Psalms 130:5

Three short clauses, and the middle one is the strangest. I wait for Yahweh. My soul waits. I hope in his word.

He says it twice, and the second time he specifies who is doing it — my soul. That is not padding. It is the difference between waiting as an activity and waiting as a condition that has taken over the whole person. Anyone who has waited on something serious knows the shift: at first you are a person who is waiting, and later you are simply waiting, with a person attached.

Then the third clause tells you what makes the waiting anything other than passing time. I hope in his word. The hope is anchored to something that was said. Not to a probability, not to a general sense that things tend to improve. To a specific communication, which is either reliable or not, and which can be gone back to and read again while nothing is happening.

The image in the next verse is worth carrying with this one: more than watchmen wait for the morning. Watchmen are not hoping the sun will rise. They know it will. What they do not know is how long the rest of the night is, and their job is to stay awake through the part where nothing can be seen yet.

The psalm opens from the depths. This is what the depths sound like when they have stopped panicking.