Psalm 6: When the Bed Becomes an Altar
The superscription whispers a musical instruction most Western readers pass over: “according to the sheminith,” likely an eighth (low) register or an eight‑string lyre. Archaeology from the Levant shows lyres with multiple strings carved on ivories and reliefs; the psalm is literally scored for the bass line. This is prayer in a minor key.
David asks not to be corrected in divine rage but in fatherly love. The Hebrew pairs are telling: “Rebuke” (tokhicheni) and “discipline” (tesarneni) admit God’s right to train him, but he pleads that it be the rod of a Father, not the gavel of a Judge (compare Hebrews 12:5–6). He confesses he is “languishing”—the word umalal suggests a plant gone limp in drought. His “bones” tremble, and his “soul” trembles; in Hebrew thought the body and inner life are one theater for God’s dealings.
Then the sharpest question in the psalter: “How long, LORD, how long?” (New International Version). Time is the crucible of faith. Delays can feel like denial; yet biblical lament insists that waiting is part of worship. David argues boldly: “Turn… deliver… save me for the sake of your hesed” (covenant love). And he reasons from doxology: in Sheol—the shadowed realm of the dead—praise falls silent. This is not unbelief in resurrection so much as a protest: “I was made to sing your Name among the living; let me live to do it.”
The poem’s middle pictures a night of tears. “I flood my bed”—hyperbole, yes, but also ancient realism. Beds were low mats or wooden frames; at night, when cities stilled and the desert winds rose, anxieties took form. The verb for “dismay” (bahal) appears at the start for the psalmist’s bones, and at the end for his enemies—a literary reversal. The terror that chills his marrow boomerangs outward. So too the triple assurance, “The LORD has heard … The LORD has heard … the LORD accepts” (New International Version), is a liturgical drumbeat—faith learning to keep time with mercy.
Now the unexpected turn. “Away from me, all you who do evil” (New International Version). In Greek the line reads, apochōreite ap’ emou pantes hoi ergazomenoi tēn anomian—words Jesus lifts in Matthew 7:23. The sobbing sufferer’s sentence becomes the Judge’s sentence. In Christ, the Davidic petitioner who cried “How long?” (Mark 14:34; Hebrews 5:7) is the risen Lord who silences evil. Praying Psalm 6 in him means trusting that our nights are already held within his long Friday and bright Sunday.
The church has long called this the first of the seven penitential psalms, recited through Lent and in times of sickness. Augustine heard in the “bed” the conscience; Calvin distinguished fatherly discipline from condemning wrath. Both agree: tears can be sacramental when they carry us to the God whose hesed outlasts our failures.
Practice for the night: ask not to be spared discipline, but to be spared wrath. Argue your case from God’s own character. Make your bed your altar; your tears, your baptism into hope.
Suggested hymn: “Abide with Me.”
Cross-references - Psalm 13:1; Psalm 30:5; Psalm 130 - Hosea 6:1–3 - Matthew 7:23; Mark 14:34 - Hebrews 5:7; Hebrews 12:5–11
Prayer Father of mercies, do not correct me in anger, but teach me in love. Turn to me and turn me to You. In my night, let your hesed be the last word. Through Jesus, who wept and was heard, steady my trembling bones and quiet my soul, that I may rise to praise You among the living. Amen.