Psalm 42
For the music director; a well-written song by the Korahites.
By the Korahites – This is the first ascription in the Psalter to anyone other than David. The reference to the temple suggests that the psalm post-dates the reign of David. It may, indeed, be exilic or post-exilic (Wilson).
Ash notes that the change of authorship affects the way we read the psalm. We do not make the David – King – Christ connection.
This psalm and the next one make up a single poem:
- They have a single title (the absence of a separate title for Psa 43 is unusual in Book II of the Psalter)
- They have a common theme, together with a repeated refrain (Psa 42:5, 11; Psa 43:5).
- Psa 42 is completed by Psa 43. The former comprises lament, and the latter the response in terms of petition and praise, thus forming a whole.
- A number of Hebrew manuscript do indeed combine the two psalms.
Kidner says that this psalm
‘is the lament of a temple singer exiled in the north near the rising of the Jordan, who longs to be back at God’s house, and turns his longing into resolute faith and hope in God himself.’
The opinion of Mays is similar. He finds indications that:
‘the psalm was composed for a representative individual who speaks with and for a group in the troubled times of the postexilic period when the faithful were at the mercy of other peoples in whose midst they had to live.’
Craigie and Tate agree that the psalm could fit an exilic context, but equally that it could have been occasioned by any situation of sickness or trouble, when both the psalmist and his enemies think that God had deserted him.
The psalmist longs to be close to the Lord; but whether the distance is physical or metaphorical is uncertain.
One feature of the psalm is that the struggle experience by the writer is not, as in many other psalms, with his enemies or with God; rather, the struggle is internal. He is in dialogue with his own soul. How often do we ourselves experience this kind of dissonance? – ‘I know I ought be feel blessed; I don’t know why I feel so miserable!’
A characteristic of this whole group of psalms (42 – 83) is the preponderance of the use of ‘Elohim’ (God), rather than ‘Yahweh’ (LORD) as the divine name.
Remembering/forgetting. As Wilson observes, ‘memory’ plays a prominent part in this psalm. The writer remembers the lost presence of God (v6) while lamenting that God seems to have forgotten him (v9).
Presence/absence. Another theme is the absence of God. The psalmist longs to go and meet with God (v2), while being taunted by the enemy: ‘Where is your God?’ (v3, 10).
These themes will be resolved in Psa 43:3f, where there is joyful anticipation that the thirst for God expressed at the beginning of Psa 42 will be satisfied.
Ash notes the
- Two voices – fear and faith
- Two places – (Jerusalem and Mount Hermon)
- Two groups – the assembly of God’s people and the enemies
- Various uses of water – refreshment, tears, chaos.
Matthew Henry suggests that the psalm may be thought of as representing the conflict between faith and sense:
I. Faith begins with holy desires towards God and communion with him (v. 1, 2).
II. Sense complains of the darkness and cloudiness of the present condition, aggravated by the remembrance of the former enjoyments (v. 3, 4).
III. Faith silences the complaint with the assurance of a good issue at last (v. 5).
IV. Sense renews its complaints of the present dark and melancholy state (v. 6, 7).
V. Faith holds up the heart, notwithstanding, with hope that the day will dawn (v. 8).
VI. Sense repeats its lamentations (v. 9, 10) and sighs out the same remonstrance it had before made of its grievances.
VII. Faith gets the last word (v. 11), for the silencing of the complaints of sense, and, though it be almost the same with that (v. 5) yet now it prevails and carries the day.
Matthew Henry adds that in singing this psalm:
‘if we be either in outward affliction or in inward distress, we may accommodate to ourselves the melancholy expressions we find here; if not, we must, in singing them, sympathize with those whose case they speak too plainly, and thank God it is not our own case; but those passages in it which express and excite holy desires towards God, and dependence on him, we must earnestly endeavour to bring our minds up to.’
