Psalm 4

Psalm 4

¹Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness!
You have relieved me in my distress;
Have mercy on me, and hear my prayer.

² How long, O you sons of men,
Will you turn my glory to shame?
How long will you love worthlessness
And seek falsehood? Selah
³ But know that the Lord has set apart for Himself him who is godly;
The Lord will hear when I call to Him.

⁴ Be angry, and do not sin.
Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still. Selah
⁵ Offer the sacrifices of righteousness,
And put your trust in the Lord.

⁶ There are many who say,
“Who will show us any good?”
Lord, lift up the light of Your countenance upon us.
⁷ You have put gladness in my heart,
More than in the season that their grain and wine increased.
⁸ I will both lie down in peace, and sleep;
For You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

How wonderful it is to know that God hears us and answers us in our times of troubles!

Again, we have a psalm that focuses on calling on God in our times of distress and tells us that no matter what others might say or do to us, “the Lord will hear when I call to Him.”

Be angry, and do not sin

I looked at some other translations, and some of them say things like “tremble and do not sin” (NIV). It made me wonder what it really means. Not knowing any Hebrew, I figured I’d do the next best thing at look at the Septuagint to see if it could shed any light on the situation. The Septuagint says, ὀργίζεσθε καὶ μὴ ἁμαρτάνετε, “Be angry and do not sin.” I found it interesting that it also uses plural imperatives (English only has one form for second person, but a plural imperative would be like saying, “All of you, do this”). It highlights the fact that this is not for one person at one time, but for all of us all the time. But, what can we learn from this? I think it would be impossible not to be angry when everyone seems to be against you and turns your glory to shame. Being angry, being troubled, isn’t the sin. It’s what we do with it. We are humans, and we can’t ignore life. The answer for fixing it follows in the next imperative…

Meditate within your heart on your bed, and be still

Have you ever been so worked up about something (in my case, it’s usually something stupid, like, “How am I going to finish 300 lines of Euripides by Thursday?” or “Why did I say that incredibly dumb sounding thing that everyone probably took wrong?” or “I can’t believe that Jimmy said that to me! He’s such a major jerkface!”) that you couldn’t sleep? You just lie there, mulling it over in your head.  You wonder if might not be as bad as you think, then you decide that it’s worse than you think, and finally, you decide how you’ll do it over when they finally do invent that time machine. The actual reference is going back to the anger, but it applies to all situations. We need to be still, meditate on the Lord, and give our care to Him to find our peace. I don’t think the idea of gaining peace from God can come through any clearer than combining the phrase “be still” with lying on a bed.

You have put gladness in my heart…I will both lie down in peace, and sleep

I don’t know what more I can say about this. We’re angry, we call on God, God gives us gladness and peace, and we can sleep soundly.