Early in Psalm 4, David turns to his opponents and names their condition. Most English Bibles soften it to “how long will you love vain words?” — but the Hebrew underneath verse 2 (3 in Hebrew) reaches for a very particular phrase: heavy of heart.

That phrase has a history. Everywhere else it appears in the Hebrew Bible, it is attached to one man: Pharaoh, in the story of the Exodus. “Pharaoh’s heart is heavy, and he refuses to let the people go.” It is the language of the hardened king who will not bend, plague after plague.

The allusion doesn’t stop there. The word David uses in verse 3 for how YHWH has “set apart” his people — hiflah (הִפְלָה) — is also an Exodus word, and only an Exodus word. It’s what God does when he draws a line between Israel and Egypt: “I will make a distinction between my people and your people.” 

And then there is light. Verse 6 asks for the light of God’s face to shine — while the psalm’s opponents are told, in verse 4, to lie on their beds in the dark. In the ninth plague, darkness covered Egypt for three days, “yet all the Israelites had light where they lived.”

David never mentions Egypt. He simply reaches for its words — heavy hearts, a people set apart, light on one side and darkness on the other — and lets his listeners feel which side of that old story they are standing on.

Read more on psalms.scriptura.org → Psalm 4: Poetry