Eric Lane captures the mood of the psalmist:
‘Away in desert places the psalmist’s thoughts are on what he would normally be doing at that time: leading the procession to the house of God (v. 4). He would be in godly company and together they would be singing with shouts of joy and thanksgiving. How different it was here! Instead of the festive throng there were just these bedraggled refugees for company; instead of sharing the thanksgiving people were taunting them with where is your God? (v. 3); instead of shouts of joy there were floods of tears (v. 3), which had to serve for food in place of the portions of the sacrifices.’
Wilcock remarks that the psalm would be well suited to public worship, where people had to travel long distances to attend the festivals in the temple of Jerusalem. So it was with Jesus and his family, Lk 2:41; Jn 5:1; 7:2–10; 11:55; 12:12.
The three stanzas may be summarised as (a) parched’ (b) overwhelmed’ (c) misjudged (Goldingay); or (a) Dry, (b) Drowning, (c) Disheartened (Wilcock).
Wilcock notes that the psalmist is willing to bring his discouragement into the open; so name it and say how he feels about it. How many – especially those who are in public ministry – feel the need to hide their discouragement! How many of us feel we have to say we’re OK, even when we’re not? But the psalmist complains directly to God, who is both the reason and the cure for his discouragement.
42:1 As a deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God!
42:2 I thirst for God,
for the living God.
As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God! – Not, ‘when heated in the chase’, as the metrical psalm has it, but when afflicted by the agony of drought.
Wilcock remarks that:
‘The drought of Psa 42:1–5 is a long way from David’s quiet waters in Psa 23:2 or his river of delights in Psa 36:8.’
As Wilson remarks:
‘The emphasis is not just on his utter dependence on God for life (while that is, of course, assumed); it is rather the joy and pleasure of being in God’s presence that the psalmist misses and longs to restore.’
Our thoughts go to John 4, and Jesus’ teaching about himself being the ‘living water’. See also Jn 7:37f.
I thirst for God – He thirsts for the company of the people of God, and for the trappings of worship. But first of all, and most of all, he thirsts for God himself.
Nothing less, and nothing else, will satisfy him.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.’
The living God – ‘Living’, in contrast to dead idols. And ‘living’ as the source of all other life.
Matthew Henry:
‘Holy love to God as the chief good and our felicity is the power of godliness, the very life and soul of religion, without which all external professions and performances are but a shell and carcase.’
Matthew Henry:
‘Sometimes God teaches us effectually to know the worth of mercies by the want of them, and whets our appetite for the means of grace by cutting us short in those means. We are apt to loathe that manna, when we have plenty of it, which will be very precious to us if ever we come to know the scarcity of it.’
‘The body cannot live without water. Its lack, quicker than anything else except breath itself, is felt as desperate desire. The soul cannot survive without God. That is true of every human soul, not just the deeply pious. Many or most may not understand the thirst that disturbs and drives their living, but it is there because God created the human soul to correspond to God. Where that correspondence is weakened, disturbed, or interrupted, the experience of its lack becomes like the thirst and hunger that is the opposite of being satisfied. The advantage of the psalmist is that he knows what is missing (42:4). He understands that the dissatisfaction of life is the thirst for God.’ (Mays)
Mays adds that in Psalms 42 and 43 ‘that need is brought to the only one who can meet it.’
I say, “When will I be able to go and appear in God’s presence?”
42:3 I cannot eat, I weep day and night;
all day long they say to me, “Where is your God?”
“When will I be able to go and appear in God’s presence?” – Or, ‘see the face of God?’
The psalmist has had enough. The sense is the same as the plea, heard elsewhere: ‘How long…?’
Mays, however, thinks that the psalm was composed in anticipation of a pilgimage to Jerusalem. The longing expressed here, then, would be that of anticipation, rather than of lament.
Scripture does not teach Christians today to embark on pilgrimages to meet with God. Rather we are taught to find God ‘in Christ’.
Matthew Henry:
‘He pants after God, he thirsts for God, not the ordinances themselves, but the God of the ordinances. A gracious soul can take little satisfaction in God’s courts if it does not meet with God himself there.’
