Psalm 13:1-6 vs. “Psalm 13”

Shane & Shane · checked 2026-08-02

What we checked

PassagePsalm 13:1-6 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asparaphrase

Categoryadditions / omissions

AlbumPsalms (released independently in 2000, re-released 2002) · 2002

Words addressed toGod, person unspecified

Teaching or experiencescripture set to music

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful

✗Translation named

✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

The how-long questions are sung as questions, to God, in the psalm's own second person. A song that leads worship into honest lament is scarce, and this one leads with it
The three movements arrive in the psalm's order: questions, then petition, then trust, with the turn where the psalm puts it
Verses 3 and 4 come through with their stakes intact: light for the eyes, the sleep of death, the enemy's boast, the foes' rejoicing. The dark middle is not trimmed
The added chorus is addressed to God and asks for nothing the psalter does not command elsewhere; it is response, not correction
The Worship Initiative pairs its version of the song with the full text of Psalm 13, so the psalm is one click from the chorus

⚠ Cautions

The chorus is the one part of the song that is not in Psalm 13. The vow to wait is sung more than any line of the psalm, and nothing in the song distinguishes it from the text
The fourth how-long question, the enemy's dominance in verse 2, is not sung as a question. The enemy survives in the verse 3 and 4 material, the question does not
The psalm is two thirds question and petition; the song's repetition sits in the added vow and the trust verses, so what gets memorized is weighted toward the response
No translation is named on the album or the charts. The verses track the NIV's renderings where translations differ, but there is no stated text to check the song against
The second verse adds a first-person wish not to fall, built from verse 4's picture but spoken by the singer rather than about the foes

Verse Proof

Psalm 13:1-6

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I wrestle in my soul, with sorrow in my heart each day? How long will my enemy dominate me? Consider me and respond, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death, lest my enemy say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes rejoice when I fall. But I have trusted in Your loving devotion; my heart will rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for He has been good to me.”

Psalm 13 is a psalm of David, addressed to the choirmaster, and it is the lament form in miniature: the whole psalm is six verses, and this proof covers all of them. It opens with four how-long questions that widen as they go, from God's apparent forgetting, to His hidden face, to the psalmist's daily sorrow, to the enemy's dominance. Then one petition with three stakes attached: light for the eyes, or else the sleep of death, the enemy's boast, and the foes' celebration. Then the turn, and it is abrupt. Nothing happens between verse 4 and verse 5. No rescue is narrated and no answer arrives; the psalm simply pivots on the word But, from four questions to settled trust, rejoicing, and a resolve to sing. Two thirds of the psalm is question and petition. The trust is two verses.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song walks the psalm's three movements in the psalm's own order. The first verse sings the opening questions as questions, addressed to the Lord: the fear of being forgotten forever, the hidden face, the daily wrestling and sorrow. Printed charts of the song show three of the psalm's four how-long questions there; the fourth, the enemy question of verse 2, is not sung as a question, though the enemy arrives in the next verse. The second verse takes verses 3 and 4 nearly whole: the plea to be looked on and answered, light for the eyes, the sleep of death, the enemy claiming victory, the foes rejoicing at a fall, and it adds one line of the singer's own, a wish not to fall. A later section takes verses 5 and 6: trust in God's covenant love, the heart rejoicing in His salvation, and singing to the Lord because He has been good. Between and after all of this runs the chorus, and the chorus is not from Psalm 13. It is a short vow, addressed to God, that the singer will wait on Him, repeated several times each pass, and the printed lyric ends on a final waiting line. The verses' wording sits closest to the NIV's renderings, including its petition phrasing in verse 3 and “unfailing love” where the BSB above reads loving devotion.

Three shifts are checkable. First, the addition that carries the song: Psalm 13 never uses the word wait. The experience of waiting is everywhere in its questions, and the psalter commands waiting on the LORD elsewhere, Psalm 27:14 among others, but this psalm does not say it. The song's chorus says it over and over, and nothing in the song marks the line as the song's own rather than the psalm's. Second, one of the four how-long questions, the enemy's dominance in verse 2, is not sung as a question. The enemy still appears, boasting and rejoicing, in the material from verses 3 and 4, so the content survives while the fourth question does not. Third, weight. The psalm spends four of its six verses asking and pleading before the turn. The song covers all three movements, and then gives its repetition to the added waiting vow and returns to it after the trust verses, so the proportions a singer memorizes are not the proportions the psalm wrote. On wording, no translation is named anywhere, and the verses track the NIV's phrasing where translations differ.

