My Soul Thirsts for You – Psalm 42

BibleStudyTools.com tells us that a maskil denotes a specific type of musical performance to accompany the Psalm and that the sons of Korah are descendants of that Korah who rebelled against Moses’ leadership and was destroyed by God (Numbers 16).  They did not follow in their ancestor’s footsteps.  Three descendants of the line of Korah go on to become great musical masters and pen the Psalms: Heman, Asaph, and Ethan (who might possibly be identified with Jeduthun).  They understand thirsting for God.

To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah.

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and appear before God?  My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”  These things I remember, as I pour out my soul:  how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.

My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.  Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.  By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.  I say to God, my rock:  “Why have you forgotten me?  Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”  As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.  (Psalm 42 ESV)

Sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances that prevent us from worshiping God with others, from participating in the life of faith with zeal and wholeheartedness.  We feel cast down in our souls and we thirst for relationship with God.  For this writer, being in the area of Jordan and Hermon meant he was far from Jerusalem.  The beautiful days in which he could go up to the temple with God’s people and praise Him are but a memory.  But he encourages himself to hope in God and His salvation, reminding himself that even though God has allowed difficult circumstances, His steadfast love is still with him.  He may feel forgotten but he is not.

We might see in the psalmist’s repeated refrain, “My adversaries say all day long, ‘Where is your God?,'” a motivation for God to answer the psalmist’s prayer for help and show up to put these naysayers to shame.