Psalm 42:2-11

2 My soul ¹thirsts for God, for the ²living God; When shall I come and ³appear before God?

3 My ⁴tears have been my food day and night, While they ⁵say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

4 These things I remember and I ⁶pour out my soul within me. For I ⁷used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, With the voice of ⁸joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

5 ⁹Why are you ¹⁰in despair, O my soul? And why have you become ¹¹disturbed within me? ¹²Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the ¹³help of His presence.

6 O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore * I ¹⁴remember You from ¹⁵the land of the Jordan And the peaks of ¹⁶Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; All Your ¹⁷breakers and Your waves have rolled over me.

8 The LORD will ¹⁸command His lovingkindness in the daytime; And His song will be with me ¹⁹in the night, A prayer to ²⁰the God of my life.

9 I will say to God ²¹my rock, "Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go ²²mourning because of the ²³oppression of the enemy?"

10 As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, While they ²⁴say to me all day long, "Where is your God?"

11 ²⁵Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God.

Psalm 42:2-11 Meaning and Commentary

To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah. Of the word "Maschil," See Gill on "Ps 32:1," title. Korah was he who was at the head of a conspiracy against Moses and Aaron, for which sin the earth opened its mouth, and swallowed alive him and his company, and fire devoured two hundred and fifty more; the history of which is recorded in Numbers 16:1; yet all his posterity were not cut off, Numbers 26:11; some were in David's time porters, or keepers of the gates of the tabernacle, and some were singers; see 1 Chronicles 6:33; and to the chief musician was this psalm directed for them to sing, for they were not the authors of it, as some {b} have thought; but most probably David himself composed it; and it seems to have been written by him, not as representing the captives in Babylon, as Theodoret, but on his own account, when he was persecuted by Saul, and driven out by men from abiding in the Lord's inheritance, and was in a strange land among the Heathen, where he was reproached by them; and everything in this psalm agrees with his state and condition; or rather when he fled from his son Absalom, and was in those parts beyond Jordan, mentioned in this psalm; see 2 Samuel 17:24; so the Syriac inscription, the song which David sung in the time of his persecution, desiring to return to Jerusalem.

{b} So R. Moses in Muis, Gussetius, Ebr. Comment. p. 918, & others.

Cross References

• 1. Psalms 63:1; Psalms 84:2; Psalms 143:6
• 2. Joshua 3:10; Psalms 84:2; Jeremiah 10:10; Daniel 6:26; Matthew 26:63; Romans 9:26; 1 Thessalonians 1:9
• 3. Exodus 23:17; Psalms 43:4; Psalms 84:7
• 4. Psalms 80:5; Psalms 102:9
• 5. Psalms 79:10; Psalms 115:2; Joel 2:17; Micah 7:10
• 6. 1 Samuel 1:15; Job 30:16; Psalms 62:8; Lamentations 2:19
• 7. Psalms 55:14; Psalms 122:1; Isaiah 30:29
• 8. Psalms 100:4
• 9. Psalms 42:11; Psalms 43:5
• 10. Psalms 38:6; Matthew 26:38
• 11. Psalms 77:3
• 12. Psalms 71:14; Lamentations 3:24
• 13. Psalms 44:3
• 14. Psalms 61:2
• 15. 2 Samuel 17:22
• 16. Deuteronomy 3:8
• 17. Psalms 69:1, 2; Psalms 88:7; Jonah 2:3
• 18. Psalms 57:3; Psalms 133:3
• 19. Job 35:10; Psalms 16:7; Psalms 63:6; Psalms 77:6; Psalms 149:5
• 20. Ecclesiastes 5:18; Ecclesiastes 8:15
• 21. Psalms 18:2
• 22. Psalms 38:6
• 23. Psalms 17:9
• 24. Psalms 42:3; Joel 2:17
• 25. Psalms 42:5; Psalms 43:5

Footnotes

• [a] Some mss read "see the face of God"
• [b] Or "move slowly with them"
• [c] Or "sunk down"
• [d] Or "Wait for"
• [e] Or "still"
• [f] Some ancient versions read "Him, the help of my countenance and my God"
• [g] Or "saving acts of"
• [h] Or "sunk down"
• [i] Lit "Hermons"
• [j] Or "while the enemy oppresses"
• [k] Or "sunk down"
• [l] Or "Wait for"
• [m] Or "saving acts of"