Save me, O God, I sink into the depths

Authors:
Themes:
Scriptures:
  • Job 17:6
  • Job 19:13-14
  • Psalms 109:1-15
  • Psalms 32:6
  • Psalms 35:19
  • Psalms 59:3-4
  • Psalms 66:12
  • Psalms 69:36
  • Matthew 27:48
  • Mark 15:36
  • Luke 23:36
  • John 15:25
  • John 19:28-29
  • Acts 1:20
  • Romans 11:9-10
  • Romans 15:3
  • Revelation 13:8
  • Revelation 17:8
Book Number:
  • 69A

Save me, O God, I sink into the depths,
the waters rise;
my eyes are sore in searching for my God
with weary cries;
for no good cause my countless foes combine
to punish me for crimes that were not mine.

2. Let none of those who seek you fall away
because of me;
I am a stranger to my mother’s sons,
my family;
scorned for your sake, consumed for your
great name,
made sport for those who mock me in my shame.

3. Answer, O Lord, come quickly to redeem,
reveal your grace;
in miry depths, when floods engulf my soul,
hide not your face;
lost and alone, in deep disgrace I sink,
they feed me gall, with vinegar to drink.

4. Those who plot harm are captured in the snare
that they have laid;
their lives cut short, their home an empty house,
their fame will fade;
your justice comes, your holy law condemns,
your book of life will not include their names.

5. Gladly I’ll sing to glorify God’s name
in thankful praise;
he hears the poor and needy when they cry
through all their days;
leading them home to settle in his land,
his people saved by his almighty hand.

© Author
Jim Sayers

The Son - His Suffering and Death

Downloadable Items

Would you like access to our downloadable resources?

Unlock downloadable content for this hymn by subscribing today. Enjoy exclusive resources and expand your collection with our additional curated materials!

Subscribe now

If you already have a subscription, log in here to regain access to your items.

Tune

  • Dewar Lane
    Dewar Lane
    Metre:
    • 10 4 10 4 10 10
    Composer:
    • Cousins, Marion

The story behind the hymn

Here is a Psalm confronting us with the classic problem of judgement in OT terms, but where the many NT references should warn against hasty or marginalising assessments (see Mark 15:36 and parallels, John 2:17, Acts 1:20, Romans 15:3). Only the 22nd , 110th and 118th are quoted as much. The writer has been described as vulnerable, sensitive, and up to his neck in trouble; his prayer, plaintive, insistent, and a deeply moving testimony to human suffering, specially relevant to Good Friday. The first version included was written for the book by Jim Sayers at Kesgrave in summer 1998, after Timothy Dudley-Smith (see notes to 69B) said that he ‘felt it impossible to render the whole Psalm’. Jim Sayers, too, says ‘I have not rendered the whole Psalm, but drawn out those parts that refer clearly to the cross’; hence the detail of the 3rd stz and the implied allusion to Judas in the 4th. His version is first published here. From the same village which has become a suburb of Ipswich comes DEWAR LANE composed by Marion Cousins. As the organist at Kesgrave Baptist Church where the author is pastor, she wrote the tune in late 1998 in the week following his request for a new one in this comparatively rare metre, naming it from the road where the manse is situated among other new homes. The Psalm was first sung at the church on Good Friday (April 2) 1999.

A look at the author

Sayers, James (Jim) David

b Epsom, Surrey 1966. Ashcombe Sch Dorking, Univ Coll of Wales, Aberystwyth (LL.B) and Edinburgh Theological Seminary (DipTh, M.Th). After two and a half years as assistant to Brian Edwards at Hook Evangelical Ch (FIEC), Surbiton, he became Pastor of Kesgrave Grace Baptist Ch, Ipswich, Suffolk, from 1995. Then in 2009 he moved to Abingdon to become Communications Director of Grace Baptist Mission. In 2020 he moved to Didcot to lead a church-plant, Grace Church Didcot. He chaired the team selecting versions of the 150 Psalms for Praise! He became a trustee of Praise Trust in 2016, and chairman in 2018.

He has 10 published texts, as here, of which the first he wrote (1994) was based on Ps 30. Nos.2B, 30A, 39, 59, 69A, 71, 86, 719, 1013, 1249. He also wrote the revised version of O Holy Night CP47