“Inarticulate prayers”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Psalm 5 (Forward, p. 87) CEV p. 557
Unfortunately, I am not sufficiently adept at the Hebrew language to assess this for myself, but verse one in the Contemporary English Version (CEV) raises an interesting possibility. It reads as follows: “Listen, Lord, as I pray! Pay attention when I groan.” What I especially picked up on was the one word, ‘groan’. Given that one of the frequent marks of Hebrew poetry is a repetition in the second verse of the main idea from the first verse, it leaves me with the intriguing and attractive notion that sometimes the psalmist’s prayer consisted of inarticulate groanings. I say, attractive, because sometimes our mental or emotional state is such that our prayers are pretty clumsy, inept and inarticulate. Sometimes we are simply lost for words and have trouble articulating or expressing our needs or concerns. Sometimes, because of our emotions, we simply can’t think straight. This is where I find the intercessions of the Holy Spirit, as described in Romans 8:28, to be so helpful. It reads, “In certain ways we are weak, but the Spirit is here to help us. For example, when we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit prays for us in ways that cannot be put into words.” Anyway, I find it helpful and encouraging that such a person as our psalmist might also have had trouble here.
So, what are the kind of the things that our psalmist prays for through his groanings? He prays for help, and in three specific ways. He prays that God will guide him with clear, understandable teachings, that God will punish his enemies and get rid of them, and that God will protect and shelter him from them.
It sounds to me that these prayers were pretty specific to the psalmist’s particular situation, so we might not find ourselves asking God for precisely the same things. But I do think that we can be equally as precise and specific in terms of our needs and our requests, yes, even if we can’t exactly put them in words or express them very precisely or articulately. I think that God hears the moanings and groanings of our hearts, the desires of our hearts, even we can’t ‘get them out’ particularly well. Amen.
Forward notes: “Braggarts cannot stand in your sight; you hate all those who work wickedness” (verse 5).
“Who do you hate? Seriously. I am not standing in front of you. There is no real fear of being judged. No one else knows the thoughts you are contemplating. So, who do you hate?
“Did someone do something that left you feeling wronged? Are you still sitting in that anger? Is there a long-held grudge between you and a friend? Is there a deep wound caused by a family member that has never healed?
“In Psalm 5, hate is expressed. I suspect the psalms are often misinterpreted as God condoning hatred of people, at least evildoers. But that’s not what’s happening here. These are real prayers, full of raw emotion, much like the ones we may have uttered a time or two.
“These are prayers in which people are actively working out their understanding of God and their own salvation. This kind of praying is a good way to process a feeling like hate. It fosters an authentic and healthy relationship with God and can lead to better relationships with people.”
MOVING FORWARD: “Reread Psalm 5. Now write your own words to express your feelings of hate and anger. Be open to the Spirit’s movement.”
A concluding note: about hate. Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, in their great introductory work, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, have this to say about the matter:
“The word ‘hate’ in the book of Psalms has been commonly misunderstood. While this Hebrew word does in some contexts mean ‘despise,’ it can also mean ‘be unwilling or unable to put up with’ or ‘reject.’ Both are standard definitions in the Hebrew lexicons for this word.” This is entirely consistent of the notion that God is unable to put up with sin or sinful behaviour but is still loving and merciful towards those that do sin.