David challenges his opponents’ moral choices directly, forcing them to confront the absurdity and duration of their commitment to falsehood rather than simply lamenting his own suffering.

David records no verbal response from those he confronts. He instead declares in verse 3 that the Lord has set apart the godly for Himself, distinguishing the righteous from those who love vanity.

This second question shifts from David’s pain to his opponents’ guilt, maintaining the how long framework but redirecting focus. The Hebrew words reeq (vanity) and kazab (lies) form a moral couplet, vanity addresses what is empty and worthless, while lies addresses what is actively deceptive. David employs a question rather than a statement to confront his opponents with the absurdity of their continued pursuit of falsehood. By framing it as how long, he implies that reasonable people would have abandoned such foolishness long ago. The question carries both rebuke and invitation, it exposes sin while implicitly offering an opportunity for repentance. The theological weight rests on the incompatibility between loving God’s anointed (and by extension, God Himself) and loving vanity and lies. Truth and falsehood cannot coexist; the question demands a choice.