Matthew Henry:
‘To appear before God is as much the desire of the upright as it is the dread of the hypocrite.’
St. John of the Cross wrote of ‘the dark night of the soul’, when God withdraws all sensible signs of his presence.
As Wilson remarks: ‘Help never comes quickly enough for the one in pain.’ I can identify with his example of being doubled over in pain due to kidney stones, and feeling that the wait at the hospital, filling out forms and so on, was endless. Still there is the reassurance that help is available, and that the pain will not go on for ever.
I cannot eat, I weep day and night – NIV: ‘ My tears have been my food day and night’.
‘Far from finding “streams of water”, the only water the psalmist knows is his “tears”.’ (Ash)
The psalmist describes, or implies, many of the common symptoms of depression: loss of appetite, sleeplessness, feelings of ‘carrying the whole world on one’s shoulders’, feeling overwhelmed.
Ken Langley asks:
‘Has anyone thought about starting a weekly “lament service,” scheduled, perhaps, in the wee hours of the morning when the targeted market niche can’t sleep anyway?’
“Where is your God?” – He has made himself vulnerable by declaring his faith. Now the scoffers throw it back in his face. And he has no answer.
They were, perhaps, idol-worshipers, who regarded with ridicule a god who was invisible and seemed impotent.
Longman comments:
‘If the book of Job and the characters’ retribution theology is any indication, perhaps behind their question is the accusation that the psalmist has done something to drive God away. Their enquiry might mask a different question: “How did you sin that you are in such pain and God is not there to help you?”‘
Matthew Henry:
‘Because God did not immediately appear for his deliverance they concluded that he had abandoned him; but herein also they were deceived: it does not follow that the saints have lost their God because they have lost all their other friends.’
Satan adds his voice to that of the scoffer. He is, after all, the great slanderer, the great accuser, the great liar.
Wilson observes:
‘That they can even raise this question is a testimony to their powerful commitment to forgetfulness and ignorance. Ours is a world that does not wish to remember God. And the danger is that the world and our friends who are of the world can easily persuade us that there is no deliverance from our fears that we do not create for ourselves. It is easy in the face of the painful vagaries of life to conclude that we are on our own—life is what you make of it!’
The trouble is:
‘The problem is that…human society [has] been woefully unequal to the task of making meaning out of life. If we are really on our own, as the psalmist feels and our world claims, then we are indeed in deep trouble and have every right to despair. The danger of buying into the world’s evaluation is that it doesn’t work and threatens to overwhelm us with its chaotic waves and breakers, as the psalmist suggests.’
Then, looking forward to verse 4:
‘That is why community worship is such an important part of the life of the faithful. The Israelites knew that and longed for those occasions when they could come together in celebration and in praise, repentance, and thanksgiving. Worship together is a place of memory. Together we call to mind what it is so easy to forget alone—that God is good and that his steadfast love endures forever for those who trust in him. Corporate worship counters our society’s message of forgetfulness and sends a message both outwardly and inwardly that we are not alone. Worship is a place for testimony and celebration. It is a time for confession and forgiveness. It is a place where we remember the past, receive power to face the present, and conceive hope for tomorrow.’
42:4 I will remember and weep!
For I was once walking along with the great throng to the temple of God,
shouting and giving thanks along with the crowd as we celebrated the holy festival.
I will remember and weep! – Aching nostalgia. He longs for ‘the good old days’, when he was able to enjoy the felt presence both of God and the people of God.
There is irony in the psalmist’s ‘remembering’ when he thinks that God has ‘forgotten’!
But the very fact that he laments the lack of God’s presence means that he is not so very far from him after all. His case is very different from those who do not feel drawn to God at all; those who, in fact, are ‘without God and ithout hope in the world’. Although he ‘remembers and weeps’, he can also remember and hope.
