Episode Details

Psalm 142: The Prayer from the Cave

David is in a cave — literally, if the superscription is to be believed — and the psalm reads like it. There is no congregation here, no temple choir, no liturgical grandeur. Just a man, a stone ceiling, and the terrifying sentence: "I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul." It may be the loneliest line in all the Psalms. And yet it is precisely here, in the place where every human support has been stripped away, that David makes his most naked declaration of faith: "Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living." Not in the land of theology or the land of someday, but in the land of the living — this world, this cave, this moment. The psalm ends with a vision of the righteous gathering around him, but that is still future. For now there is only the cry, the cave, and the God who meets us most fully when no one else will.

00:00 A Cry Poured Out in Solitude
01:00 Bring My Soul Out of Prison