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PSALM 13

1. How long, O jehovah, will you forget me? for ever? How long will you hide your face from me?
2. How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?
3. Look upon me, answer me, O jehovah, my god! Enlighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.
4. Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed over him; lest mine adversaries be glad because I am moved.
5. Yet I have trusted in your mercy; my heart shall be glad in your salvation.
6. I will sing to jehovah, because he has recompensed me.

Verse 1. How long will you hide your face from me?— From what has been said above concerning the face of jehovah or the lord, as denoting the Divine Love, and every good in heaven and the church, it may be known what is signified by hiding or concealing the face, when spoken of jehovah or the lord, namely that it consists in leaving man in his own proprium or selfhood, and thence in evils and falsities which overflow from his proprium. For man, when viewed in himself, is nothing but evil and the false principle thence derived; from which he is withheld by the lord so as to be kept in good; which is effected by elevation out of the proprium. AE 412.

Verse 3. Enlighten my eyes—By eyes is signified the understanding; and the reason is because all sight of the eyes belonging to men and angels is from that source. This appears as a paradox to those who do not know the interior causes of things from which effects are produced in the body, and who therefore believe that the eye sees of itself, the ear bears of itself, the tongues tastes of itself, and the body has sensation of itself; when yet the interior life of man, which is the life of his spirit, which is the life of his understanding and will, or of his thought and affection, is made sensible, by the organs of the body, of what is passing in the world, and thus perceives things naturally. The whole body, with all its faculties of sensation, is merely an instrument of its soul or spirit; which also is the reason why, when the spirit of man is separated from the body, the body has no sensation whatever, whereas the spirit afterwards is equally sensible as before. That the spirit of man alike sees, hears, and has sensation, after its quitting the body, as before in the body, may be seen in the treatise on Heaven and Hell, HH 461, 469. AE 152.

Verse 4. Lest I sleep the sleep of death. Inasmuch as to watch signifies to receive spiritual life, hence to sleep signifies natural life without spiritual, since natural life compared with spiritual is as sleep compared with wakefulness. AE 187.

Verse 2. How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?—A manifest distinction is here made between the soul and the heart, as likewise in other parts of the sacred Scriptures, particularly in the commandment, "You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might; Deut 6:5; Matt 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27. But whereas by the heart is to be understood the seat of the will, or love, and its affections, therefore by the soul is to be understood the seat of the understanding, or thinking principle, and its thoughts; since these two, the will and the understanding, or affection and thought, properly constitute what is called man. It is accordingly said of the soul, How long shall I take counsel in it? because to take counsel has relation more especially to the understanding and thought. For the same reason it is said of the heart, having sorrow in it; because all sorrow, like all joy, is of the heart, or love, sorrow, being nothing else but what is opposed to the love and its affections. Here then our recollection is again excited to that divine and heavenly marriage of love and wisdom, or goodness and truth, the marks and characters of which we have already endeavoured to develop in the book of the Psalms; since a manifest reference is here made to that marriage in the two distinct terms the soul and the heart, the former of which has more relation to the understanding, or wisdom, or truth, whilst the latter has more relation to the will, or the love of good.