As Kidner remarks, although the centre of public worship was (and is) God himself, there was (and is) great delight and encouragement to be in the company of like-minded others.
Shouting and giving thanks along with the crowd – Here is part of the answer to the taunt, ‘Where is your God?’ He is present among his gathered people.
The temple of God – We are not told why he has been unable to participate in temple worship. Perhaps he is in exile, or laid aside by sickness. Wilson suggests that an earlier, pre-exilic psalm may have been preserved for later use precisely because it was seen to fit an exilic context.
DeClaisse-Walford characterises the experience of temple worship:
‘The books of Psalms and Chronicles suggest that worship at the temple in Jerusalem was a dynamic and awe-inspiring experience. In Psalm 150, worshippers are instructed to praise God with trumpet, harp, lyre, and tambourine and with dancing, strings, pipe, and clanging, clashing cymbals. 2 Chr. 29:20–36 tells us that during the reign of King Hezekiah, the people worshiped at the temple with blood sacrifices—seventy bulls, one hundred rams, and two hundred lambs; with singing and musical instruments—cymbals, trumpets, and “the instruments of King David”; and with thank and drink offerings.’
His thoughts are not fixed on the temple for its own sake, but for the sake of the experience of God’s presence, enjoyed with other worshipers, and focused on the celebration of God’s saving acts. We, in our own day, need to remind ourselves that church buildings, and the activities that take place within them, are not ends in themselves, but means to the end of meeting with God. ‘God does not dwell in buildings made by human hands.’
The holy festival might be Passover, Booths or Pentecost. At any rate, it was a time
‘when people would teem into Jerusalem and the sanctuary and pour out their exuberant joy towards God. Such a memory would enhance his emotional pain as he compared his present sadness with past joy.’ (Longman)
Wilson reminds us that, despite the many abuses of temple worship catalogues by the prophets and others, the temple was the focus of great joy and delight.
Christians do not seek God’s presence in any particular physical location. Nevertheless, they can experience both his presence and his absence. Longman comments that:
‘Christians reading this psalm recognize that they can enjoy intimate communion with God through Jesus wherever they are. Unlike the Old Testament, where God made his presence known in special ways in physical places, such as the temple, we can commune with God in any physical place. Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit, and both individually (2 Cor. 6:14–18) as well as corporately (1 Pet. 2:4) we are the very temple of God.’
‘What he misses is not some solitary mystical experience of God but the corporate throng of enthusiastic temple worship, of which he may have been a leader. When Jesus of Nazareth would have sung this, he would be longing not only for the immediate presence of his Father but for his place as the joyful leader of the assembled people of God. When we sing this, we express and deepen an intense longing for the immediate presence of God the Father, and for the joy of being in the new heavens and new earth, led by Jesus our worship-leader as we sing songs of exultant praise and joy. This longing is partially sated in the joyful corporate worship of the church here on earth.’
‘There is strength in numbers. The individual can encourage, challenge, or admonish the community toward faithfulness, endurance, or repentance. The community can provide a collective memory of the mighty acts of God that exceeds the memory or experience of one and provides the continued context for enduring faith, hope, and love. For someone to be cut off from this experience of communal worship (as our psalmist is) is to be cut off from the sustaining ground of faith and hope and to be left to one’s own poor devices to survive. Many don’t.’ (Wilson)
Wilson remarks that corporate worship is important precisely because we need each other’s help and encouragement in difficult times:
‘To reverse Job’s saying (Job 42:5), when it is no longer possible to see God with our eyes, sometimes it is necessary to hear of him by our ears. One of the roles of the worshiping congregation is to worship when I cannot, to celebrate the resurrection of Christ when I am mourning the death of a loved one or struggling with my own sin. The congregation is to declare the wonderful works of God even when I can no longer see him or sense his presence.’
42:5 Why are you depressed, O my soul?
Why are you upset?
Wait for God!
For I will again give thanks
to my God for his saving intervention.
