Psalm 42:7

Psalm 42 opens Book Two of the Psalms, which runs from Psalm 42 to Psalm 72. It begins with a deer panting for water, a picture of a soul that thirsts for God (Psalm 42:1–2). The psalmist’s tears have been his food day and night while people ask him, “Where is thy God?” (Psalm 42:3), and he remembers how he once went with the crowd of worshippers to the house of God (Psalm 42:4).

The sons of Korah were Levites. Their families kept the gates of the sanctuary (1 Chronicles 9:19) and served among its musicians, so the temple in Jerusalem was both the place of God’s presence among his people and the place of the psalmist’s own calling. Being kept away from it was a deep grief to him. Scripture leaves the cause unnamed. It may have been exile, or some other forced separation at the hands of enemies.

The first half of the psalm closes with a refrain (Psalm 42:5), and our passage closes with it again in verse 11. It comes a third time at the end of Psalm 43, and that shared refrain is the main reason Psalms 42 and 43 are often read as one song. Each time, the psalmist looks honestly at his sorrow and then answers it with hope in God.

Verse 6 begins with prayer: “O my God, my soul is cast down within me”. The name for God here, ʼĕlôhîym, is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is read as a plural of majesty, with its verbs usually singular. The little word “my” makes it personal. Whatever else the psalmist has lost, he still speaks to God as his own.

The soul, nephesh, comes from a root meaning “to breathe”. It means a breathing creature, life, soul, self or person, so “my soul” here is the psalmist’s whole self. To be cast down, shâchach, is to sink or bow down, to be brought low. He feels bent under a weight, and the words “within me” place that weight deep inside him. He tells God so plainly, and God has kept his words in Scripture for his people to pray.

“Therefore will I remember thee.” The verb zâkar means to remember, and in one of its forms it means to mention or to bring to remembrance. The word “therefore” ties his remembering to his sorrow: because his soul is cast down, he will remember God. What he reaches for in his distress is the memory of who God is, what he has promised and what he has done. The writer of Lamentations does the same: “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope”, and a few lines later, “They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:21–24). God’s own promise to his people points the same way, for he pledges to strengthen and uphold them (Isaiah 41:10).

“Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.” The word for deep, tᵉhôwm, is the word for the deep waters at creation, over which the Spirit of God moved (Genesis 1:2). It means a vast, unfathomable depth of water. In Scripture deep waters call to mind the flood of judgment and the forces that no man can master, and the psalmist feels them closing over him.

The waterspouts, tsinnûwr, take their name from a root that may mean “to be hollow”, and the word can mean a gutter or channel for water. Here it is usually taken as a waterfall or cataract, a torrent pouring down with a deafening roar. The psalmist may have had real waterfalls before him, since the slopes of Hermon and the sources of the Jordan were near where he was.

The phrase “deep calleth unto deep” pictures one depth answering another. It can be read as trouble calling up more trouble, the roar of one torrent echoing into the next until the psalmist is surrounded by sound. It can also be read as the depth of his need crying out to the depth of God, to his power and his hidden ways. Both readings fit the verse, and the second fits the hope with which the psalm ends.

The waves, mishbâr, come from a root meaning “to break”, and they are the breakers of the sea. The billows, gal, are the rolling waves. When these “are gone over me”, the psalmist is under the water, buried by one trial after another. Jonah prayed in almost the same words from the belly of the fish: “all thy billows and thy waves passed over me” (Jonah 2:3). Another psalm cries, “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul” (Psalm 69:1–2), and the writer of Lamentations speaks of waters flowing over his head (Lamentations 3:54).

“Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.” Straight after the waves comes this word of confident trust. Here the KJV prints “LORD”, for Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God. It is linked with the root “to be” and names him as the eternal God who has bound himself to his people.

To command, tsâvâh, is to give an order as one with authority. The LORD sends his lovingkindness by decree, just as he once commanded light into being (Genesis 1:3). The word for lovingkindness, cheçed, is the steadfast, loyal love God has pledged in his covenant, and it takes in his favour, his good deeds and his mercy. Because it rests on his will, it holds firm when our feelings and circumstances change.

The daytime and the night together take in all of the psalmist’s hours. Earlier his tears were his food “day and night”, and now he looks to God’s lovingkindness and God’s song to fill the same day and night. The song, shîyr, is “his song”, the song God gives, and it stays with the psalmist in the dark. Elihu speaks of God our maker, who gives songs in the night (Job 35:10), and Paul and Silas sang praises to God in prison (Acts 16:25).

The psalmist’s answer to God’s love and song is prayer, “my prayer unto the God of my life”. The word for life, chay, means living or alive. To call the LORD “the God of my life” is to own him as the one who gives and keeps every breath, and so the one to whom every need can be brought. Paul gives the same counsel: in everything let our requests be made known to God by prayer, and the peace of God will keep our hearts (Philippians 4:6–7).

