Psalms 42:1-8

1 ¹As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.

2 ²My soul thirsts for God, for ³the living God. When shall I come and ⁴appear before God?^[a]

3 ⁵My tears have been my food day and night, ⁶while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?"

4 These things I remember, as I ⁷pour out my soul: ⁸how I would go ⁹with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, ¹⁰a multitude keeping festival.

5 ¹¹Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you ¹²in turmoil within me? ¹³Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation^[b]

6 and my God.My soul is cast down within me; therefore I ¹⁴remember you ¹⁵from the land of Jordan and of ¹⁶Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; ¹⁷all your breakers and your ¹⁸waves have gone over me.

8 By day the LORD ¹⁹commands his steadfast love, and at ²⁰night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.

Psalms 42:1-8 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. [Joel 1:20]
• 2. Psalms 63:1; John 7:37; [Isaiah 41:17; Isaiah 55:1]; See Psalms 84:2
• 3. Psalms 84:2; Joshua 3:10; Daniel 6:26
• 4. Psalms 84:7; [Exodus 23:17]
• 5. Psalms 80:5; Psalms 102:9
• 6. ver. 10; Psalms 79:10; Psalms 115:2; Joel 2:17; Micah 7:10
• 7. Psalms 62:8; 1 Samuel 1:15; Job 30:16; Lamentations 2:19
• 8. [Isaiah 30:29]
• 9. Psalms 55:14
• 10. [2 Samuel 6:15]
• 11. ver. 11; Psalms 43:5; [Matthew 26:38; John 12:27]
• 12. Psalms 77:3
• 13. Lamentations 3:24
• 14. Jonah 2:7
• 15. 2 Samuel 17:22, 24
• 16. Deuteronomy 3:9
• 17. Jonah 2:3
• 18. Psalms 88:7; See Psalms 32:6
• 19. Psalms 44:4; Psalms 68:28; Psalms 71:3; Psalms 133:3
• 20. Job 35:10; [Psalms 4:4; Psalms 16:7; Psalms 63:6; Psalms 77:6; Psalms 119:55, 62, 148; Psalms 149:5]

Footnotes

• [a]. Revocalization yields and see the face of God
• [b]. Hebrew the salvation of my face; also verse 11 and 43:5