April 12, 2015
Tom Lowe
Title: PSALM 42
A psalm of David.
Psalm 42 (KJV)
1 As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.
5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.
7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all THY waves and thy billows are gone over me.
8 Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
Introduction
We do not know for certain who wrote this psalm, when it was written or the exact situation of the writer; but those things hardly affect our general understanding of this beautiful psalm. Some have suggested that it was penned by a wandering Levite, far from the beloved Temple in Jerusalem, longing to return and take part again in the corporate worship of the people of God. Some have suggested it was written by David during his flight from Absalom or by a poet in David’s small band of fugitives, but the geography in verse 6 seems to put the setting too far north for that, since David camped over the Jordan at Mahanaim. Others recognize the voice of the Messiah during the time of his rejection and suffering. Still, others detect the plaintive sob of the Jewish remnant during the future Tribulation Period. Then there are those who like to apply it to the believer as he looks back on the days of his first love and longs for the renewal of that kind of fellowship with the Lord. It has also been suggested that the psalm was written by wretched King Jehoiachin on his way to Babylon as a prisoner of Nebuchadnezzar. Never again would he see the Temple he and his fathers had done so much to defile. In him, the royal line of David through Solomon came to an end under the resounding curse of Jeremiah. It is not surprising that he wept. Some have thought the psalm was written by godly King Hezekiah, which is also what I believe. I suppose there are more “opinions” than this, but I am just not aware of them.
We are going to examine this psalm as if it was written by godly King Hezekiah, although it could have been written by any of the godly men I have mentioned. After David, he was the greatest king ever to sit upon the throne of Judea. He did more to bring the nation back to God than any other king. Two tremendously significant events took place in his life. The first was an illness which threatened his very life, and from which he recovered only by a miracle of healing sent by the direct intervention of God. The other was an invasion by the Assyrians which threatened Judah’s independence, and from which he was rescued only by a miracle of help sent by the direct intervention of God. Psalm 42 stands connected with the first of these events, psalm 43 with the second. It would seem that the psalmist’s illness best fits the various moods and movements of this psalm.
Psalms 42 and 43 originally composed one psalm. Psalm 43 has no title of its own. The content and wording of the two are clearly similar (see 42:9b and 43:2b), and psalm 43 has the refrain which appears twice in Psalm 42. The psalm is a lamentation of one who has been hurled into deep despair and believes himself to be so near death that he can already hear the water courses[1] of the underworld, the world of the dead (42:7). His enemies are oppressing him. Their loveless voices taunt him, and one of them, a man of deceit and iniquity, has, with evil intentions spoken lies against him.
Commentary
Prologue to Verses 1-5
If Hezekiah is the psalmist, we know this about his father; he was an exceedingly weak and wicked man. His foreign policy was a disaster. Because of his unwillingness to believe the Word of God preached to him by the great prophet Isaiah, the Assyrians had penetrated deeply into the country and were exerting tremendous pressure on the little land. Everyone in the Middle East was frightened of Assyria in those days. The Assyrians were the Russians of that time, a ruthless and terrible foe who made war with thoroughness and savagery which completely intimidated their weaker neighbors. They scoffed at alliances made against them, bullying those who joined such alliances with dire threats of the consequences they could expect.
In Hezekiah’s day the Assyrians were already on the march. Judah’s sister state of Israel to the north had felt the full weight of the Assyrian war machine and the 10 tribes were no more. They had been deported far and wide and their great city of Samaria left a smoking ruin.
Hezekiah had inherited a little country divided against itself religiously and politically. Foul religious cults were flourishing in the land and the political parties squabbled over every move suggested in foreign affairs. Half the country wanted peace with the Assyrians at any price, half the country wanted to forge alliances with Egypt, Babylon, and any other nation able to help contain the Assyrian aggression.
Hezekiah found a ready ally in Isaiah who encouraged him to campaign against the false religions which had arisen in the land. Accordingly he cleansed and restored the Temple and put the spiritual affairs of the nation back in order. But no man or combination of men, no matter how good and godly they may be, can legislate revival. The majority of the people we’re skeptical and thought that attacking the false religions would only weaken the country further by causing needless resentment.
