Psalms 42:1-7

1 As a deer thirsts for streams of water, so I thirst for you, God.

2 I thirst for the living God. When can I go to meet with him?

3 Day and night, my tears have been my food. People are always saying, "Where is your God?"

4 When I remember these things, I speak with a broken heart. I used to walk with the crowd and lead them to God's Temple with songs of praise.

5 Why am I so sad? Why am I so upset? and keep praising him, my Savior and

6 my God. I am very sad. So I remember you where the Jordan River begins, near the peaks of Hermon and Mount Mizar.

7 Troubles have come again and again, sounding like waterfalls. Your waves are crashing all around me.

Psalms 42:1-7 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.