Psalms 42
Big idea: Thirst as a physical fact. A deer at a dry streambed is not longing for water in a poetic sense; it is dying. And what the psalmist misses is not comfort but a place — how I used to go with the crowd, and led them to God's house, with the voice of joy and praise. He is remembering a procession he can no longer join, somewhere north near the headwaters of the Jordan. Twice he interrogates himself in the same words: why are you in despair, my soul? Hope in God. It is not a feeling; it is an argument a man is having with himself, and he loses it once and starts again.
Psalm 42 asks the question twice and doesn't get there. Psalm 43 asks it a third time and reaches the altar.
42:1–5 — As the deer pants for the water brooks
Book II opens in exile and thirst, and the deer image is more desperate than it usually sounds — panting is what an animal does when the water has run out. What the psalm misses is specific and social: not God in the abstract but the walk to the house with a crowd on a festival day. And it ends by doing something unusual — the psalmist turns and addresses his own soul in the second person, which is the refrain the next two movements repeat.
1 For the Chief Musician. A contemplation by the sons of Korah. As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, 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 ask me, “Where is your God?” 4 These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me, how I used to go with the crowd, and led them to God’s house, with the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping a holy day. 5 Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence.
42:6–11 — Deep calls to deep
The second movement remembers, and the geography is precise — the headwaters of the Jordan, far north of Jerusalem — so he is naming exactly where he is stuck. Then the image the psalm is remembered for: deep calling to deep at the noise of waterfalls, which is the same northern water heard as the sound of drowning. And in the middle of it, verse 8: a song at night.
6 My God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from the hill Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me. 8 Yahweh will command his loving kindness in the daytime. In the night his song shall be with me: a prayer to the God of my life. 9 I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” 10 As with a sword in my bones, my adversaries reproach me, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?” 11 Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him, the saving help of my countenance, and my God.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).