It was at this point that Hezekiah fell sick and died. We do not know what afflicted him; the best suggestion seems to be that he contracted the plague. We can well imagine what a disappointment it was to this godly king to be abruptly told to prepare for death. His work was not finished; he had no son or heir to set up on his throne; death seemed so futile and unfair. Possibly, in his desperate condition, Hezekiah wrote this psalm.
1 As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?
The psalm opens with a cry wrung out of the psalmist’s innermost soul. Due to his sickness, he was cut off from the Temple he had renovated and restored. He loved the meeting place of God’s own and when cut off from it he grieved and felt his soul shriveling up. Now he has one desire which is indeed a passionate one; to come again to the Temple as he had done so many times in the past, and there to see God, and there to be helped by God.
The psalmist paints a vivid picture taken from the animal world. It is the dry season of the year. The wades of the tableland of Palestine have dried-up one after another. He uses that as the background for a forest scene where a deer (hind[2], not hart1) with parched tongue stands between the rocks panting for water. The psalmist himself, panted after the things of God like the mountain deer panted after the cool mountain streams. To the sensitive soul of our poet-psalmist, it is a picture of his spiritual thirst to “see the face of God,” that is, to worship in His Temple. This thirst for God proves the very being of God; for all-natural appetites must be satisfied.
It is said that there is a hole in the heart of everyone—ancient Israelites, modern Christians, Chinese Buddhists, Californian secularist alike, and that that hole is a God-shaped hole. Only God can fill it, they say, with—Himself. The “ecumenical” nature of this psalm shows up clearly when we realize that in this second book of the Psalter, the name Yahweh, the name of the Covenant God of Israel, seldom occurs. In this collection of psalms, it is nearly always Elohim whom people call upon, the general word for “God” that all men can use. So here we hear the longing of any human soul who knows that life is empty and meaningless without, not just “God,” but “the living God.” For there are gods galore in the world who are as dead as a piece of wood. He mentions this as a just cause of his thirst. He did not thirst after vain, useless idols, but after the only true and “living God.”
This last phrase, “when shall I come and appear before God?” reveals the psalmist’s intense desire to go up to the Temple in Jerusalem to attend a festival, worship, and meet with God. To “appear before God” is the desire of the godly man and the dread of the hypocrite.
3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?
4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.
The first hint of the psalmist’s problem comes at 42:3. He is in the midst of the taunting, insulting voices of his enemies; men who feel that they have him in their power, who are humiliating him by pointing to his God-forsaken condition. The situation is not one which has just now arisen. Already many a day and many a night he has experienced their humiliating remarks over the seeming neglect he has suffered at the hands of his God. It has caused him bitter tears: “My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?” The phrase “tears have been my meat,” means, “instead of eating I have wept.” “Day and night” is the common expression for constantly or continually. “Where is thy God?” (42:3, 10) was a standard question the Gentile idolaters asked the Jews (79:10; 115:2; Joel 2:17; Micah 7:10; see Matthew 27:43). It is what the chief priests meant when they said of the crucified Messiah, “He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have him . . . ” (Matthew 27:43). However, the question indicates that the writer must have been a devout believer who wasn’t ashamed of his faith; otherwise, his tormentors wouldn’t have questioned him.
Then in 42:4, the psalmist’s lifts the curtain from his past experiences, and we see who he was and what he was. Why did he do it? No doubt, he did it partly because of this; he had formerly been a leader of the Pilgrims on their trek to the holy place. He had made many pilgrimages to the Temple on the great holy days when Israel observed its appointed festivals, and when the Temple was thronged with a vast multitude in a holiday mood and in festive attire. How moving now are such glorious memories! How they stir him to the depths of his being!
“These things” refer to his banishment from God’s presence, and his enemies’ scoffs and triumphs upon that occasion. “I pour out my soul” denotes either (a) His fervent prayer, as it is taken in 1 Samuel 1:15 and Psalm 62:8. Or, (b) His bitter sorrows, which caused his heart to almost melt or dissolve, and consumed his spirit, and he was ready to faint, as it is used in Job 30:16, and Limitations 2:12. The expression, “that kept holy day” means those “that kept the feast,” that is, the three solemn festivals (feasts), which they kept holy unto the Lord.
