Pour out Your Hearts
In the last part of psalm 62, the psalmist exhorts the people (probably referring to the congregation as the LXX implies) to pour out their hearts before God:
But what does it mean to say that we should pour out our hearts before God?
The idea of “pouring” something before the Lord is used in similar fashion in psalm 42:4 (these things I remember, and I pour out my soul within me) or the superscription of psalm 102:1 (a prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before Yahweh). But one passage in particular seems to make even more sense of this expression, 1 Samuel 1:14-17:
Several things seem to be happening here. First Eli accuses Hannah of drunkenness and emphatically tells her to put away her wine from her. Hannah then answers that drunkenness is not her problem but that she is simply a woman “troubled in spirit.” Let me paraphrase her answer:
“Oh no, my lord! I haven’t been pouring wine or strong drink into my cup. I am a woman troubled in spirit; I am pouring out my soul before Yahweh.”
In this paraphrase I just made explicit what seems to be implicit in what Hannah says. She pours out her soul before the Lord because she is troubled in spirit. She can’t have children and she feels oppressed. But we know what she meant by pouring out her soul because a few verses back the narrator let us eavesdrop on her prayer:
She was distressed, she wept and she made a vow. For Hannah, pouring out her soul before Yahweh meant expressing her affliction in her time of suffering. But I think we need to balance this aspect of the expression with the fact that most often anger is “poured out” before God as well as complaints (see again 102:1). John Goldingay remarks, “the psalm is encouraging the community to an act of faith that pours out its resentment, grief, and fear before God, the act that psalms are often modeling.”
Whether the psalmist is specifically talking about suffering, complaint or anger as the object of “pouring out,” the imagery that the story of Hannah conjures up is still very strong. The same way that a drink can be poured out onto the ground splashing in every direction until the cup is empty, my pouring out my soul before the Lord should have the same affect. When we put together this aspect of pouring out our hearts before God and letting our souls be silent in Him, we are inevitably driven to the conclusion that trusting God is more than just an abstract feeling, it is an emotional roller coaster ride whose end is better than its beginning.
Tags: John Goldingay, Psalms
