At the center of Psalm 4 sits a single line — the longest in the poem — where David tells the restless, angry people around him what to do: think to yourselves, on your beds, and be silent. Three ordinary words hold that line up: think, heart, bed. And then something strange happens. Each of those three words comes back, later in the psalm, in exactly the order they first appeared.

The word translated “think” also can mean “say.” It returns in verse 7 — “many are saying, who will show us good?” “Heart” returns in verse 8 — “you have put joy in my heart.” The root for “bed” returns in verse 9 — “I will lie down and sleep.” The central line is quietly reused, root by root, as the poem moves toward its close.

And as the psalm progresses, those words begin to change hands. In the middle line, these words belong to the anxious crowd: their uneasy hearts, their beds. By the end, the same words belong to David: his joyful heart, his peaceful sleep. The vocabulary of the sleepless is handed, one word at a time, to the man who can rest.

The vocabulary of the sleepless is handed, one word at a time, to the man who can rest — and the psalm holds that rest out to the very people it began by rebuking. This, it says, can be yours too. 

Read more on psalms.scriptura.org → https://psalms.scriptura.org/w/Psalm_4/Poetry