As I have been meditating on Ps 90 (see here and here), and by extension Ps 89, I started digging around for all the instances when someone in the OT tells God to “remember” (זכר) something using the qetol/imperative form.

Word Search

In addition to the two springboard instances in Ps 89 (vv. 48, 51 MT [47, 50 Eng.]), I have found the following:

• Job, whose speech turns from his false comforters to God in prayer, asks that God “remember” how breath-like his life is (v. 7) and how clay-like it is (10.9).
• At the threat of Israel’s destruction, Moses pleads with God to “remember” his covenant with the patriarchs (Deut 9.26–27).
• In the darkest hour just before death, Samson begs God to “remember” him so that he would have strength to destroy the enemy (Judg 16.28).
• David asks that God “remember” him according to covenant-love and not according to sins of his youth (Ps 25.6–7).
• Solomon—or else a psalmist developing his poetry (cf. 2 Chron 6.41–42)—tells God to “remember” the hardships that David endured (Ps 132.1) so that God would in turn recall the substance of the covenant-promise (vv. 11–18).
• The law-keeping psalmist asks for God to “remember” him in affliction (Ps 119.49–50), especially the affliction of persecution from the lawless (vv. 51, 53).
• When Hezekiah learns from Isaiah that he was going to die soon, he asks God to “remember” him through bitter tears (2 Kgs 20.3//Isa 38.3).
• Representing the cries of those who first witnessed the curses of the covenant at the time of Judah’s exile, Jeremiah asks God to “remember” so that Judah and Zion would not be utterly destroyed (Jer 14.21).
• In the deep suffering of a spurned prophet, Jeremiah also twice asks God to “remember” him personally (15.15; 18.20).
• The prophet of Lamentations, who may be Jeremiah reflecting on the exile, asks God to “remember” his afflictions (Lam 3.19) and the harshness of the covenant-curse (5.1).
• Asaph, much like Ethan in Ps 89, looks at the destruction of the temple (Ps 74.3–8) and asks God to “remember” the people that he purchased and redeemed, as well as Mount Zion (v. 2), and to “remember” the enemies’ mockery (vv. 18, 22).
• An anonymous exilic psalmist, cognizant of his and his people’s sins as far back as the Egyptian slavery up to the present (106.7–39), asks God to “remember” him in the day when God restores his people from exile (v. 4; cf. vv. 5, 47).
• Another anonymous exilic psalmist tells God to “remember” how the Edomites cheered when Jerusalem fell (137.7) so that God would someday vindicate his people and punish Edom (cf. Obad 10–14).
• The prayer for remembrance may be most characteristic of Nehemiah, writing after the partial return from exile:
  • In response to the news that Jerusalem’s wall lies broken and that the remnant of those who survived the exile is in peril, Nehemiah prays that God would “remember” not only the curses but also the promises of restoration previously announced through Moses (Neh 1.8–9; cf. Deut 30.1–10).
  • Nehemiah asks God to “remember” him and his good works done for the remnant (5.19; 13.14, 22, 31).
  • With vindication in mind, Nehemiah asks God to “remember” the evil works of Tobiah and Sanballat and the false prophets (6.14) and the wicked priests (13.29).

An Abstraction

Throughout the Scriptures in Hebrew, this plea that God would remember seems to be especially the faithful heart-cry in the face of a whelming flood of sorrows and threats in this sin-cursed world. It makes sense that one would command remembrance precisely when one feels most forgotten. Nevertheless, the command to remember is not an indictment against God or a despairing “How could you forget!?” In these scriptural examples of those who have commanded God to remember, the saints seem to know their covenantal history quite well, and they also seem to presuppose that God knows the same history; they are appealing to God’s constancy in his past dealings with Israel, not casting aspersions on him for having a bad memory.

Asking or telling God to remember in this way is confessing our desperate need of his grace and relying fully on his infallible promise-keeping character.

Note well: in this abstraction, I am not claiming that זכר means the same thing in every case, only that the communicative contexts calling for the qetol/imperative form of זכר directed at God do have some striking commonalities.