As the Deer Pants
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. 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.
An exile remembers leading a procession he can no longer join, and asks his own soul a question three times.
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.
The second book of the Psalter opens with thirst. The image is an animal in a drought, and the psalm makes the comparison a matter of survival rather than preference — a deer looking for water is not indulging a taste.
My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”
The taunt is quoted twice in this psalm, and it is the cruelest question available to anyone in this situation, because the psalmist is asking it himself.
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.
The memory is the sharpest pain in the psalm. He is not a man who never had access; he used to lead the procession. What he has lost is something he once had and organized for others.
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.
The refrain, and it appears three times across this psalm and the next. Its method is worth noticing: he is not describing his feelings but interrogating them. There is a distinction here between the man and his soul, and the man is doing the talking. Feelings are being addressed rather than obeyed.
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.
The geography places him in the far north, near the headwaters of the Jordan, a long way from the sanctuary. Whatever exiled him, the psalm gives a location and it is not Jerusalem.
Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me.
He is beside falling water, in the country where the Jordan comes down off Hermon, and the sound of it becomes the image of what is happening to him. The waves are called yours — the trouble is not attributed to circumstance.
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.
The one verse of settled confidence, and it is placed in the middle rather than at the end. The psalm does not resolve; it returns to the same question, and the refrain repeats after it.
I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
He is still asking in the next verse, and the psalm ends by putting the question to his soul a third time.
settled What this mark means