Psalms 42:1-6

1 To the Overseer. -- An Instruction. By sons of Korah. As a hart doth pant for streams of water, So my soul panteth toward Thee, O God.

2 My soul thirsted for God, for the living God, When do I enter and see the face of God?

3 My tear hath been to me bread day and night, In their saying unto me all the day, `Where [is] thy God?'

4 These I remember, and pour out my soul in me, For I pass over into the booth, I go softly with them unto the house of God, With the voice of singing and confession, The multitude keeping feast!

5 What! bowest thou thyself, O my soul? Yea, art thou troubled within me? Wait for God, for still I confess Him: The salvation of my countenance -- My God!

6 In me doth my soul bow itself, Therefore I remember Thee from the land of Jordan, And of the Hermons, from the hill Mizar.

Psalms 42:1-6 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.