Biblion Bible Commentary
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As the Deer Pants
Psalms 42:1-11
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. · WEB
An exile remembers leading a procession he can no longer join, and asks his own soul a question three times.
As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God Psalms 42:1.
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?" Psalms 42:3.
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 Psalms 42:4.
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 Psalms 42:5.
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.
Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from the hill Mizar Psalms 42:6.
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 Psalms 42:7.
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 Psalms 42:8.
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?" Psalms 42:9. 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