NOTES for Psa 13

The psalmist's words that everyone is a liar and no faithful people remain may seem an exaggeration to some. Indeed, if no faithful people remained among the people of God, they would simply cease to exist as such. Is that possible? At first glance, no, but much depends here on what falsehood is and how it is understood. In the psalm the liars are not accidentally contrasted with the poor and the humble (the Synodal Translation calls the poor “beggars” and the humble “poor”): the poor and the humble were names usually given to those who sought the path of righteousness and the fullness of communion with God.

The tradition is associated with the preaching of the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem and with the circle of his disciples, who called themselves the poor, although the matter concerned, of course, not so much their material condition as their spiritual state. The poor recognized themselves as poor insofar as they entrusted themselves completely to God, allowing Him to dispose of their lives.

Everything they had they regarded not as their own property, rightfully belonging to them, but as something given to them by God for temporary use, and nothing more. They also recognized the simple fact, not obvious to everyone, that with regard to what mattered most—righteousness and communion with God—they truly were destitute. Righteousness is not a trait or quality of fallen man; it is his state, and a state that is usually temporary, at least during the earthly stage of the human journey.

Man himself is powerless here: the most he can do is try to remain in a state of righteousness for as long as possible when God grants it to him. A person cannot attain such a state by his own strength; he has neither the means nor the methods: in what matters most, he is destitute. Everything he may possess in this world is useless and therefore worthless from the standpoint of this central concern—a righteous life and communion with God.

This awareness enables a person to perceive both himself and the surrounding world adequately. Without it, the picture of the world is distorted: a person sees neither his true self nor the world as it really is. Falsehood then becomes an integral part of human life. The only question is at what point and to what extent the person himself becomes aware of it.

Once aware of it, everyone faces a choice: one can leave everything as it is and continue living in a world of now more or less conscious falsehood, as most people usually do, or one can enter the path of becoming conscious of one's own life—the path of righteousness and communion with God. Unfortunately, few choose this path—it is the path of a minority that sometimes disappears completely. Then falsehood becomes all-encompassing: everyone is involved in it to one degree or another. This is the situation encountered and described by the author of the psalm.