Consider [and] hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the [sleep of] death;
Ver. 3. Consider and hear me, O Lord my God] He turns him to God in this peck of trouble (for they seldom come single), and pleads the covenant, "My God," beseeching him to see and hear both at once how it fared with him, and to send him seasonable and suitable help. It were wide with the faithful if they had not their God to repair unto in distress, pouring out their souls into his blessed bosom. This they must do most earnestly, when under a cloud of desertion; as our Saviour, being in an agony, prayed more fervently, Luke 22:44; and as Micah, having lost his gods, set up his note, Judges 18:24 .
Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep death] i.e. Comfort my conscience, clear up my condition, and cheer up my drooping spirit, lest I faint away as a dying man, whose eyes through weakness wax dim, lest I fall into that somnus ferreus, as the poets call death, that longest sleep;
Surge, ne longus tibi somnus unde
Non times, detur (Hor. lib. 3, Obadiah 1:11 ).