Hopelessness comes from Satan, who knows God's Kingdom is coming and has no hope himself, and from human nature, which tends to "hope vaguely and dread precisely." Fear and self-doubt can make even those who desire the Kingdom despair, as with the servant in the Parable of the Talents who buried his talent and said, "I was afraid," having no vision for the future. Unlike Satan and the demons, whose nature is fixed in rebellion, humans caught in sin through weakness or ignorance still have hope. Those convicted at Pentecost were afraid and hopeless, but Peter offered hope through repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Hope is lost or weakened when the eyes turn from God to circumstances, as Peter sank when he looked at the waves instead of Christ. Hope is also abandoned by living in sin and disobedience, or by trusting in human solutions such as medical means to extend life, which is a misdirected hope. Mainstream Christianity, with its traditions and partial truths, has only a human hope. Hope is kept by looking to God, whose unchanging purpose and oath make the promise sure. It is also kept by patient endurance through trials, and by spending time with God, since faith, hope, and love are gifts from Him.

The poet expresses a profound loss of hope when declaring that his strength and hope have perished from the Lord. This statement arises directly from the experience of exceptional personal affliction in which God has led him into darkness without light, turned His hand against him repeatedly, aged his flesh, broken his bones, besieged him with bitterness, set him in dark places like the dead, hedged him in without escape, blocked his ways, and made his paths crooked. Every attempt to cry out meets silence, while God appears as a bear or lion tearing him apart and leaving him desolate, or as an archer piercing him with arrows and forcing him to drink wormwood. The destruction of the Temple removes the glory, vitality, and spiritual foundation that once supplied confidence and a sense of well-being, leaving the poet with no banner to sustain forward movement. In this condition the soul is moved far from peace, prosperity is forgotten, and life becomes a constant state of anxiety marked by hunger and the inability to find relief. The loss of hope therefore forms the culmination of unrelieved suffering in which every human resource and every former assurance has been stripped away.