The Absentee Landlord
How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? Psalm 13:1 NASB
Hide Your face – I understand the absence of the Landlord when the tenant deserves judgment. Feeling the brokenness of relationship is a powerful incentive for repentance and restitution, as every parent knows. Children who need to take a “time out” discover the immediate discomfort of isolation and the motivation for correcting behavior. I get that part, and I have experienced it as a child and as an adult. But what I don’t understand, and emotionally can’t abide, is the absence of the Landlord when I am desperate for relationship. Why does He stay away when all I really need, and all I really want, is His company? Just as David expressed, “How long will You keep me in the emptiness? Have You forgotten all about me?”
The Hebrew verbal root here is sātar (to hide, to conceal), in this verse, a Hif’il form. It expresses direct, causative action. So God’s absence is not accidental, as if He were just preoccupied with some other cosmic task. No, David suggests that God deliberately stays away. We can see the power in this cry of dereliction when we realize that the word for “face” comes from a Hebrew verb, pānâ, that means “to turn.” In its derivatives, this root appears 2100 times in the Tanakh. The noun pānîm (face) is always plural (literally, “faces”). In other words, the very idea of face in Hebrew is about direction, either toward or away, and expresses the multiplicity of recognizable relationship. We all know what this is like. We just want to “see” someone to know what is in the heart. Therefore, as Zornberg points out, “‘hiding of His face’—conveys most powerfully the human experience of being abandoned by God. To suffer grinding, senseless labor, to lose one’s babies to the river, is to know the world as one where God indeed seems blind and deaf and unknowing”[1]is the epitome of despair. But, “. . . When He no longer hides His face, history changes; redemption becomes possible.”[2]
What David desperately desires is what I desire, and perhaps you do too. What he wants is to “see” the faces of the Landlord turned in his direction. What he wants is the hint that a relationship of concern and care is once again possible. What he wants is to be known, to be seen, to be acknowledged. Like any child, David wants his Father’s attention—because without it the world is a dark and lonely place. But like any child, when the Father’s face is hidden, the darkness grows. “How long, O Lord?” That’s the heartbreaking question.
Only God can give the answer.
Topical Index: relationship, face, pānâ, pānîm, sātar, hide, Psalm 13:1
[1] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus (Schocken Books, New York: 2001), p. 31.
