Mugs of Tears

One of the chronic American maladies is the swell of emotive sobs that follow major national events which haven’t gone one’s way. Gone are the days where your candidate lost an election and you get to work beating him next time. Now, you cry about it. Literally. 

Even worse for us today, the reproaches are televised. Bad enough are the TV anchors breaking down on live television; worse are the Tik-Tok-ers who so strongly feel the urge to scream that they set up a selfie camera to capture their rage, before uncorking it. What good do any of these tears do? They’re often performative, rather than heartfelt or actually meaningful.

And for the opposite political side, these are derisively labeled “liberal tears”—the tears of those so detached from reality that they’ll moan and cry when things are actually going quite well. One Conservative media company sells “Leftist Tears” coffee mugs. “Drinking the tears” of one’s opponents is a way to say, “I don’t care, and I revel in their misery!” (To be fair, this is a trope not monopolized by one group: see the various mugs sold on Amazon, proudly holding “Tears of my Students,” etc.) But today, buckets of tears, mugs of tears, tumblers of tears: these are for smiling and tasting the sweet, sweet victory over your enemies.

On Election Day this year, I found myself reading and praying through Psalm 56 many times. It’s a psalm composed by David “when the Philistines seized him in Gath,” and calls on God to graciously hear him and save him from his enemies. What better words to pray in times of uncertainty, than “In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (Ps 56:4)

But I was struck to rediscover some language in this psalm that I’d never seen in this light before. While today mugs are for the tears of our opponents, in verse 8 David calls on the Lord, saying, “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” 

God keeps “bottles of tears.” Not to sip with a chuckle at our misfortune. Not those of His enemies, but those of His People who call on Him in distress. What can we learn from this inspired picture?

For starters, the Hebrew verse uses two wordplays that are missed in the ESV. A more literarily-conscious translation would put verse 8 this way: “My trials you have recorded; you put my tears in your vial, are they not in your record?”

There are three basic clauses in the verse: the first about the keeping-count of David’s tossings, the second about his tears in God’s bottle, the third about those same tears in God’s book. 

The wordplay comes from two words in the first clause: “tossings” (or better, “wanderings,” nod in Hebrew) and “you have counted” (or “made a written record of,” saphartah in Hebrew). Then these same two words, or echoes of them, are repeated: “tossings” (nod in Hebrew) in the second clause, and “counted” (siphrah in Hebrew) in the third. Thus, my translation: “My trials (nod) you have recorded (saphartah); you put my tears in your vial (nod), are they not in your record (siphrah)?”

Thus, not only is the verse explicitly saying that God hears, records, and remembers the cries and distress of His People, but His “bottle” literally rhymes with David’s “wanderings” (vial with trials), and David’s trials are “registered” even as his tears are put in God’s “register.” There is a direct linguistic connection between the trials, and the record of them.

For David, these were no empty cries. He wasn’t becoming a melted weepy over spilt milk. He was an exile—a political fugitive—running from Israel’s king, and hindered at times by Israel’s enemies, the Philistines. He was being, as Matthew Henry put it, “hunted like a partridge upon the mountains.”¹ Not an isolated instance—not a “wandering”—but a significant portion of his life (“wanderingS”) was a trial. The Hebrew word “nod” might even call to mind the “land of Nod” in which Cain settled in his exile from Eden (Gen 4:16).²

The language about “recording” his tears makes sense. Indeed, the root word behind “you have counted” (saphartah) and “record” (siphrah) also forms “book” (sepher), and the Old Testament has regular attestation of heavenly records (Is 65:6; Mal 3:16; cf. Dan 10:21; 12:1), as does the New (Phil 4:3; Rev 3:5). But the language of “tears in a bottle” sounds strange. Why would tears be collected in a vessel?

Some look for a historic or archaeological inference, suggesting that this refers to ampullae—the Roman bottles sometimes found in burial places which some think were vessels for the tears of family members after their loved one died.³ Evidence that this was the actual practice is scant, however, and in any case the “bottle” here usually means a “skin,” as in a “wineskin” (1 Sam 16:20; Josh 9:13; Jdg 4:19; Matt 9:17). We shouldn’t look for some possibly-historic Roman burial practice to explain God’s “tear bottle.”

Instead, we should look to the subject of tears, or weeping, more generally. The tears of the righteous People of God are not selfish tears. David also wrote that his eyes “shed streams of tears because people do not keep your law.” (Ps 119:136) When Ezra repented of sins, he did so “weeping and casting himself down before the house of God,” while the multitude of the people likewise “wept bitterly.” (Ezr 10:1) St. Paul likewise shed tears because of the enemies of God (Phil 3:18). These are not emotive sobs out of shortsighted personal misery, but tears based on unrighteousness, godlessness, and the godly desire for what is right and true.

