Psalms 130
Psalm 130 carries the heading A Song of degrees - one of the fifteen short psalms (120-134) sung by pilgrims on the long climb up to Jerusalem. But it has a second life as well. For centuries it has been known by the first two words of its old Latin translation, De Profundis - “out of the depths” - and counted among the seven psalms the church has long prayed as songs of repentance. It is short, only eight verses, yet it travels an enormous distance: it begins at the lowest point a human being can reach and ends in one of the widest hopes in all of Scripture.3
The opening is a cry from the bottom: Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications (vv. 1-2). These are not the depths of the sea or of physical danger; the rest of the psalm makes plain that they are the depths of guilt - the place where the weight of sin settles and despair begins to feel reasonable. From there the psalmist asks the question that should stop every mouth: If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? (v. 3). If God kept account of every failure, no one could remain standing before Him. And then comes the hinge of the whole song, the word that changes everything that has been said: But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared (v. 4). Not a ledger of debts - forgiveness. And the result of that forgiveness is not that God is taken lightly, but that He is held in deeper awe than terror could ever produce.1
From there the psalm settles into the long patience of faith. I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning (vv. 5-6). The waiting is not anxious; it is the certainty of a night-watchman who knows beyond doubt that the dawn is coming. And the psalm ends by turning outward, handing the same hope to the whole people: Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities (vv. 7-8). The New Testament will hear in that promise the voice of the One whose very name means rescue - he shall save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21) - the forgiveness of this psalm given, at last, a face.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 130:1-4 · A Song of degreesOut of the Depths
1Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. 2Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. 3If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? 4But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
The psalm does not open with an excuse or an explanation. It opens with a location: Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. The pilgrim songs are the music of an upward climb toward Jerusalem, yet this one begins by naming a downward place - the depths. In Hebrew the word pictures deep waters, the place where a drowning person sinks beyond reach. But the psalm is not about a flood; it is about the soul. These are the depths where guilt collects, where the weight of what we have done settles and presses, where despair starts to feel like simple realism. From the bottom of that, the psalmist does the one thing the drowning can still do: he cries out. He does not wait until he has climbed back up to some respectable level before he prays; he prays out of the depths, while he is still in them. That is the first thing this psalm teaches about God - that He can be reached from the very bottom, that no place is too far down for an honest cry to carry. The depths are not a disqualification from prayer. For this psalmist, they are where prayer begins.3
After the cry comes the question, and it is one that ought to stop every mouth: If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? (v. 3). To mark iniquities is to keep account of them, to write each one down and hold the record - the language of a ledger, a tally that nothing falls off. And the psalmist follows the thought to its honest end. If God kept that account, weighing every failure and forgetting none, who shall stand? The expected answer is devastating and immediate: no one. Not the psalmist, not the upright, not the priest, not the king - no one could remain on their feet before a God who marked every sin. This is the moment the psalm refuses to flinch. It does not minimise the problem or plead that the depths are not really so deep. It grants the full weight of the truth: measured by a perfect account, every person is undone. And it is precisely by telling that truth without softening it that the psalm sets up the word that comes next - the one word that changes everything.