42:6 I am depressed,
so I will pray to you while I am trapped here in the region of the upper Jordan,
from Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Why are you depressed, O my soul? – This refrain, occuring three times across the two psalms, represents the soul in experiencing internal conflict (dissonance, if you like). Calvin: ‘David here represents himself as if he formed two opposing parties.’
On this self-communing, Kidner writes:
‘It is an important dialogue between the two aspects of the believer, who is at once a man of convictions and a creature of change. He is called to live in eternity, his mind stayed on God; but also in time, where mind and body are under pressures that cannot and should not leave him impassive. Cf. ‘Now is my soul troubled …’ (John 12:27f.). The psalmist’s refrain teaches us to take seriously both aspects of our existence. There is no hint that his distress was avoidable on the one hand, for it arose out of his love; or unendurable on the other, for it did not shake his faith.’
In other words, the psalmist is facing unavoidable pressures and demonstrating unshakeable convictions. These convictions do not remove, or cure, the pressures. Rather they make them bearable. They enable us to ‘hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, because he who promised is faithful’.
These unavoidable pressures arise from that fact that the psalmist is struggling with
- a land that is a spiritual desert, v1f.
- the taunts of unbelievers, v3f. We have plenty of mockers and scoffers today!
- problems that threaten to overwhelm
- the seeming failure of God to act quickly
Mays insists that the conflict is not merely subjective and introspective, but liturgical and confessional. The self’s question about God’s felt presence is answered by the self’s awareness of believing community and of the faith which formed and sustains it.
The question may be taken in a number of ways:
(a) as a statement of the extremity of his experience: ‘How downcast you are, my soul.’
(b) as an expression of puzzlement: ‘I don’t know why I feel so discouraged’.
(c) as an enquiry:
‘Our disquietudes would in many cases vanish before a strict scrutiny into the grounds and reasons of them. “Why am I cast down? Is there a cause, a real cause? Have not others more cause, that do not make so much ado? Have not we, at the same time, cause to be encouraged?”’ (Matthew Henry)
Why are you so upset? – In turmoil, churned up, unsettled.
As Mays points out:
‘When facing the suffering of his passion, Jesus echoed the language of these psalms in speaking of his own downcast, disquieted soul (Matthew 26:38; John 12:27).’
Wait for God – Not passively, but expectantly (as the next clause confirms).
I will again give thanks to my God for his saving intervention – or, ‘God my saviour’. Here, as in so many other places, the attributes and actions of God are used as implied arguments to suppor the accompanying heartfelt wish.
‘We must talk to ourselves instead of allowing ‘ourselves’ to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’.
‘The essence of this matter is to understand that this self of ours, this other man within us, has got to be handled. Do not listen to him; turn on him; speak to him; condemn him; upbraid him; exhort him; encourage him; remind him of what you know, instead of listening placidly to him and allowing him to drag you down and depress you. For that is what he will always do if you allow him to be in control. The devil takes hold of self and uses it in order to depress us. We must stand up as this man did and say: ‘Why art thou cast down? Why art thou disquieted within me?’ Stop being so! ‘Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance,’ He, ‘who is the health of my countenance and my God.’’
(Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression)
I will pray to you – ‘It is a great support to us, when upon any account we are distressed, that we have liberty of access to God, and liberty of speech before him, and may open to him the causes of our dejection.’ (Matthew Henry)
‘The way to forget the sense of our miseries is to remember the God of our mercies.’ (Matthew Henry)
While I am trapped – Although he longed for Jerusalem’s temple, and the company of fellow-believers,
‘wherever he went he took his religion along with him. In all these places, he remembered God, and lifted up his heart to him, and kept his secret communion with him. This is the comfort of the banished, the wanderers, the travellers, of those that are strangers in a strange land, that undique ad caelos tantundem est viae—wherever they are there is a way open heavenward.’ (Matthew Henry)
The region of the upper Jordan – An area in the North, beyond Israel’s border, towards the source of the Jordan.
