Psalm 143:6 Soul Thirst

Psalm 143:6 I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.

A psalm of David Psalm 143 is brief and pretty much to the point. As so often, there is the call to the LORD to hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy. The argument is based on God's faithfulness and righteousness. David wants to avoid a temporal judgment though recognising that no-one living is righteous before God. His enemy pursues him, crushes him to the ground, makes him dwell in darkness like those long dead. This is why his spirit grows faint and his heart ... is dismayed. But the memory of God's past works (5) and his own great need prompt him to seek God. He wants a speedy answer from the one to whom he lifts his soul. The argument is that God should Rescue me from my enemies, O LORD, for I hide myself in you (9) and For your name's sake, O LORD, preserve my life; in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble (11). Because God is his God, he wants to be led on level ground and for his enemies to be silenced and destroyed. If we focus finally on verse 6 we see David there spreading out his hands to God in prayer. His soul thirsts for God like a parched land. In a desert where there has been no rain for some time the land itself is, as it were, thirsty. Whether David was seeing this phenomenon as he wrote we do not know but it pcitures well his own desperate need of the refreshment that God alone can give. Anyone who has known that must recognise that God alone can deal with such thirst. No doubt this verse informed Jesus when he spoke to the woman at the well in John 4. Christ is the living water that once drunk means no more thirst.