Nor are they empty tears. God told Hezekiah through Isaiah, “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears.” (2 Kgs 20:5) Likewise through Jeremiah, “I have heard Ephraim grieving.” (Jer 31:18) And again through Ezekiel, “Put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed.” (Ez 9:4) When the Israelites were under great pressure in Egypt, “God heard their groaning,” (Ex 2:24) and said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings.” (Ex 3:7) These are not empty tears—or screams screamed into the void of a cold, deaf, materialistic cosmos—but tears shed before a God who notices.

Nor are they useless tears. In each of the previous examples, God doesn’t “hear” the cries and “see” the tears and ignore them. God saw Hezekiah’s tears and promised him that he would be healed of disease and live another 15 years (2 Kgs 20:5-6). God heard Ephraim grieving, His heart yearned for him, and said “I will surely have mercy on him.” (Jer 31:20) The mark put on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan was so that they would be spared from death (Ez 9:6). And having heard Israel’s groanings, Yahweh said, “I have come down to deliver them.” (Ex 3:8) They’re not useless tears, but tears that lead to God’s delivering response.

From this, we can deduce what David meant and expected, when he said, “put my tears in your bottle.” His tears weren’t selfish, ordered towards his own happiness, but ordered towards his “walking before God.” (Ps 56:13) His tears weren’t empty, but he trusted that they were in God’s “bottle” and written in His “record.” God would see them. And his tears weren’t useless, or for no good purpose, but he expected their effectiveness. After saying his tears are in God’s bottle, he says, “Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call.” (Ps 56:9) Why? Because “God is for me.”

It might be humorous for teachers to laugh about the “tears of my students”—“ohhh, you have too much homework?? [sip].” But the tears of the faithful are no laughing matter. They’re no joke. Bottles of Christian tears have changed the world, because God has heard, and answered. 

For our tears to be effectively collected in God’s bottle, therefore, we must recognize the same three things David did:

First, in our crying out to God for deliverance, we must do so for something larger than ourselves. Our comfort is included in such cries, but it’s much more: our cries must be ordered towards what is good, right, and true. Towards righteousness and the justice of God. An easier life is not sufficient for such tears, but a life to live towards God is.

Second, in our crying out to God for deliverance, we must be sure and certain that God takes them seriously. The bottle of tears that is before God is as a memorial: it’s a collection of the symbols of their need. Our prayers rise before Him as incense, so that He smells and remembers (Ps 141:2; Rev 5:8). Our tears are collected in his wineskin, so that He sees (tastes?) and remembers. Why cry to Him at all if He doesn’t hear? We aren’t the hopeless prophets of Baal! (1 Kgs 18:27-30) As John Stott says, “tears like this are the holy water which God is said to store in his bottle.”⁴

Third, in our crying out to God for deliverance, we must actually believe He’ll do something about it. In His own time, to be sure, and often not without some patience needed. David himself waited quite a while for deliverance and the peace of his kingdom. But his certainty in this inspired text is also God’s promise, as St. Augustine recognized. It’s as if David said, “Thou hast hearkened to me imploring Thee. . . . Because as Thou hadst promised this thing, so Thou hast done. Thou hast said Thou wouldest hearken to one weeping. I have believed, I have wept, I have been hearkened unto; I have found Thee merciful in promising, true in repaying.”⁵

Jesus said that neither a sparrow, nor a hair of our heads can fall without His knowledge. (Mt 10:28-29) Why would not even a tear be caught and collected? And if these small things are so seen, God must remember the blood shed by His martyrs too: “Tyrants may burn their flesh and their bones, but the blood remains to cry aloud for vengeance; and intervening ages can never erase what has been written in the register of God’s remembrance.”⁶ He’ll answer. The bottle of Christian tears will ultimately turn into a wave of righteous justice, when God turns His enemies to Himself, or leaves them turned to themselves.

Even as hopeless unbelievers scream and cry into the emptiness of cyberspace, remember and believe that your cries for help go into the fullness of God’s Heavenspace. Cry your tears to God, when the need arises, then fear not. That tear bottle means He’s for you, and it’s a matter of time before He acts.

Photo by Bianca Gasparoto from Pexels

1. Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 824. ↩︎
2. See Joseph Addison Alexander, The Psalms Translated and Explained (Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot; James Thin, 1864), 250–251. ↩︎
3. See L. Berkhof, Biblical Archaeology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans-Sevensma Co., 1915), 73. ↩︎
4. John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 41–42. ↩︎
5. Augustine of Hippo, “Expositions on the Book of Psalms,” in Saint Augustin: Expositions on the Book of Psalms, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 8, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 222. ↩︎
6. John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 354–356. ↩︎