Hermon – a mountain in the far north of Israel. Longman suggests that the language of physical distance may be a metaphor for spiritual distance. Alternatively, the writer may actually be in exile, or a captive on his way to exile (in Babylon). Either way, the psalmist feels separated from Jerusalem, and from the temple where God’s presence was known in a special way.
The location of Mount Mizar is unknown, but it is evidently in the vicinity of Mount Hermon.
It is not certain whether, in the context of this psalm, these locations are to be understood literally or metaphorically.
As Christians, we too are in exile. Not geographically, but spiritually. We are exiles, strangers and pilgrims in this world. Our citizenship is in heaven. While we are present in the body, we are absent from the Lord. We walk by faith, not be sight. We know Christ, indeed, but not yet in fullness.
42:7 One deep stream calls out to another at the sound of your waterfalls;
all your billows and waves overwhelm me.
One deep stream calls out to another at the sound of your waterfalls; all your billows and waves overwhelm me – The imagery changes from that of drought to deluge.
Although some commentators think that the psalmist is referring, in an exaggerated way, to the headwaters of the River Jordan, Mays thinks that such literality would be very unusual in the psalms and that ‘the deeps, floods, and waves of 42:7 are metaphors for overwhelming trouble.’
Here, then, is a vivid metaphor for those times when ‘everything seems to get on top of you’.
Here is a sound-picture of anxiety and disorientation. Pounding of waves, and tumbling of waterfalls, come to mind. His worries seem overwhelming, and are threatening to drown him!
NIV – ‘Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls.’
AV – ‘Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts.’
NLT – ‘I hear the tumult of the raging seas.’
Calvin:
‘These words express the grievousness, as well as the number and long continuance, of the miseries which he suffered; as if he had said, I am oppressed not only with one kind of misery, but various kinds of distress return one after another, so that there seems to be neither end nor measure to them.’
‘One flood of suffering invites another flood to pour itself on the sufferer.’ (JFB)
Ash notes:
‘The sound of overwhelming waters replaces the joyful sound of thronging crowds. The expression “deep calls to deep” is not reassuring but frightening. This is Bible poetry for chaos and terror. Not only is he far from the people of God rejoicing in the presence of God; he is under overwhelming pressure.’
Matthew Henry:
‘It may be meant of the terror and disquietude of his mind under the apprehensions of God’s anger. One frightful thought summoned another, and made way for it, as is usual in melancholy people.’
Longman points out that this is a very different kind of water metaphor from that used in v1f. That was gentle and life-giving. This is powerful and dangerous.
The psalmist calls them, ‘Your waterfalls…your billows…your waves.’ Even though he hears nothing but a violent din, and experiences nothing but anxiety, he has not forgotten his God. So it was with our Saviour, when he cried out (borrowing the words of another psalm), ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
42:8 By day the LORD decrees his loyal love,
and by night he gives me a song,
a prayer to the living God.
The Lord throws out a lifeline! . The psalmist reaches out his hand and graps the Lord’s ‘loyal love’! (Wilson)
By night he gives me a song – Cp. Psa 137:4.
Ash:
‘It is wonderful to think of [the Lord Jesus] praying verses 6-11, as he faced the terrifying floodwaters of human hostility, the concrete expression of the Father’s wrath pouring over him, drowning his soul in sorrows as they swept over him. And yet in the midst of it all, the Father’s love was unchanging (v 8a). As we face the pressures and troubles that come with following Jesus, we too can talk to ourselves with the words of realistic faith that we find in this section.’
Matthew Henry:
‘In silence and solitude, when we are retired from the hurries of the world, we must be pleasing ourselves with the thoughts of God’s goodness.’
Living God = ‘God of my life’.
42:9 I will pray to God, my high ridge:
“Why do you ignore me?
Why must I walk around mourning
because my enemies oppress me?”
42:10 My enemies’ taunts cut into me to the bone,
as they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
I will pray to God, my high ridge – Once again, in his desolation he clings to what he knows of God, and finds a firm place, an island of safety (‘high ridge’ = ‘rock’?)
