Psalm 13

What’s Happening?

This psalm of David deals with the experience of God’s hiddenness—those times when life is so hard God seems absent.

David asks how long God will forget him and hide his face from him (Psalm 13:1). His heart is full of sorrow because his enemies are oppressing him (Psalm 13:2). These oppressors even celebrate the bad things happening to him (Psalm 13:4).

When things get this bad, it is common for us to think God has abandoned us. Like David, the most natural way to process our experience is to question God: “Where are you? Why aren’t you acting? Why are you letting this happen?”

But if God remains silent, like David all we can do is ask God to act in our favor (Psalm 13:3).

Despite David’s experience, emotions, and assumptions, he holds fast to the truth of who God is. The psalm ends with a confession of trust. David says that he trusts in God’s unfailing love (Psalm 13:5). The word for unfailing love is not describing God’s emotions but his loyal covenant commitment to Israel and David.

God has made promises in the past to his people, and David clings to those promises when everything else falls away. He looks back on God’s bountiful dealings with him and his people—and it causes him to sing praises to God in the midst of sorrow (Psalm 13:6).

Where is the Gospel?

The hiddenness David experienced would also be experienced by Jesus himself.

Jesus was killed on a cross by his enemies, though he did nothing to deserve it. At his darkest moment, Jesus prayed the words of Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was not a declaration that God had abandoned him, but a faithful cry rooted in Scripture. Like David in Psalm 13, Jesus was naming his anguish while also entrusting himself to God’s covenant love.

Psalm 22 does not end in despair but in confidence that God hears, delivers, and will be praised among the nations (Psalm 22:24–27). By quoting its opening line, Jesus was publicly declaring that even in the midst of suffering, he trusted God to vindicate him.

And God did. On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead. His resurrection is proof that God never abandoned him—and will never abandon us either.

This is good news. Even when circumstances tempt us to believe God is silent or absent, the cross and resurrection show us that God is always faithful. Jesus endured the darkest night of suffering with trust in God, and we can too. Nothing—not even death—can separate us from God’s loyal love for us (Romans 8:38–39).

See For Yourself

I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see the God who is loyal and faithful, even through the worst circumstances. And may you see Jesus as the one who trusted God in suffering and was vindicated in resurrection—so that we might share in his life.