Psalms 13:3

THE FOUR LINES OF PRAYER

"Consider and answer me, O Jehovah, my God:

Lighten mine eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death;

Lest mine enemy say; I have prevailed against him;

Lest mine adversaries rejoice when I am removed."

These lines tell how the distressed psalmist turned to God in prayer, the last resource and the first, of every child of God. "Take it to the Lord in prayer." Right there is the answer, the ultimate answer, the only answer to all the problems associated with our earthly pilgrimage.

This prayer promptly phased into exclamations of rejoicing as the supplicant, conscious of the fact that indeed the Lord had heard his cry, was once more aware of the loving presence of God in his life.

It should be noted that in Psalms 13:4, the psalmist's prayer for the avoidance of death is based upon the premise that, "If he dies, his enemies will interpret his death in such a way as to mock his trust in God."[6]

"The doctrine is taught here (in Psalms 13:4) that God's honor is bound up with the deliverance of his people."[7] It was this very fact to which the great Jewish leader Moses appealed when God, at one time, expressed a purpose of destroying Israel, and of developing through Moses a new Chosen People. Moses pleaded with God not to do such a thing, saying:

"If thou kill this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because Jehovah was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness" (Numbers 14:15-16).