Psalm 30:5
Scripture Explained · Pairs with New Beginnings
“For His anger is but for a moment. His favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
Psalm 30:5 · World English Bible
What it meant then
David wrote this psalm as a song of dedication after coming through actual trouble, the kind he could point back to. A few verses earlier he says God “brought up my soul from Sheol” (verse 3), the place of the dead, so the words here come from someone looking back at one specific night that had genuinely ended by the time he sat down to write.
The picture he reaches for is a domestic one: a guest who stays only the night and is gone by morning, set against a favour that moves in and stays for good. Read plainly, the verse is describing God's own character: anger passes through like an overnight guest, favour is the one that actually lives there for good.
What Spurgeon wrote
Pairs with
This verse is one of the cards in the New Beginnings Scripture Card set, and pairs with the New Beginnings journal.
Spurgeon wrote: “Weeping may endure for a night; but nights are not forever. Even in the dreary winter the day star lights his lamp.”
And of the turn to joy: “When the Sun of Righteousness comes, we wipe our eyes, and joy chases out intruding sorrow. Who would not be joyful that knows Jesus?”
He summed up the whole verse as a reason for worship: “Mourning only lasts to morning. When the night is gone the gloom shall vanish. Short nights and merry days call for the psaltery and harp.”
Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, on Psalm 30