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42. Psalm 42

¹ As the deer pants for streams of water,
   so my soul pants for you, my God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
   When can I go and meet with God?
³ My tears have been my food
   day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
   “Where is your God?”
⁴ These things I remember
   as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
   under the protection of the Mighty One See Septuagint and Syriac; the meaning of the Hebrew for this line is uncertain.
with shouts of joy and praise
   among the festive throng.

    ⁵ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
   Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
   for I will yet praise him,
   my Savior and my God.

    ⁶ My soul is downcast within me;
   therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
   the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep
   in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
   have swept over me.

    ⁸ By day the LORD directs his love,
   at night his song is with me—
   a prayer to the God of my life.

    ⁹ I say to God my Rock,
   “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
   oppressed by the enemy?”
¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
   as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
   “Where is your God?”

    ¹¹ Why, my soul, are you downcast?
   Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
   for I will yet praise him,
   my Savior and my God.

9. I will say to God my rock If we read the preceding verse in the past tense, the meaning of this verse will be, Since God has, in this way, heretofore shown himself so kind towards me, I will pray to him now with so much the greater confidence: for the experience which I have had of his goodness will inspire me with courage. But if the preceding verse is rendered in the future tense, David, in this verse, combines the prayer which it contains with the reflections which faith led him to make. And, surely, whoever, from a persuasion of the paternal love of God, anticipates for himself the same favor which David has just described, will also be induced from his example to pray for it with greater confidence. The meaning, then, will be this: Since I expect that God will be favorable to me, inasmuch as by day he manifests his favor towards me, and continues to do this, so that even by night I have occasion to praise him, I will bewail the more frankly my miseries before him, saying, O Lord! my rock, why hast thou forgotten me? In making such a complaint, the faithful are not to be understood as meaning that God has utterly rejected them: for if they did not believe that they were under his care and protection, it were in vain for them to call upon him. But they speak in this manner according to the sense of the flesh. This forgetfulness, then, relates both to outward appearance, and to the disquietude by which the faithful are troubled according to the flesh, although, in the meantime, they rest assured by faith that God regards them, and will not be deaf to their request.