Psalms 4:6 · World English Bible
Psalms 4:6 Meaning Many Say
Many say, “Who will show us any good?” Yahweh, let the light of your face shine on us.
What does Psalms 4:6 mean?
The many are restless and hungry, going from door to door asking who has something good to give them, and their asking never ends because no single thing satisfies it. Their fault is not wanting good; it is looking for it in a crowd of small sources that keep running dry.
From the Sufism reading below.
Psalms 4:6 through 2 lenses
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
Sufism
Self-Help
SUFISM
Sufism
The many are restless and hungry, going from door to door asking who has something good to give them, and their asking never ends because no single thing satisfies it. Their fault is not wanting good; it is looking for it in a crowd of small sources that keep running dry.
One voice breaks from the crowd and asks differently, not for a thing but for a face to turn toward it. Every good the others chase was only a stray beam; here a person turns straight to where the light is coming from. A room lit by many candles still longs for morning. When the true light falls on the heart, the endless searching quiets, because what it wanted was never a possession but a presence.
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SELF-HELP
Self-Help
Asking vaguely for something better keeps a person scanning forever; asking for one specific thing gives the mind somewhere to arrive.
A search for improvement in general has no target, so it sweeps the whole horizon and returns empty, and every empty return teaches a person that nothing is coming for them. That conclusion sets the mood, the mood decides what gets attempted, and a crowd can stand together in one field repeating an unanswerable request and call the result the way things are.
The psalmist aims at a face. Asking Yahweh for his own presence rather than for relief in the abstract gives the request an address, and a request with an address can be answered while the trouble it was asked from is still going on.
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Sufism lens
Live Psalms 4:6 today
- When you catch yourself reaching for your phone with no reason, put it down and sit with the restless feeling for thirty seconds instead of feeding it. That feeling is the one asking a much bigger question.
- Instead of asking someone what they can do for you today, give them your full attention for five minutes with nothing on the table. Presence is the thing you have both been hunting in smaller forms.
- On the evening when nothing is enough, when the scroll and the snack and the next episode all come up short, turn the lights down and say plainly that what you want is not a thing. Then stay there a little while without fixing it.
How many small sources have I gone back to this week hoping one of them would finally be the real thing?
The same truth in other traditions
Dhammapada 186
A shower of gold coins would not satisfy a craving. Wanting of that kind has a wide mouth and little taste, and satisfaction has to come from somewhere other than more.
Katha Upanishad
The pleasant and the good both arrive and ask to be chosen. Most people take the pleasant thing in front of them, and the few who choose the real one stop being pulled from door to door.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
Stop looking around for the good as though someone else were holding it. Dig where you stand, because the spring you keep searching for is inside you and will keep rising if you clear it.
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