The psalmist puts this question to the God he calls his rock. “I will say unto God my rock”. The word for God here is ʼêl, which means “God”, and which Strong’s and BDB also give the sense of strength, power and might. The rock, çelaʻ, is a craggy rock, a high cliff or stronghold. David sang, “The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer” (Psalm 18:2). In one sentence the psalmist calls God his rock and asks why God has forgotten him, so he holds together what he knows of God and what he feels, and brings both to God.

To forget, shâkach, is the ordinary word for forgetting. Another psalm uses it in the same kind of cry: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever?” (Psalm 13:1). These questions are prayers. They are spoken to God’s face, and they plead with him to act.

“Why go I mourning” uses qâdar, a verb meaning to be dark or ashy, and so to mourn, as mourners went about in sackcloth and soiled clothes. The psalmist pictures himself walking about darkened with grief. The cause is “the oppression of the enemy”, and the word lachats means pressure, distress or affliction. His enemies press on him, and the pressure from outside deepens the sorrow within.

“As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?” The word the KJV renders “sword”, retsach, is defined in Strong’s as a crushing, and also as a murder-cry or slaughter. The bones, ʻetsem, are the strong frame of the body, and the word can stand for the body itself or for the very self. Scripture often uses the bones for a person’s inmost strength, so the wound the psalmist describes reaches the core of who he is. Words have done this to him. He feels his enemies’ taunts as a weapon driven into his frame.

To reproach, châraph, means to taunt, and BDB gives its proper sense as to say sharp things against someone. In Israel, to be reproached over one’s God was a public shame. The question “Where is thy God?”, already heard in verse 3, strikes at the covenant itself, implying that the LORD is absent, weak or has abandoned his servant. The enemies say it “daily”, so the wound is opened afresh each day. The Assyrian Rabshakeh mocked Judah’s trust in the LORD in the same way (2 Kings 18:35). Nehemiah brought the scorn of his enemies to God in prayer (Nehemiah 4:4), and Job heard the same pressure from his own wife, who urged him to curse God (Job 2:9).

The psalm speaks of real enemies, and the same question reaches believers today from people who mock faith, from hard circumstances that make God feel far away, and from the doubts of their own hearts, as the psalmist’s own questioning of his soul shows. Paul names tribulation, distress and even the sword, and is persuaded that none of them shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35–39).

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?” Now the psalmist turns and speaks to himself, addressing his soul as though it were another person. “Cast down” is shâchach, the same verb as in verse 6. To be disquieted, hâmâh, is to make a loud sound, and so to be in commotion or tumult. The word is used of moaning, roaring and uproar. His soul is bowed low and in an uproar at the same time.

“Hope thou in God” is a command he gives his own soul. He asks it why it is downcast, and then he tells it what is true and where to look. This is what believers have called preaching to yourself: letting God’s truth speak louder than the voice of despair. Paul speaks of bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), and he prays that the God of hope will fill believers with joy and peace in believing (Romans 15:13).

“For I shall yet praise him.” The word “yet” looks ahead. The praise lies in the future, and the psalmist is sure of it, because it rests on God’s faithfulness. The refrain comes back once more in Psalm 43:5, and each time hope in God has the last word.

The New Testament shows us the Son of God going down into the depths this psalm describes. In Gethsemane Jesus said that his soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death (Matthew 26:38), and he prayed that the Father’s will be done (Luke 22:42). On the cross his enemies mocked his trust in God, saying that God should deliver him now if he would have him (Matthew 27:43), a taunt of the same kind as “Where is thy God?” Then he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), the cry that opens Psalm 22:1.

There the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), and the waves and billows of God’s wrath against sin went over him. The psalmist hoped for deliverance, and Christ went down into death on purpose, to save. God raised him up (Acts 2:24), and those joined to him are raised with him to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). He is the spiritual Rock that went with Israel (1 Corinthians 10:4), and he turns his people’s sorrow into joy (John 16:20). Because he bore that abandonment, his people have God’s promise, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5).

The psalmist was far from the temple, and in Christ those who were far off are brought near by his blood and have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:13–18). The Spirit he sent abides with his people (John 14:16–18), and he is with them always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:20). He is our high priest, touched with the feeling of our weaknesses, so that we come boldly to the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:14–16), and our hope in him is an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast (Hebrews 6:19).

God’s lovingkindness has come to us in person in the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), in him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), and our prayers rise to the Father in his name (John 14:13–14). The face lifted up by God’s salvation is lit by the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6).

This psalm gives God’s people words for the times when the soul is cast down, and it shows that God welcomes them. The psalmist tells God about his sorrow, his questions and the taunts he hears every day, and God has kept those words in Scripture so that we can pray them.

It shows us God as the Lord of the deep. The waves that go over his servants are his, and so are the lovingkindness he commands by day and the song he gives at night. He is the rock that stands when the waters rise, and he is near his people at the far edge of the land as surely as in his house.

And it shows that hope rests on God himself. The psalmist’s feelings rise and fall from line to line, while the God he names stays the same: “my God”, “God my rock”, “the God of my life”, “the health of my countenance, and my God”. When his soul sinks he tells it to hope in God, for he shall yet praise him, and in Christ that “yet” is sure for every believer.