Psalm 89

How long, Adonai, will you hide your face forever; will your fury blaze like fire? (89:47)

The final Psalm in Book 3 of the Psalms, at 53 verses, is the third longest Psalm. It concludes with a doxology typical of the final verse of each book of Psalms, “Blessed is Adonai forever, Amen and Amen.” When I embarked on this project to write a reflection on each of the 150 Psalms, one per week, a nearly three year project, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to maintain the discipline. That’s the funny thing about long-term projects. You begin with the best of intentions, but at a certain point it seems like they’re going to take forever to complete. Forever is a long time. Something which takes forever is never completed.

The JPS translation of our verse, paying careful attention to the punctuation of the verse, reads three distinct questions:

How long, Adonai; will you hide your face forever, will your fury blaze like fire?

The first question, “How long,” is a general cry for God’s presence. It is followed by two specific question. To paraphrase, “Will I never see you again?” and “Are you very angry?”

Rabbi Benjamin Segal, in his masterful book “A New Psalm: The Psalms as Literature” translates the verse differently by putting moving the word “forever” from the middle of the verse, where it is found in the Hebrew, to the end of the verse:

How long, Adonai, will you hid your face; will your fury blaze like fire forever?

Rabbi Segal’s translation, reads the verse as two questions — “How long will you remain distant?” and “Will you be angry forever?”

I’ve chosen a different way to understand the verse. The Psalmist asks, “How long will you hide your face?” but embedded in the verse is the word ‘forever,’ a word which indicates what he’s afraid of. I’ve translated this verse to emphasize the writer’s sense of uncertainty and contradiction. The Psalmist asks “how long?” but answers that God’s face will be hidden forever, that God will never appear to him again.

Time is relative. One minute standing in silence, as Israelis do as part of their Memorial Day observance, seems like an eternity. On the other hand, one minute on a rollercoaster is over in a flash. When we’re feeling abandoned, time crawls. When we’re having a good time, time flies. Three-fifths of the way into my journey though the Psalms, I, like the Psalmist, sometimes wonder if I’ll make it to the end. It seems far away. As we finish Book 3 of Psalms, I pause to acknowledge God, the source of blessing, and to thank God for giving me the mental strength and discipline to push on and finish what I began.