~ Faithful & Labeled: The song sets Psalm 13's three movements in the psalm's own order. It keeps the how-long questions as questions. But its chorus, the song's most-repeated line, is a vow of waiting found nowhere in Psalm 13. One of the psalm's four questions is not sung. No translation is named.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Psalm 13 asks how long four times and never says wait. The song's most-sung line is a vow to wait.

Why it matters

Psalm 13 is the rare psalm a congregation can sing while things are still bad. Its shape is the permission: four questions, one petition, and only then trust, with nothing in between to explain the change. Repetition is how a song teaches shape, and this song's repetition belongs mostly to a response the psalm never states. Waiting is a thoroughly biblical answer to how long. It is still worth knowing which words are David's and which are the song's, because the sung version reaches its settled posture far more often than the psalm does.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

Two things get planted here, and both are worth having. The first is the psalm's questions, in something close to their own words, sung to God as questions. A person who has this song by heart owns proof that scripture itself asks how long, four verses of it before any resolution, and that is a rare and useful thing to carry into a bad month. The second is the refrain, and the refrain is the song's own: a settled vow to wait on God, returned to again and again until it becomes the song's home key. Count who the lines are about and the mix is the psalm's own, God asked, God trusted, the singer's sorrow and the singer's vow, which is why the tag reads mixed. What the loop plants most deeply is the response, reached sooner and held longer than the psalm holds it. So read Psalm 13 through on the days you sing this, and let the questions keep their full length, including the one about the enemy that the song leaves out. The psalm earns its last two verses by not hurrying to them.

Helpful comparison

Put the psalm and the song side by side and count. Psalm 13 gives four verses to lament and petition and two to trust; the questions are the psalm's bulk, and the trust is its destination. The song covers every movement, in order, and then does what songs do: it chooses a chorus. The chorus it chooses is not the questions, and not the trust verses either, but a new vow of waiting, sung between every section and again at the end. That vow is the psalm's implied posture made explicit, and the psalter says it outright elsewhere, so nothing false has been added. But the psalm's boldest feature, the fact that most of its words are complaint spoken straight at God, becomes in the song a station the singer passes through on the way back to the refrain. A documented walk-through of the song reads it in exactly these three movements, sorrow, prayer, rejoicing, which is the psalm's map. The song keeps the map and redraws the mileage.

Sources

Shane & Shane: Psalms 13, on the duo's own channel · (the official performance video embedded here; oEmbed confirms the uploader is the duo's own channel, Shane and Shane, @ShaneAndShaneMusic)
Wikipedia — Psalms (Shane & Shane album) · (their first studio album: released independently in 2000, re-released 4 June 2002 by Inpop Records, self-produced; "Psalm 13" is track 5, 3:49)
WorshipChords — Psalm 13, Shane & Shane · (the printed section order: how-long verse, waiting chorus, petition verse, trust bridge, waiting ending; the chorus vow and closing waiting tag are not Psalm 13 lines)
Chordie/ChristianGuitar — Psalm 13, Shane Barnard · (chart showing three of the four how-long questions sung as questions; verses 3-4 present with all five elements plus an added first-person line about not falling; bridge tracks verses 5-6)
eLyrics — Psalm 13, Shane Barnard · (the printed lyric's running order: the waiting line returns between sections, repeats through the close, and ends the song)
The Worship Initiative — Psalm 13 (Lite), scripture pairing · (the publisher's page pairs the song with the full text of Psalm 13)
Michelle Nezat — Podcast #155: "Psalm 13" by Shane & Shane · (a documented walk-through of the song organized as Sorrow, Psalm 13:1-2; Prayer, Psalm 13:3-4; Rejoicing, Psalm 13:5-6; no translation named)
BibleGateway — Psalm 13, NIV · (the NIV's renderings the song's verses track where translations differ: the look-and-answer petition in verse 3 and “unfailing love” in verse 5, where the BSB reads loving devotion, the KJV mercy, and the WEB loving kindness)
BibleRef — Psalm 13:1 · (a psalm of David; lament; the movement from the how-long questions to answering fear with faith in verses 5-6)

Corrections

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