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Psalms 42

The famous image of a deer panting for water opens a psalm of homesickness, not for a place exactly but for God's presence. The speaker is far north, near the Jordan's source, Mount Hermon, and the hill Mizar (v.6), and tears are his food while taunters keep asking, 'Where is your God?' What anchors it is a refrain he repeats to himself: 'Why are you in despair, my soul?... Hope in God!' (v.5, 11). Watch him argue with his own grief rather than deny it.

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Psalms 42 (WEB)
  1. 1

    As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God.

  2. 2

    My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

  3. 3

    My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”

  4. 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. 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.

  6. 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. 7

    Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me.

  8. 8

    The LORD 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. 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. 10

    As with a sword in my bones, my adversaries reproach me, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”

  11. 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.

The opening of Book Two

Psalm 42 begins the Psalter's second book and a run of psalms tied to the sons of Korah. Its mood shifts from David's individual laments toward exile and distance from the temple, that ache of remembering 'how I used to go with the crowd' to God's house (v.4).

The 'deep calls to deep' line (v.7), waves and waterfalls sweeping over him, turns geography into emotion: the rushing northern waters mirror grief that floods faster than he can hold back.

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