Night Moves
When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, Psalm 63:6 NASB
Remember/meditate – “Now I lay me down to sleep,” but it rarely happens so easily. Nursery rhymes are wishful fables. Sleep is far more difficult. The room is dark. The noise of the day is finished, but there are connections happening at the speed of thought. “Oh, I forgot to do that. Ah, now I see how this works. I need to write it down or I’ll forget in the morning.” The light goes on, scribbles are made, the light goes off. It starts again. Half dreams become insights. Real dreams become alternate realities. David has nice, poetic words for it, but I think the reality is much more disturbing.
Zākar (to remember)—the kind of remembering we do when we want to close our eyes and forget for the night. That’s the time when unfinished obligations creep into consciousness, when our sins are most real, when assessment of our real persona is most likely to make an appearance. I’m sure David had plenty of these things to remember, but you will notice that he doesn’t say, “When I remember.” He says, “When I remember You.” At the moment when all the rest of the day’s turmoil subsides, David remembers God. Fondly, we hope, although I suspect we have times when remembering YHVH is terrifying. David’s inward mental recall of YHVH probably covers the whole range, but with the addition of hāgâ we find that remembering can be frightening too. David remembers YHVH and meditates on Him.
Hāgâ isn’t quite what we think of as meditation. Our modern view is something like this:
Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.[1]
I don’t think David was practicing Ayurvedic techniques. I don’t think he was even exploring mindfulness. Why? Because the object of his meditation isn’t David, it’s God. David is allowing his whole person to experience the presence of God, the overwhelming gratitude for God, the depth of God’s care, the intensity of the desire to serve him. It’s interesting that this Hebrew verb (hāgâ) also means “moan, growl, rumble, make unintelligible sounds.” That doesn’t sound like modern meditation. It sounds like a person who is experiencing something he really can’t articulate—something primal. “The basic meaning of hāgâ and its cognates is a low sound, characteristic of the moaning of a dove (Isa 38:14; 59:11) or the growling of a lion over its prey (Isa 31:4). It is sometimes used in mourning contexts, . .”[2] On this night, David draws near to something absolutely dear to YHVH—LIFE! The feeling of being alive, there in the dark. The wonder of it all. That’s worth staying awake.
Topical Index: zākar, remember, hāgâ, meditate, Psalm 63:6
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation
[2] Wolf, H. (1999). 467 הָגָה. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 205). Chicago: Moody Press.
