How Long?
God, do not be far from me; my God, hurry to my aid! Psalm 71:12
Hurry – You remember these lines from another psalm? “How long, Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long am I to feel anxious in my soul, with grief in my heart all the day? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?” (Psalm 13:1-2). I’m quite sure that if you’ve lived long enough you know these words from personal experience. What did Erica Brown say? Oh, yes, ““Instability is chronic. Disruption is common. Uncertainty is permanent,”[1] No wonder we complain, “How long?”
The answer to this common complaint is not “Shut up and take it!” or “God has purposes that we don’t understand.” Neither staunch perseverance nor noetic incapacity will do. The real answer is leʿezrâti ḥiša(h). “Help me quickly,” with the emphasis on ḥûš (“quick”). It’s a common plea in the psalms: “Hasten to help me” or “Hasten to me” (Ps 22:19 [H 20]; 38:22 [H 23]; 40:13 [H 14]; 70:1, 5 [H 2, 6]; 71:12; 141:1).[2] With this we need to add Isaiah 60:22, just as a precaution against expectation: “I, the Lord, will bring it about quickly in its time.” You can’t hurry God, but you can ask.
Interestingly enough, and perhaps necessary, is the fact that the same Hebrew consonants, Chet, Vav, Shin (חוּשׁ) also mean “to be agitated, to worry about.” When the psalmist uses the term, do you suppose it’s possible that he also hints at the reason for our insistence on God’s quick reply? We’re worried. We’re agitated. So, we turn to God and ask (demand?) that He do something—now! Please. There is an unusual use of this word in Ecclesiastes 2:24-25. The verses are usually translated, “A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?” (NIV). In these verses, ḥûš is the word for “enjoyment”? This is the only place where the word is translated this way. Do you find that a bit odd? Do you suppose that the translators are interpreting the context rather than allowing the word to have its usual meaning? And what if we did allow ḥûš to express worry or concern, rather than “enjoyment”? Wouldn’t the statement in Ecclesiastes take on much more powerful implications? “For without God who can eat and act quickly.” If that’s the sense of this verse, doesn’t it say more than finding “enjoyment”? Doesn’t it imply that everything we do requires God’s provision? The undertone of “hurry” is divine assistance. Isn’t that what we really want, that God come quickly to our aid? And doesn’t that imply that all we do relies on Him? Maybe Qohelet is saying something far more profound, far more than the existentialist’s “eat, drink, and be merry” dour prediction. Maybe what he’s saying is that our sense of hurry already contains a divine truth. Paul put it like this: “ for in Him we live and move and exist,” (Acts 17:28), which gave him the opportunity to introduce the poets.
Topical Index: ḥûš, hurry, be agitated, worry, Ecclesiastes 2:24-25, Acts 17:28, Psalm 71:12
[1] Erica Brown, Leadership in the Wilderness: Authority and Anarchy in the Book of Numbers, (Maggid Books, 2013), p. 28.
[2] Yamauchi, E. (1999). 631 חוּשׁ. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 274). Chicago: Moody Press.
