Does God sleep?

Psalm 121 states what God is; Psalm 44 is a prayer of lament, and its words describe how things looked to people in great distress. The nation was suffering, not for its sins but for its loyalty: “for thy sake are we killed all the day long” (44:22). God seemed to be doing nothing. So the psalmist uses a bold picture: God is like a sleeper who must be roused. The verses around it say the same in other images: “Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression?” (44:24) and “Arise for our help” (44:26). ‘Awake’ and ‘arise’ mean ‘act now’.

The psalmist was not confused about God. Israel did not think of the Lord as one who really sleeps; that was a taunt for idols, as when Elijah mocked Baal’s prophets by suggesting that their god might be asleep (1 Kings 18:27). The prayer is bold precisely because the psalmist trusts that God is awake and able, and so he complains that God has not yet shown it. Keil and Delitzsch explain that God is said to sleep when he does not step in to act in what is happening on earth. Psalm 7:6, Psalm 78:65 and Isaiah 51:9 use the same figure. The Bible encourages this kind of honest prayer; it is not a denial of what Psalm 121 says.

Jesus asleep in the boat

The Gospels say that Jesus slept in the boat during a storm, and his disciples woke him with words much like Psalm 44: “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:38). Christians hold that the eternal Son took a real human nature that grew tired and slept, while as God he never ceased to uphold all things. When he woke, he stilled the storm.