[aron]

Psalm 6

6 I am worn out from my groaning.
All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.

7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

8 Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the Lord has heard my weeping.

9 The Lord has heard my cry for mercy;
the Lord accepts my prayer.

10 All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish;
they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.

It occurred to me that the righteous and holy God doesn't listen to the cries of the unrighteous. Their tears are in vain. Hebrews 12:17 says, "Afterward, as you know, when [Esau] wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done." The tears of the fallen can't change God's righteous judgment. 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 1:6 tell of what happened to the angels who sinned. These epistles seem dependent upon the Book of Enoch's description of how the fallen angels of Genesis 6 tried to extricate themselves from punishment, but were denied.

On the other hand, the tears of the righteous avail, before God's throne. Jesus wept not for His sins, but for ours. And the Father listened. So the tears of the psalmist are of themselves vain, but as a preface of the coming Christ they display God's salvation in His Son Jesus, the High Priest of Heaven who intervenes on our behalf.

Peter went outside and wept bitterly (Luke 26:62), which was of itself vain. Only Jesus' intercession - "Peter, I have prayed for you" (Luke 22:32) - could ultimately save him from the darkness of rejection. So when the writer of Hebrews said, (5:7) "Christ, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared," I think that this "strong crying and tears" was not only for Himself, but for the deliverance of Israel and even all humankind. The NT record continually stresses the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as God's vindication of Jesus' obedient human life, and His Father's designation as the Son of God in power (Rom 1:4), and that this resurrection becomes the hope of all humanity, to be likewise saved from death by faith in this One.

Yes, Jesus cried strongly, and the Father heard His cries. Similarly, Psalm 6:9 says, "Jehovah has heard my supplication; Jehovah receives my prayer". Yet in covering Psalm 6 WL merely stressed the inadequacy of David's repentance. Nothing here, to WL, indicated the coming Christ. The Epistle to the Hebrews clearly says that Jesus' cries were heard, and God saved Him from death. The psalmists' strong cries and desire to be saved from death, and the exultation and hope of the same, were found by the indifferent RecV footnote expositor to be absent of any connection. I find this strange.