Hezekiah’s reforms in Jerusalem had been far from popular. There was an entire apostate priesthood out of work and faced with financial ruin. Then, too, many people loved their idols. They gloated over Hezekiah’s sickness. “Serves him right,” they sneered. Now then, where is your God? Hezekiah’s God cannot be all-powerful for our gods have struck Him down.” Or, “If Hezekiah’s God is all-powerful then he must be a friend who takes delight in suffering. Hezekiah, where is your God?” “O God,” cried the smitten king. “You hear them! Where are You indeed? Is this to be my reward for all I have done for You?” The wretched king was overwhelmed with bitterness. Whatever it was he had expected from God in acknowledgment of his faithfulness in the face of fierce opposition, we can be sure he did not expect this. For a moment he almost lost his way.
But Hezekiah’s spiritual barrenness and spiritual bitterness did not remain for long.
5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
He faced his problem and fought his problem by falling back upon weapons which are spiritual and mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted[3] in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.” Thus does the spirit rebuke the flesh, and battles with its despondency in the name of the Most High. He repeats this statement in verse 11, and again in Psalm 43.
This constant reference to “the help of his countenance” has been taken by some in an absolutely literal way as referring to his face, a face marred and disfigured by the disease which has afflicted him.
Look at him! As he reclines on his sickbed, he cannot help noticing the revulsion with which his servants perform their duties. They are afraid that the disease which has him in its grip may take hold of them. When left alone, he snatches the polished Brass which serves him for a mirror and looks at himself. Quickly, he throws down the mirror in disgust. No wonder his servants are afraid to be around him. He cannot bear to look at himself.
Like poor old Job, he has no clue as to the reason why he has suffered so. He knows that he is about to die, about to be cut off from the world of men when he and he alone is the hope of his nation. He has been the godliest king in 14 generations. Why is this happening to me? He has no answer to that question.
But he knows where to go for hope. He flees to God. “Soul,” he says, “Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.”
Prologue to Verses 6-8
The psalms are true to life because they are drawn from life, from the stuff of which life is made—hope and fear, love and hate, jubilation and frustration, faith and anxiety, joy and despair. One moment the king stands on the bedrock of hope, the next he is wallowing in the quicksand of horror; one moment he is shouting, the next he is shaking; one moment faith thrills him, the next fear threatens him. Like Hezekiah, we too seesaw back and forth between confidence and collapse.
6 O my God, my soul is cast down[4] within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar[5].
7 Deep[6] calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts[7]: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me[8].
When we come to the seventh verse, our spiritual instincts tell us that in a very special way we are at Calvary, hearing the cries of the Lord Jesus as the “waves and billows” of GOD’S judgment rolled over Him. Cataracts [9] of divine wrath cascaded down upon Him with resounding thunder as He bore our sins in His own body on the cross.
View that closing scene of anguish:
All God’s waves and billows roll
Over Him, there left to languish
On the Cross, to save my soul.
Matchless love! How vast! How free!
Jesus gave Himself for me.
—J. J. Hopkins
The horror and fear of death had a grip on his soul. Paul tells us that death is the last enemy. He is an enemy even to the saint of God. Few of us are anxious and eager to die to go to heaven. We feared death and recognize it as an enemy. But, as Spurgeon says, “If death is the last enemy, leave him till last!”
The psalmist is far from the Temple. In fact, he tells us just where he is—at the source of the Jordan River—the many-peaked Mount Hermon and Mount Mizar5. And he is in the constant presence of enemies who taunt him, whose heartless words crush his spirit. His great inner need leads him to remember God. “I remember,” he said, as we all do. I recall how I used to go (it is implied that he went “regularly”) with the crowd of worshippers, even heading the procession, starting from the city gate, then proceeding through the streets, and going right on into the temple courtyard. What a happy time it was; we all shouted and sang songs of thanksgiving.
The psalmist gives us as vivid a description of death as we shall find anywhere in the Bible, so vivid that some think he was reminiscing about a past narrow escape he had once when swimming in the Jordan River—“therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan.”
“Thy waterspouts[10]” . . . “thy waves” . . . “thy billows”—the psalmist alleges that God is ultimately responsible for the oceans of trial in which he seems to be drowning. The way to forget our miseries is to remember the God of our mercies. The psalmist saw troubles coming from God’s wrath, and that discouraged him. But if one trouble follows hard after another, let us remember they are all appointed and overruled by the Lord.