Everything the psalm has built - the depths, the marked iniquities, the impossibility of standing - turns on a single word: But. But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared (v. 4). All that came before is true, and it remains true; the depths are real, the account is real, the inability to stand is real. And alongside all of it stands another reality, equally true and infinitely greater: with God there is forgiveness. Notice where the forgiveness is located - it is with thee, with God, kept ready in His own character, not something the sinner must somehow generate. The psalm is not saying iniquity does not matter; it has just spent a verse insisting that it does. It is saying that the God who could justly keep the ledger has chosen instead to forgive. And then the last clause turns in a direction we would never expect: that thou mayest be feared. We might assume forgiveness would make God easy to take for granted - if He pardons, why hold Him in awe? The psalm says the opposite. It is precisely the God who forgives who is truly feared - not with the cringing dread of a debtor before a creditor, but with the deep, grateful reverence of one who has been pardoned and knows exactly what that pardon cost the heart of the One who gave it. Terror keeps its distance; forgiveness draws near, and the nearness produces an awe that mere fear never could.1
Psalm 130:5-8I Wait for the LORD
5I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. 6My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. 7Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. 8And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
With the cry answered, the psalm changes posture. The urgency of the depths gives way to something quieter and steadier: I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope (v. 5). The cry was a single, desperate reach; the waiting is patient, settled, sustained. And notice what the waiting rests on - not a feeling, not a guarantee of when relief will come, but a word: in his word do I hope. The psalmist has heard that there is forgiveness with God, and he takes God at His word, anchoring his expectation to what God has said rather than to what he can presently see or feel. This is the difference between hope and mere optimism. Optimism guesses that things will improve; hope leans the whole self on a promise that has been spoken. The threefold repetition - I wait… my soul doth wait… do I hope - lets us feel the act stretching out over time, the soul holding its position through the long interval between the cry and the answer. To wait in his word is not passivity; it is the active, costly trust of one who keeps standing on what God has promised even while the depths are still cold.
The psalm now turns outward, from the single soul to the whole people: Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption (v. 7). What one person discovered in the depths is handed to everyone - the same hope, on the same ground. And the ground is named in two great words. First, mercy - the steadfast, covenant-keeping love that does not let go. Then, plenteous redemption. The word plenteous matters: the redemption with God is not a meagre, last-minute reprieve, carefully rationed, but an abundance, more than enough for the need. Set this verse beside verse 3, where the marked iniquities would crush anyone who stood alone, and feel the contrast. The iniquities are many; the redemption is more. The account against the sinner is heavy; the mercy is heavier still. This is why the psalmist can summon all Israel to hope - not because the people are better than their guilt, but because what is with the LORD is greater than what is against them. The depths are deep, but the redemption is plenteous, and it runs deeper.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 130 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for selichah (v. 4, “forgiveness,” a noun used in the Hebrew Bible only of God), for peduth (v. 7, “redemption,” the ransom-price word), and for the depths (maamaqim, v. 1) out of which the whole psalm cries.
- Psalm 130 ↔ Matthew 1 · Mark 2 · Romans 8 · Ephesians 1Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Psalm 130 to the New Testament - the forgiveness of sins that belongs to God alone, spoken by the Son of man (Mark 2:7-10); the iniquities that can no longer be charged against the redeemed (Rom. 8:33); and the plenteous redemption (v. 7) fulfilled in the One who came to save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21; Eph. 1:7).
- Psalm 130 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 130 - the metaphor of the “depths” in verse 1, the legal sense of God “marking” or keeping account of iniquities in verse 3, the alternating divine names (LORD and Lord), and the comprehensive force of all his iniquities in the closing line.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Out of the Depths
- Mark 2:5-10thy sins be forgiven thee... who can forgive sins but God only?... the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.The forgiveness the psalm says is “with thee” (v. 4) spoken by the One who proved He could speak it.
- Romans 8:33-34Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.The terror of verse 3 - iniquities marked - undone for those who are His; no charge can stand.
- Exodus 34:6-7The LORD God, merciful and gracious... forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.The self-revelation behind verse 4’s “forgiveness” (selichah) - pardon held in God’s own character.
- Psalm 32:1Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.Another of the penitential psalms - the blessedness of the one who has found the forgiveness of verse 4.
I Wait for the LORD
- Matthew 1:21thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.The redemption “from all his iniquities” (v. 8) given a name - the name that means rescue from sin.
- Ephesians 1:7In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.The “plenteous redemption” of verse 7 - the ransom and the price it was paid at.
- Titus 2:14Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity.Verse 8’s promise echoed almost word for word - redeemed from all iniquity, not a part of it.
- Luke 1:78-79the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness.The morning the soul watched for (v. 6) - daybreak risen on those in the shadow of death.
- Psalm 103:3-4Who forgiveth all thine iniquities... who redeemeth thy life from destruction.The same pairing as verses 4 and 8 - forgiveness of all iniquity joined to redemption of the life.