Deep physical agony distorts the human experience of time, turning the natural passing of day and night into a heavy burden. Instead of providing rest, the daily cycle becomes a continuous, desperate wait for the next moment, driven by the false hope that the coming hours will ease the pain. Lying down to sleep, the sufferer's immediate thought is an intense longing for the morning, hoping daylight will bring relief.
As the dark hours drag on, the sufferer experiences the night in two agonizing ways. There is a deep wish for the evening to simply flee and pass by quickly [רש"י, מצודת דוד, מצודת ציון, מלבי"ם]. At the same time, the reality of insomnia forces the waking mind to painfully measure every single passing moment. While a sleeping person is completely unaware of time, the restless sufferer feels the crushing weight of each hour, mentally counting them out in the dark [רלב"ג, אבן עזרא, רמב"ן, ביאור שטיינזלץ].
The arrival of morning, however, only brings disappointment. The night is spent consumed by troubling thoughts and constant tossing until the twilight hours—the hazy transition between darkness and light [מלבי"ם, מצודת ציון]. This creates a vicious cycle of misery. At night, the person begs for the morning, but during the day, exhausted by restlessness and pain, they desperately wait for the evening. Caught in this trap, time loses all meaning. The agony becomes so intense that the sufferer might even prefer death as an escape, a despair that challenges the idea that suffering exists merely to cleanse a person of their sins [מצודת דוד, מלבי"ם].
Taking a completely different approach, this intense restlessness can be viewed through a spiritual lens rather than a physical one [אלשיך]. In this light, the anticipation of rising is not driven by pain, but by a burning desire to study Torah. The night is carefully measured and divided so the person can wake up in the middle to serve God. The constant tossing and turning is instead understood as deliberate physical pacing during the day—walking back and forth to fight off fatigue and resist sleep, allowing for continuous, uninterrupted learning deep into the night.