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Psalm 6 is a psalm for the dark night of the soul. Here we find ourselves in the company of a suffering king. David is not merely inconvenienced, disappointed, or temporarily discouraged. He is under the heavy hand of God’s fatherly discipline, surrounded by fierce enemies, and conscious of his need for deliverance. Even worse, David knows that his own sin is, at least in part, the cause of his affliction. Such a cost is unbearable. He is languishing. His bones ache. His soul is sorely vexed. He is weary with groaning. All night he makes his bed swim and waters his couch with tears.
But David’s deep sorrow is not faithless despair. His cry rises to the Lord in the form of a plea not to be rebuked in God’s anger. David does not ask to be spared the rod altogether. He asks to be spared the rod in wrath. If the Lord must chasten him, David pleads that He would chasten him as a loving Father chastens an erring son.
This is the great comfort of divine discipline. The hand that wounds is the hand of our Father. The Lord’s chastening is not enjoyable. Hebrews tells us plainly that no chastening seems pleasant in the moment. Yet afterward it yields “the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). The absence of discipline would be far more dreadful, for “the Lord disciplines the one he loves” (v. 6).
The dark night of the soul is no strange visitor to God’s people. David knew it. John Bunyan knew it. Charles Spurgeon knew it. William Cowper knew it. Paul knew it. God’s saints have often learned, through tears, that painful afflictions are ordered by divine wisdom to drive them out of themselves and into Christ. The waves that rise are to cast us against the Rock of Ages. These are David’s waves.
And here we must see something of Christ’s agony in David’s agony. In Gethsemane, our Lord said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matt. 26:38). He watered the garden with tears of anguish. We can almost hear the words of David on His lips: “I am weary with my moaning” (Ps. 6:6). Yet the Lord Jesus did not suffer chastening for His own sins (2 Cor. 5:21). He suffered vicarious chastisement for ours. The Father afflicted His beloved Son in holy anger so that those united to Christ would never face His wrath as enemies. The Holy Spirit testifies to our spirits that the Lord’s discipline comes not out of wrath but for our salvation.
Therefore, even when the Lord’s discipline is heavy upon us, we may run toward the One who administers it. This is the hope of parents, isn’t it? That the child would learn to run back into the arms of the father who has administered the discipline. In the midst of our affliction, we must run back into the Father’s arms as David does. We may pray through tears. We may plead for His mercy. We may say with David, “Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love” (Ps. 6:4).