Psalm 130:1

The word for depths, maʻămâq, is a plural noun from the root ʻâmaq, “to be deep”. It pictures deep places, such as a pit with no way up its sides or a sea that swallows a man up. The psalmist uses it of his own state. He is sunk in trouble, overwhelmed and helpless, and the only way out is the help of God.

Israel knew many such depths: famine, plague, oppression by foreign powers, personal disaster, and heaviest of all, the crushing weight of sin, whether one man’s or the whole nation’s. The word itself names no single cause, and so it can hold all of them.

“Have I cried unto thee” uses qârâʼ, the verb for calling out to someone. Here the psalmist is the one who calls, and from the depths his call is an urgent cry for help, made directly and personally to God.

He calls God by name: “O LORD”, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name that the KJV prints in capitals. This is the God who made himself known to Israel, bound himself to them by covenant, and showed himself faithful, merciful and steadfast in love. His name speaks of his self-existence and his eternal being, and that gives the psalmist firm ground to stand on while everything else gives way. Israel had learned from the Exodus that the LORD hears the groaning of his people in bondage and acts for them, and every cry to him by name rests on that history.

So the cry itself carries hope. A man who calls to God from the bottom of the pit still expects God to hear him, and the trust that is only implied in verse 1 becomes plain in verse 4. Scripture is full of such cries and of God’s answers to them. David says, “In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple” (Psalm 18:6). Jonah says, “out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice” (Jonah 2:2). In Lamentations the prophet remembers, “I called upon thy name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry” (Lamentations 3:55–57).

Verse 2 turns the cry into a request, and each of its words adds something.

“Lord” here is ʼĂdônây, a form of the word for master or lord, used as a name for God, and the KJV prints it in small letters to set it apart from the LORD of verse 1. It honours God’s supreme authority over the one who prays, and it also speaks of the bond between a master and those who belong to him. The psalmist comes with reverence to the one who has every right over him.

“Hear” is shâmaʻ, the ordinary verb for hearing, which also carries the sense of listening, taking to heart, and obeying or responding. When it is asked of God, it asks him to take up the prayer, understand it and act on it.

“Let thine ears be attentive” uses qashshâb, “attentive”, from a root meaning to hearken. It describes close listening, the ear bent toward the one who speaks. The second half of the verse says again what the first half said and sharpens it, moving from “hear” to “be attentive”, the way Hebrew poetry often deepens a line by restating it.

“Supplications” is tachănûwn, from ḥânan, to be gracious or to show favour. A supplication is a plea for grace and mercy from someone who depends wholly on God’s kindness and brings no claim of his own. Daniel prays in the same spirit: “we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousnesses, but for thy great mercies” (Daniel 9:18).

The word “voice”, qôwl, appears twice in this verse: “hear my voice” and “the voice of my supplications”. The repetition keeps attention on the prayer itself, spoken aloud and personally, and on the psalmist’s longing that God would take up these very words and the heart behind them.

The heading “A Song of degrees”, or “A Song of Ascents” in most modern translations, places Psalm 130 among the fifteen Songs of Ascents, Psalms 120 to 134. These psalms were most likely sung by pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for the three yearly feasts of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles, and some hold that the Levites sang them going up the steps of the Temple. The going up was literal, since Jerusalem stands on a hill, and it was also a going up into God’s presence at the Temple. The Songs of Ascents share themes of journeying, longing for God’s presence, the fellowship of his people, and trust in his protection. So this intensely personal cry was also one the whole company of worshippers took on their lips together.

The psalm is often known by the first words of its Latin title, De Profundis, “Out of the depths”. It is also one of the seven Penitential Psalms, Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143, which early Christian tradition grouped together for their confession of sin, repentance, and earnest pleas for God’s mercy and forgiveness. The best known of them is David’s prayer of repentance in Psalm 51.

Jesus went down into the deepest depths of all. He was without sin, and he carried the sin of humanity with all its crushing weight on the cross, where he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). That cry echoes the psalmist’s, and it was the cry of one who was perfectly obedient and who suffered in our place. He is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and through his death and resurrection he overcame sin, death and hell and won the forgiveness and redemption the psalmist longed for.

Jesus also prayed the prayer of verse 2. In the days of his flesh he offered up prayers and supplications “with strong crying and tears” (Hebrews 5:7), most deeply in Gethsemane, when he fell on his face and prayed to his Father (Matthew 26:39).

Because of him, our own voice reaches the Father’s attentive ears. He ever lives to make intercession for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25), so whoever cries out of the depths today cries to a risen Saviour who has known the worst of human anguish. His atoning work took away the barrier of sin that silences the penitent, and we may come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). The Spirit helps us when we pray, interceding for us according to the will of God (Romans 8:26–27). And Paul names depth itself among the things that cannot part God’s people from him: “Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).

These two verses give us words for the lowest moments of life, whether the weight comes from suffering, fear or our own sin. They show that the right place to take such trouble is straight to the LORD, honestly and without first trying to climb out alone, and that the one who prays from the depths comes as a beggar for grace, asking for mercy that he has done nothing to earn.

They also show who God is. He is the LORD who bound himself to his people and heard them in Egypt, the Lord who has every right over us and still bends his ear to the voice of our supplications. The same psalm goes on to say that with him is forgiveness, and in Christ that forgiveness has been won. A cry out of the depths is a cry that God hears.