Psalms 69:13–18

Psalms 69:13 — "My prayer is to you, Yahweh, in an acceptable time" The phrase "acceptable time" (Hebrew: עֵת רָצוֹן, ʿēt rāṣôn) is not a passive qualifier but a bold theological assertion. The psalmist is not merely hoping God is listening; he is claiming that this moment of crisis is itself the appointed season of divine favor. The word rāṣôn carries the connotation of God's sovereign pleasure and goodwill — the same root used for acceptable sacrifices. By opening his petition this way, the psalmist asserts confidence that God is not indifferent even amid apparent silence. He does not pray to fate or to circumstance — he prays to Yahweh, the covenantal name, stressing that his cry is grounded in relationship, not desperation alone. Paul will later cite this very phrase (2 Cor 6:2, drawing on Isa 49:8) to declare that the age of Christ is the great "acceptable time" — the fullness of divine favor made flesh.

Psalms 69:14 — "Deliver me out of the mire, and don't let me sink" The mire (tît, meaning thick mud or clay) picks up directly from verse 2 ("I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold"), giving this second movement of the psalm an explicit continuity with his opening lament. The image is visceral and particular: someone drowning not in clear water but in mud, where every movement entangles more. The double petition — deliver me and don't let me sink — expresses both positive rescue and the prevention of further descent. Together they speak of complete dependence: the psalmist cannot save himself; he needs both a hand to pull and a ground to stand on.

Psalms 69:15 — "Don't let the flood waters overwhelm me" The waters (mayim, shibboleth, bᵉʾēr) appear here in three forms — flood waters, the deep (mᵉṣûlāh), and the pit — each escalating in intensity and finality. The "pit" (bᵉʾēr) resonates with the Hebrew idiom for Sheol, the realm of the dead. The psalmist is describing a descent that, left uninterrupted, leads to death itself. In the typological reading, these waters foreshadow the overwhelming of Christ in the garden and on the cross — the Catena Aurea and patristic readers including St. Augustine consistently identify the Passion of Christ as the deepest fulfillment of this imagery.

Psalms 69:16 — "Answer me, Yahweh, for your loving kindness is good" The theological heart of the petition. The psalmist does not appeal to his own merit but to God's ḥesed — the great covenant-faithfulness, steadfast love, or "loving kindness" that defines Yahweh's character. The word ṭôb ("good") applied to God's ḥesed is not a superficial compliment; it is a confessional statement: God's love is intrinsically, ontologically good, and therefore it is the proper basis of petition. This mirrors the Catechism's teaching that prayer is fundamentally a response to the prior movement of God's grace (CCC 2560–2561): we cry out because we have already been claimed by a love that precedes us.

Psalms 69:17 — "Don't hide your face from your servant" "Hiding the face" (hastêr pānîm) is one of Scripture's most profound expressions of spiritual desolation — it appears in Moses (Deut 31:17), in Isaiah's Suffering Servant passages, and throughout the Psalter. To call himself "your servant" is not servility but covenantal identity: the psalmist asserts belonging. He has a right, rooted not in achievement but in relationship, to appeal for God's face to be turned toward him. The Church Fathers saw this verse fulfilled in Christ's cry of dereliction (Mt 27:46): the ultimate "hiding of the face" borne so that God's face might shine on all humanity permanently.

Psalms 69:18 — "Draw near to my soul and redeem it" This verse achieves the most intimate register of the entire passage. The cry is not merely for external rescue but for God to draw near (qārab) to the very nepeš — the soul, the whole living self. "Redeem" (gāʾal) is the language of the kinsman-redeemer (gōʾēl): the nearest of kin who steps in to rescue a relative from slavery or death. God is here implored to act as the closest of kin, the one who by nature of covenant love is obligated in love to rescue. This deeply Hebraic concept finds its ultimate expression in the Incarnation — God draws near definitively in the flesh of the Word made man.

Catholic tradition reads Psalm 69 as one of the most explicitly Messianic psalms, cited more often in the New Testament than almost any other. But these verses in particular illuminate a profound Catholic theology of prayer, redemption, and the Incarnation.

St. Augustine, in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, reads Psalm 69 as spoken in the voice of Christ — Christ praying through His mystical body, the Church, and the Church praying through and in Christ. The "acceptable time" of verse 13 becomes, in Augustine's reading, the whole economy of salvation: Christ's prayer on our behalf is permanently before the Father, making every moment of sincere petition an echo of His eternal intercession.

The imagery of God as gōʾēl in verse 18 resonates powerfully with the Catechism's teaching on Redemption. The CCC teaches that the Son of God "took our nature so that he might make man partaker of the divine nature" (CCC 460, drawing on 2 Pet 1:4). The kinsman-redeemer concept anticipates exactly this: God does not redeem from a distance but draws near, assumes our flesh, and from within our condition pulls us free.

Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth, noted that the psalms of lament are not expressions of mere human distress but are the voice of the whole human race crying out to God — a cry that Jesus takes entirely upon Himself and transforms. Psalm 69's imagery of drowning and the hidden face, redeemed by the confidence of ḥesed, models the Catholic conviction that suffering is not meaningless, that the "dark night of the soul" described by St. John of the Cross is itself a pathway into deeper union with the God who drew near in Christ.

The Liturgy of the Hours assigns Psalm 69 to the Office of Readings, recognizing its unique capacity to voice both individual anguish and corporate redemptive hope.

Every Catholic prays through seasons when God seems absent — illness, grief, spiritual dryness, moral failure — moments when the mire of verse 14 feels utterly real. This passage offers a specific, structured way to pray through such seasons rather than away from them.

First, notice that the psalmist does not begin with his suffering in verse 13 — he begins with God's name and the claim of an acceptable time. In practical terms, this means beginning prayer not with an inventory of your problems but with an act of faith that this moment, however dark, is already within God's sovereign attention.

Second, the appeal to ḥesed in verse 16 is a usable template: pray not on the basis of your worthiness but on the basis of God's character. Catholics can invoke this through devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus — the living embodiment of ḥesed made flesh — or through the Divine Mercy chaplet, which explicitly petitions on the basis of God's mercy rather than our merit.

Third, verse 18 invites us to ask concretely for nearness — not just rescue, but intimacy. The sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, are the Church's answer to "draw near to my soul": they are the moments when God, as the divine gōʾēl, closes the distance entirely.