My enemies taunts – We are, in our own day, surrounded by those who would ridicule our faith and undermine our hope. Some of them even call themselves ‘the Brights’, as if we were stupid!
42:11 Why are you depressed, O my soul?
Why are you upset?
Wait for God!
For I will again give thanks
to my God for his saving intervention.
‘The ancient Israelites had waited many times in their history for God to appear and deliver them. In Egypt, they waited for deliverance from slavery. In the wilderness, they waited to go into the promised land. In exile in Babylon, they waited to return to Jerusalem and to the presence of God.
‘When we find ourselves in circumstances where God seems to be absent, when our very beings feel as though the weight of the world is upon them, may we be able to speak the assuring words, “Wait for God … for I will again praise him.”’
(DeClaisse-Walford)
‘Only a soul indwelt by the Spirit “pants” for God (v. 1; cf. John 3:3; 1 Cor. 2:14). And only one loved by God will exhort his soul to “hope in God” (Pss 42:5; cf. Rom. 5:5). This is the kind of intimate relationship with God that Christ came to bring (John 14:21). More fully and deeply than any other, he can empathize with the devastating feeling of being forsaken by God (Psa 42:1–4; Mark 15:34).’ (Gospel Transformation Bible)
As Craigie and Tate observe, resolution is not reached while the psalmist looks within himself. It is reached when he looks to God (Psa 43).
‘How often have the people of God occasion to use the language of this psalm! In a world of trouble and sorrow such as ours is; in a world where the friends of God have often been, and may again be, persecuted; in the anguish which is felt from the ingratitude of children, kindred, and friends; in the distress which springs up in the heart when, from sickness or from any other cause, we are long deprived of the privileges of public worship—in exile as it were from the sanctuary—how imperfect would be a book professing to be a revelation from God, if it did not contain some such psalm as this, so accurately describing the feelings of those who are in such circumstances; so adapted to their wants; so well fitted to direct to the true source of consolation!’ (Barnes)
Ken Langley writes:
‘Several years ago, the worship leader in a church I was visiting began the service with announcements, including an
update on his personal crisis. A few months earlier his arm had been badly mangled in a piece of machinery on his fishing boat. He’d had several unsuccessful surgeries, and was still in constant pain despite powerful drugs. “The bottom line,” he said, “next week they’re going to amputate my arm. Now let’s stand and sing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” It’s not often that this old preacher is at a loss for words, but I could hardly sing. My wife, too was choked up.’
‘Don’t confuse or let your hearers confuse hope with optimism: a belief in progress, a sunny disposition that always
looks on the bright side. Sermons faithful to the God-centered vision of the Psalms will never say “Time heals” or “Things will work out.” Not long before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. shared with his former Dexter Ave. congregation that though he still had hope he was not optimistic. He did not foresee America getting its act together, but he held on to a God who brings light out of darkness and justice to the nations.’
Ken Langley again:
‘I recall a cartoon I saw in a ministry journal years ago. Above the preacher’s head is a thought balloon in which he
fancies himself a general, helmet and all, leading the congregational army out to do battle. “Charge!” he cries. But over the heads of the congregation is a different thought balloon: they see themselves lying on the battlefield, desperately wounded. “Medic!” they cry. Our pews are filled with people who are crushed by life, people burdened with guilt they don’t know what to do with, people angry at God, people engaged in denial because they think it’s unspiritual to talk about their pain. They need hope.’
- Let God know you’re thirsty, v1. Cf. Jn 7:37.
- Be honest with God about your feelings and doubts, v3. Cf. Mt 27:46.
- Verbally praise God for who He is, v4. Cf. Heb 13:15.
- Instruct your soul. Don’t let circumstances dictate your thoughts, v5. Cf. Phil 4:8.
- Remember God’s goodness by remembering past victories, v6. Cf. 2 Tim 3:11.
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