Psalms 4:8

Of all the things a psalm could promise, this one promises a night's sleep.

That is less modest than it sounds. Sleep is the one part of the day you cannot supervise. Whatever vigilance you have been running on since morning, you put it down; for seven or eight hours you are unable to defend yourself, check anything, or respond to news. Every person who falls asleep is making an involuntary confession that the world will continue without their attention, and that someone or something else is holding it.

Which is why insomnia so often arrives with trouble. The body will not release its guard while the mind still believes the guarding is load-bearing.

David writes this while his name is being dragged. He is not sleeping because the situation resolved — read the psalm from the start and it plainly has not. He gives one reason, and puts the weight on a single word: you, Yahweh, alone. Not chiefly. Not among others. He is not hedging with a second security in case the first fails, which is what most of us actually do.

There is also the ordinariness of it worth noticing. This is a promise about a bed, not a battlefield. Much of what faith looks like in practice is not dramatic. It is a man with real enemies, lying down at a normal hour, and going to sleep.