Psalm 143 Reflection

Psalm 143 is most widely known as being one of the seven Penitential Psalms. As Psalm 143 falls into this grouping, it also means that it is considered a lament of repentance. While there is not an obvious transgression that David, the writer of the Psalm, is begging for repentance for, it is clearly shown through his words that he needs God to intercede in his life and save him from his transgressions and predicaments. Through his imploring of God to save him, David does not lose hope—he still continues to praise God for the goodness he has done and will do. While, by the end of the psalm, the inflection has grown more optimistic, Psalm 143 still contains the vital ingredients of a lament. A lament has five portions, which is clearly demonstrated …show more content…
One of the most obvious forms is chiastic structure, where two ideas are presented and then consequently reworded and expressed in the opposite order. This is found in verses three through nine, where David first mentions the enemy, his spirit, and then God’s hands. The mirror image of this pattern, the second half of the chiastic structure, is found when David mentions his hands, his spirit, and then his enemies. This chiastic structure draws attention to the fact that even as one’s enemies are pursuing them, and their spirit is failing, all they need to do is spread out their hands to see God’s hands at work. However, David was not only focusing on God’s hands at work through this chiastic structure. He was also illustrating that there will be times in man’s life where man feels defeated—where man is being pursued by his enemy until he is bone-weary and his spirit fails, and there is nowhere for man to turn except to God. This idea is also depicted through David’s usage of antithetic parallelism. Verse four could be considered the pivotal point of the psalm, and also contains the strongest usage of antithetic parallelism. For the first time, David exposes how broken he truly is, not once but twice. These two lines build on each other, and allow the reader to realize that not only is his spirit growing faint, but that his heart is also …show more content…
Despite this, there are innumerable other types of poetic devices found in Psalm 143. David chooses every one of his poetic structures carefully, as his intent and ambition in the writing of this poem is to not only catalogue his shortcomings and sins, but also to request that God has mercy on him. He chooses to use three different imagery ridden similes to show his despair and desperate need for God, as he describes himself as a man long dead, thirsting as a parched land, and as despondent as those who go down to the pit. All of these similes highlight the fact that he has many shortcomings and sins, and without God will be dead. While hyperbole could be considered a form of poetic structure found here, especially as David says his spirit fails and he is crushed to the ground, these words may not be hyperbolic in nature but are rather showing David’s heart and the depth of his pain. Therefore, parts of this psalm could be considered a hyperbole, but without speaking to David himself, the reader will never truly know what David was meaning and is left to draw their own conclusions. In fact, this may be exactly what David desired as he was writing Psalm 143, as he wanted the reader to be able to connect with his words, whether they feel that the words are hyperbolic or they feel as if they are trapped exactly how David