Don’t Say a Word

I was mute and silent, I refrained even from good, and my sorrow grew worse.   My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned;  Psalm 39:2-3a  NASB

Silent– Listen!  Silence is a good thing, right?  Don’t we long for an escape from the din around us?  The traffic, the elevator music, the indecipherable human clamor of the restaurant crowd, the constant cell phone chiming. Wouldn’t it be lovely to just go to the beach, the empty beach and hear nothing but the waves?  Or the mountains.  The airy whispers of wind in the trees.  The lullaby of a waterfall.  All that noisewe have to endure!  David even writes in another poem, “My soul waits in silence for God only; from Him is my salvation” (Psalm 62:1).

But if this is true, why does David complain that when he was silent his sorrow grew worse?  Perhaps some reflection on David’s vocabulary will help.

“Sorrow” is the Hebrew word kĕʾēb.  John Oswalt comments, “it is impossible to separate the mental and physical anguish as far as this word is concerned.”^[1]  David notices that his deliberate decision to say nothing and do nothing resulted in increased anguish.  He found no relief at all by keeping everything inside. This is not a case of searching for that quiet spot where we can be alone with God and our thoughts.  This is a case of holding our feeling in and doing nothing at all, not even good deeds.  This is a prescription for emotional necrotizing fasciitis.  (I won’t make you look that up.  It’s the flesh-eating disease.)  Our internal state “eats” away the psychological security of life.  We feel “hot,” another way of describing an emotional fever.  We’re sick because we have no outlet for how we feel.  This kind of silence kills.

“Habitual repression of emotion leaves a person in a situation of chronic stress, and chronic stress creates an unnatural biochemical milieu in the body.”[2]

“The person who does not feel or express ‘negative’ emotion will be isolated even if surrounded by friends, because his real self is not seen.  The sense of hopelessness follows from the chronic inability to be true to oneself on the deepest level.  And hopelessness leads to helplessness, since nothing one can do is perceived as making any difference.”[3]

Maté’s clinical observation is telling—and frightening:

“Not one of the many adults interviewed for this book could answer in the affirmative when asked the following:  When, as a child, you felt sad, upset or angry, was there anyone you could talk to—even when he or she was the one who had triggered your negative emotions?  In a quarter century of clinical practice, including a decade of palliative work, I have never heard anyone with cancer or with any chronic illness or condition say yes to that question.”[4]

A tranquil beach, a mountain stream—yes, great places to get in touch with the God who really knowsand loves us.  But if we have only these places, the dreamed-for retreats from the world, we will spend most of our lives in the “hot-box,” and that’s a guarantee of deep, emotional distress.  Maté notes, “Emotional intimacy is a psychological and biological necessity.”[5]  We might add that it is also a spiritual essential.  And that raises a critically important question: “Do you have someone to really talk to?”

Topical Index: kĕʾēb, sorrow, silent, emotion, Psalm 39:2-3

^[1]Oswalt, J. N. (1999). 940 כָאַב. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 425). Chicago: Moody Press.

[2]Gabor Maté, When the Body Says NO, p. 92.

[3]Ibid., p. 99.

[4]Ibid., p. 128.

[5]Ibid., p. 198.