Even as we speak in faith, in the ebb and flow of our emotions, we may say things that are not true or things that, in cooler moments, we simply wouldn’t. Now, of course, we could get all theological here and say that this statement is quite true. It is true that, as fallen sinners, we are all easily false in a million different godless ways. One might think he could use this text as a proof for the doctrine of Total Depravity. But I don’t think the Psalmist is being theological here. He’s being practical, even emotional. He is in the midst of suffering something very acutely, and what he is expressing is this fact that there is a sense in which we all suffer alone. We enjoy having our friends and loved ones and certainly enjoy their support and encouragement and help of whatever kind. But, especially when we suffer deeply, we are likely to feel abandoned, misunderstood, made light of, whatever. It is at those times when we may, in the throes of our suffering, darkly conclude that everyone has failed us, all are false to us. But while there is an element of truth to it, on the other hand, it simply isn’t true. I like what Albert Barnes said:

“This is not an unnatural feeling in affliction. The mind is then sensitive. We need friends then. We expect our friends to show their friendship then. If they do not do this, it seems to us that the entire world is false. It is evident from the whole course of remark here that the psalmist on reflection felt that he had said this without due thought, under the influence of excitement - and that he was disposed, when his mind was restored to calmness, to think better of mankind than he did in the day of affliction and trouble. This also is not uncommon. The world is much better than we think it is when our own minds are morbid and our nerves are unstrung; and bad as the world is, our opinion of it is not unfrequently the result rather of our own wrong feeling than of just reflection on the real character of mankind.”

I like to what Spurgeon said:

In the sense in which he spoke his language was unjustifiable. He had no right to distrust all men, for many of them are honest, truthful, and conscientious; there are faithful friends and loyal adherents yet alive; and if sometimes they disappoint us, we ought not to call them liars for failing when the failure arises entirely from want of power, and not from lack of will. Under great affliction our temptation will be to form hasty judgments of our fellow men, and knowing this to be the case we ought carefully to watch our spirit, and to keep the door of our lips. The Psalmist had believed, and therefore he spoke; he had doubted, and therefore he spoke in haste. He believed, and therefore he rightly prayed to God; he disbelieved, and therefore he wrongfully accused mankind. Speaking is as ill in some cases as it is good in others. Speaking in haste is generally followed by bitter repentance. It is much better to be quiet when our spirit is disturbed and hasty, for it is so much easier to say than to unsay; we may repent of our words, but we cannot so recall them as to undo the mischief they have done. If even David had to eat his own words, when he spoke in a hurry, none of us can trust our tongue without a bridle.

Lots of good thoughts from these two good men!

On an exegetical note, before I move on, these two verses also have some grammatical oddities. In both verses, the pronoun “I” is actually included in the “I am greatly afflicted” of verse 10 and the “I said” of verse 11. In my translation above, I have noted the presence of the pronouns by underlining them. This is odd as in Hebrew the pronominal substantives are invariably included in the verb. As with Greek, it only took one word to say both the subject and the verb. Whenever an ancient writer actually includes both, it is for a reason. Usually it is emphasis. Probably that’s what it is here. I suppose he is expressing the intensity of his emotions by actually including the “I” with the verbs.

Also, just for whatever it’s worth, the expression “All men” is somewhat unusual in the Hebrew. It literally reads something like, “The all of the man a lying one.” I think that is just a Hebrew way of saying “all of mankind” or “all of humanity.”

Anyway, lessons learned: Even in the depths of sorrow, we should never hesitate to express our hearts (good or bad) to God. On the other hand, at times like those, let us be careful what we say to (and of) people, knowing our own frame of mind is so unstable.

A blessed assurance on the one hand and a wise caution on the other!