This book took its title from the book of Job. People in pain cry out for relief, Elihu said, and no one asks for God, "who giveth songs in the night" (Job 35:10). Most of the songs gathered here were written in that dark. The last of them walked out into the sunrise.
That order is older than any of these songs. On the first page of the Bible, the day starts at evening. "And the evening and the morning were the first day" (Genesis 1:5). Every day of creation is counted the same way, and Jewish households still keep the Sabbath from sundown to sundown. A singer in the dark may think he has come to the end of something. Genesis suggests he may be standing at the start of a day he has not seen yet.
In Psalm 143, David is in that dark. "He hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead" (143:3). Then he looks back. "I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands" (Psalm 143:5). A few lines later he asks for the dawn. "Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust" (143:8). In the psalm, remembering comes first, and the morning follows it.
Morning light gives things their shapes back. What was hard to make out at night can be seen for what it was. These songs may read that way now. Leonard Cohen's baffled king was still working out a hallelujah he could not finish. The Beatles' long and winding road kept leading back to a door. Read from the morning, each of them looks like the first half of a day.
A psalm of David puts the night and the morning in one sentence. He wrote it, the heading says, while Saul's men watched his house to kill him. "But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in the day of my trouble" (Psalm 59:16). The morning song is about the night. David sings in the daylight about who kept him in the dark.
You may have started this book weeks or months ago. So go back to the start. The first essay read Coldplay's "The Scientist," a song about a man who wants to return to the beginning of a love he let grow cold. That essay found its answer in the third chapter of Lamentations. The poet sat in the ruins of Jerusalem and called something back to mind. "This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:21–23). The book opened on a morning verse. It has taken the whole night to get back to it.
Observant Jews say a short prayer each morning before they get out of bed. It is called Modeh Ani. "I give thanks before You, living and eternal King, for You have returned my soul within me with compassion. Great is Your faithfulness." In Hebrew it reads:
מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ, מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם, שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ.
Modeh ani lefanecha, melech chai v'kayam, shehechezarta bi nishmati b'chemlah, rabbah emunatecha.
Its last two Hebrew words, rabbah emunatecha, are taken from that verse in Lamentations. The first words of a Jewish day remember the night just ended, and they thank God for the morning that follows it.
That verse is where this book began. Turn back to the first essay and read it again in the morning.