Redeem Israel, O God

In the second part of Psalm 25, King David lays before us a deeply human picture: a man in distress and loneliness, beset from within and from without. Yet he does not despair; he lifts his gaze, and teaches that precisely when the heart is enlarged by trouble, there, in a sincere turning to the Lord, lies the greatest hope. The whole psalm is an alphabetical acrostic, its verses opening in the order of the Hebrew letters, from aleph to tav.

The verse that seals the psalm, and serves as the central refrain of the song, is a cry of national hope:

"Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles."

After praying over his own troubles, David lifts his eyes to the whole people, in a cry that has accompanied Israel through every generation. Even inside private pain, we are one fabric, asking that the redemption of the one be the redemption of all.