In Old Testament typology[11] the Jordan is the river of death. It has its source in the Herman’s, flows through a torturous valley, winding and twisting on its way, and buries itself at last in the waters of the Dead Sea, 1,290 feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea. From there the Jordan never emerges again. Mizar5, mentioned by Hezekiah, was a little hill on the east side of the Jordan. Its name means “little mountain.” From its small beginning, the rains and melting snow would turn the rivulets into cascades of water and dangerous cataracts, a picture of intense suffering (69:1-2; 88:7; Jonah 2:4); however, the psalmist knew that the cascades, cataracts, and waves were His and the psalmist had nothing to fear from his God.
The psalmist had come to the Jordon, the river of death. It seemed as if its “waves and billows” were already breaking over his head when the prophet Isaiah, his best and truest friend, told him to set his house in order because he would die soon. The king, despite an assurance that he could hope in God, was in a cold sweat and was in mortal terror of death. He could already feel its chilling flood tides surging over him. He longed for even a little mountain upon which to take his stand. But again the emotional pendulum swings and we are abruptly brought to verse 8.
8 Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
In one of his great passages, Paul describes his own desperate fight against overwhelming spiritual odds: “We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9, NIV). That was also how our psalmist felt. We can see him fighting his greatest battle, alone against the rulers of this world’s darkness, fighting his own fears of death and his own despair over the unfinished state of the work he had set out to do. He feared that death was imminent, therefore, the psalmist prayed day after day and night by night unto the Lord for help and waits expectantly for it to come, although God seems to have given him over to his enemies’ power, to face—all day and day after day—their crushing taunts. He was overwhelmed, but he was not overcome. Love, laughter, life—all were to be found in God. So much for death. God was not the God of the dead but of the living. God and death could not coexist in the same human heart. The psalmist’s sobs gave way again to songs.
“In the night his song shall be with me!” shouted the king, clapping his hands, and lifting up his voice in a sudden song (psalm) of praise. “His lovingkindness,” i.e., His blessings, which is the effects of His lovingkindness, which God is often said to command (Deuteronomy 28:8; Psalm 133:3[12]). “His song shall be with me,” i.e., I shall be constantly singing and praising God for His lovingkindness. “My prayer [is] unto . . . God,” and therefore I will boldly and with faith direct my prayers to Him, for I am confident that He is ready and willing to hear and help me because that has been my experience. “The God of my life” is the giver and preserve of my life from time to time.
This is the answer to the day-and-night sequence in verse 3. There the psalmist had said, “My tears have been my meat day and night . . . ” But now the day is filled with God’s steadfast love and the night is filled with song and prayer. So by day and by night God’s goodness is proven.
We know what happened to Hezekiah. God eventually lifted him off that deathbed, gave him another 15 years of life, and even set the shadow on the sundial back to confirm to Hezekiah His almighty power over all the forces of the universe.
Prolog to Verses 9-11
The psalmist made a decision. It was a twofold decision. Come what may, he decided that never again would he give way to despair:
From now on he would talk to the Lord (42: 9-10)
From now on he would trust in the Lord (42:11)
9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten[13] me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
At this point, Hezekiah fell back on a favorite tactic of the people of God, in all ages, when they find themselves up against circumstances they cannot control. He used the argument with God. “I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
“Now look here, Lord,” he says in effect, “Just a moment ago I was wishing that I could find a little hill, something solid somewhere to stand above the riptide of the Jordan. I don’t need any hill Mizar! I have a Rock! ‘On Christ the solid Rock I stand—all other ground is sinking sand!’ Lord, I take my stand on what You are, in Your very nature. You are a Rock. I am weak and unstable and I change from one minute to the next, but You are a rock. It is quite possible, Lord, that in my feebleness and fickleness I might forget You. That is my nature Lord, but you are a Rock! That is Your nature and You cannot deny Your own nature! So then, Lord, since You are a Rock, since You cannot change since You are as solid and substantial and real as a rock, then why do I go around groaning because I have a few enemies and because the greatest of them all, death himself, has just poked his head in the door?”
