Disappointed

Why are you in despair, my soul?  And why are you restless within me?  Wait for God, for I will again praise Him for the help of His presence, my God.  Psalm 42:11  NASB

Despair – Hebrew is earthy.  It doesn’t portray the complexity of our Greek-based psychological vocabulary.  It describes internal psychic states with tactile imagery.  A verb like šāḥaḥ, translated for us as “despair,” is literally “to sink down,” “to melt away,”  “to be brought low.”  Here the verb is reflexive.  The picture it paints is bringing myself down, melting myself away.  If we remember that nepeš (“soul”) is also not Greek, and means “the whole person,” then we understand the sentence.  “Why am I making myself melt away?”  “Why am I taking myself down?”

In good Hebrew poetic form, this opening idea is amplified with the second stanza.  The verb is hāmâ.  “To cry aloud, to mourn, to rage, to roar, to make noise, to be disquieted, to be troubled.”  The translator offers “restless,” but as you can see, there’s a lot more involved here.  Something is so distressing to me that I feel as if I am internally collapsing.  I can’t sleep.  I can’t eat.  I’m crying on the inside.  I want to shout and scream, but nothing comes out.  Why is this happening to me?

And the answer is—disappointment!  When I examine my life with spiritual eyes, I find disappointment.  I’ve damaged so many relationships, made so many mistakes, taken so many wrong turns.  I look back on those flaws and feel ashamed.  How could I have been so arrogant, so uncaring, so disobedient?  By any standard, I fail to measure up.  I’m brought down, I’m melting away because I am so disappointed with myself.  Surely God feels the same way about me.  He had such great plans for me, such noble purposes, and I failed Him, over and over.  I chose my own road and encountered tragedy, frustration, and šāḥaḥ.  Now I’m roaring with tears on the inside.  It’s too late for me.

What is David’s reply?  yāḥal.  The translator chooses “wait,” but there’s another nuance with this verb that is picked up in the LXX.  “Hope.”  This is not a wishful desire.  It’s an imperative, a command, a causative act.  “yāḥal is used of ‘expectation, hope’ which for the believer is closely linked with ‘faith, trust’ and results in ‘patient waiting.’ The sense of expectation may be positive, i.e. hoping for good in the future.”^[1]   I need this verb!  Why?  Because my despair, my disappointment, is locked into the past.  I disappointed myself, and as long as that’s all I can see about me, nothing will change.  I will attribute that disappointment to God’s view of me, forgetting that most important sequence raḥûm, ḥannûn, ʾerek ʾappayim, and ḥesed.  David reminds me that I must wait for these words to become my reality.  I have damaged myself by forgetting Exodus 34:6, and in that damaged state I see only the ruins.

This yāḥal “hope” is not a pacifying wish of the imagination which drowns out troubles, nor is it uncertain (as in the Greek concept), but rather yāḥal “hope” is the solid ground of expectation for the righteous. As such it is directed towards God. The Psalmist twice commands: “O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is lovingkindness (Heb ḥesed), and with him is abundant redemption” (Ps 130:7; cf. 131:3).^[2]

Disappointment is only half the picture.  God’s declaration is the other half.

Topical Index:  šāḥaḥ,  melt away, yāḥal, wait, hope, disappointment, Exodus 34:6, Psalm 42:11

^[1] Gilchrist, P. R. (1999). 859 יָחַל. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 373). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Gilchrist, P. R. (1999). 859 יָחַל. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., pp. 373–374). Chicago: Moody Press.