Psalms 42:1-10

1 As the hart pants after the water brooks, so does my soul pant after thee, O God.

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

3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?

4 I will remember these things; I will pour out my soul in me. When I shall be included in the number; I will go with them to the house of God with voice of joy and praise, dancing in the multitude.

5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted against me? Wait thou for God, for I shall yet praise him for the wellbeing of his presence.

6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I will remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the mountain of Mizar.

7 Deep calls unto deep at the voice of thy waterspouts; all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

8 Yet the LORD will command his mercy in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

9 I will say unto God, My rock, why hast thou forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

10 It is as death in my bones when my enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?

Psalms 42:1-10 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.