“My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O Lord, how long?”
The anguished question of how long before the psalmist's soul experiences restoration expresses the acute sense of time passing while distress continues, suggesting that divine delay in providing relief feels interminable. The question itself constitutes a form of lament that accuses God of tardiness in responding to the supplient's misery. This verse captures the interior experience of repentance: recognition of deserved judgment combined with bewilderment at prolonged distress.
Church Fathers on Psalms 6:3
To the end, in the hymns of the eighth, a psalm to David. 1. “Of the eighth,” seems here obscure. For the rest of this title is more clear. Now it has seemed to some to intimate the day of judgment, that is, the time of the coming of our Lord, when He will come to judge the quick and dead. Which coming, it is believed, is to be, after reckoning the years from Adam, seven thousand years: so as that seven thousand years should pass as seven days, and afterwards that time…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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