The psalmist, in other words, challenged God to break His silence and vindicate His own nature. It was foolish to think that Elohim would break faith with His servant, His child! Let us never think that the God of our life, and the Rock of our salvation, has forgotten us if we have made his mercy, truth, and power, our refuge. That is a very good argument to use with God. It is an even better argument for us to use than it was for the psalmist. He challenged God—by his name Elohim, we can challenge Him as Father! It is impossible for God to abandon his own nature, the nature of a Father, our Father, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
10 As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?
The psalmist pleaded with God to remember His own Name. He reminded the Lord what the enemies of the faith were saying and of their sarcastic jibes; “As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?” The expression, “As with a sword in my bones,” is literally “with a shattering in my bones,” crippling him and threatening his life.
“Lord,” he said, “That is what hurts most. The dreadful thing that has happened to me has given the enemies of the gospel a cause to blaspheme. Lord! I am not pleading my need anymore, I am pleading Your Name. It is Your Name that is involved in all this.” A business will go to great lengths to protect its name. How much more can we expect God to protect His own great and glorious Name?
11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted3 within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
So it came to pass that one night Hezekiah the king went to bed with a poultice of figs pressed against the ugly, swelling boil that was choking out his life. When he awoke the next morning the soreness and swelling were gone, the blood flowed clean and pure through his veins, and his strength returned. He looked in the mirror. His face was fair and fresh. God had worked a miracle.
His spirit is still profoundly depressed, but the deep darkness of the soul’s abandonment has been penetrated by a growing spiritual confidence. It is at this moment that there wells up in his mouth that cry of faith and confidence (repeated from verse five) which has been repeated in turn by countless martyrs right up to the present day, “I shall yet praise Him!” This wonderful holy man can make his quiet response to the jibes of his enemies simply because he is utterly sure that the living God is there already in his future.
This experience with God strengthened the king for the fearful struggles that still lay ahead. Those struggles are commemorated in the next psalm, a psalm which is really an appendix to this one. But Hezekiah was now able to look out with confidence at the lesser troubles of life: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.”
Every time we have an experience like that with God—it may not be a matter of life or death as Hezekiah’s was, but a situation at work, at school, at home—when we see God come through in answer to prayer it strengthens our faith and makes us better able to come to grips with the next difficult situation. For there is no discharge in this warfare. Satan will pursue us, shout and cry, right down to the banks of the Jordan, and even though the river if he can. But faith always has the last word. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t be unsettled. “Hope in God”; you will be delivered from your enemies and from your depression as well. And you will “praise Him” once again as your Savior and your God. So, “Hope thou in God!”
[1] Watercourses—this term is applied to the flow or movement of the water in rivers, creeks, and other streams.
[2] Hind is the name given to female deer; hart refers to the male deer.
[3] Disquieted can mean: uneasy; restless. upset, worried, disturbed, distressed
[4] “My soul is cast down” reappears in Jonah 2:7 and Matthew 26:38. There is no use in trying to hide this reality.
[5] Mizar or Misar (Hebrew: ????) is a small mountain or hill near the more spectacular Mount Hermon. It is mentioned in Psalm 42, along with the peaks of Hermon, as being in the Land of the River Jordan, presumably meaning near its source.
[6] “Deep” is the technical term for the waters of chaos that boil away under the earth, and which we hear about in the Second Commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4, KJV).
[7] God’s “waterspouts” are the clouds which pour down violent and successive showers of rain; which frequently come down from heaven, as it were, bringing with it “the noise;” rattling noises and terrible thunder and lightning.
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[8] “All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me,” that is, are gone over my head (Psalm 38:4). They do not lightly sprinkle me, but almost overwhelmed me.
[9] Cataracts—a descent of water over a steep surface; a waterfall, especially one of considerable size.
[10] Waterspout is an intense columnar vortex (usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud) that occurs over a body of water. They are connected to a towering cumuliform cloud or a cumulonimbus cloud. In the common form, it is a non-supercell tornado over water.
[11] Typology is a method of biblical interpretation whereby an element found in the Old Testament is seen to prefigure one found in the New Testament. The initial one is called the type and the fulfillment is designated the antitype. Either type or antitype may be a person, thing, or event, but often the type is messianic and frequently related to the idea of salvation.
[12] (Psalm 133:3, KJV) “As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore.”
[13] Forgotten, i.e., failed to answer or act (Psalm 13:1).
