Psalms 42:4-6

4 These things I remember and I ¹pour out my soul within me. For I ²used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, With the voice of ³joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

5 ⁴Why are you ⁵in despair, O my soul? And why have you become ⁶disturbed within me? ⁷Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him For the ⁸help of His presence.

6 O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore * I ⁹remember You from ¹⁰the land of the Jordan And the peaks of ¹¹Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

Psalms 42:4-6 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.

Cross References

• 1. 1 Samuel 1:15; Job 30:16; Psalms 62:8; Lamentations 2:19
• 2. Psalms 55:14; Psalms 122:1; Isaiah 30:29
• 3. Psalms 100:4
• 4. Psalms 42:11; Psalms 43:5
• 5. Psalms 38:6; Matthew 26:38
• 6. Psalms 77:3
• 7. Psalms 71:14; Lamentations 3:24
• 8. Psalms 44:3
• 9. Psalms 61:2
• 10. 2 Samuel 17:22
• 11. Deuteronomy 3:8

Footnotes

• [a]. Or "move slowly with them"
• [b]. Or "sunk down"
• [c]. Or "Wait for"
• [d]. Or "still"
• [e]. Some ancient versions read "Him, the help of my countenance and my God"
• [f]. Or "saving acts of"
• [g]. Or "sunk down"
• [h]. Lit "Hermons"