Psalm 42
Prayer from deep depression
For the music leader. An enlightening psalm [1] of Korah’s family. [2]
1So thirsty for God
For the music leader. An enlightening psalm [1] of Korah’s family. [2]
1Like a deer pants for water.My thirsty spirit pants for you, my God.
2I’m so thirsty for God,
The living God.
When can I go to him?
When can I stand in front of him?
3Tears have fed me day and night.
They’re all the food I’ve had.
Meanwhile, these people taunt me all day long,
“Where’s your God now?” [3]
4I remember how it used to be.
But now I lay my broken heart in your hands.
I used to lead the worship procession
Into the house of God.
There we sang, joyful and thankful,
As we gathered for happy holidays.
5Spirit of mine, why are you depressed?
Why do you make me feel so bad?
I still have my hope in God.
I’ll praise him again and he’ll help me again.
6God, the spiritual core of my life
Is broken in despair.
But I remember you from Jordan Land,
With its peaks of Hermon and Mizar. [4]
I pray, while deep in depression
7Deep in depression I cry outAt the roar of your deep water.
Your pounding waterfalls and punishing waves
Break over me with crushing force.
8But the LORD sends his kindness in the day,
And gives us music for the night.
So, I talk to the God of my life.
9I’ll ask God, my solid rock in life,
“How could you forget me like this?
Why do you let these people hurt me?
And why do you abandon me to this grief?”
10These enemies taunt me to the bone.
All day and every day they hammer me,
“Where is your God now?”
11Spirit of mine, why are you depressed?
Why do you make me feel so bad?
I still have my hope in God.
I’ll praise him again and he’ll help me again.
Footnotes
The subtitle wasn’t part of the original psalm. “An enlightening psalm” is a guess. The original Hebrew word is maskil (mass-KEEL). Scholars say they aren’t sure what it means. They say they don’t even know if the word refers to the lyrics or the music. Maskil sounds a bit like another Hebrew word, askilkha, which means “let me enlighten you.” Some scholars associate maskil with a root word, sakal, which generates a lot of words with various meanings such as: thoughtful, instructive, wise, and proper. One theory is that the word relates to both lyrics and music. It could, for example, describe the lyrics as “thoughtful” and the music as a harmony fit for that theme.
Korah was a musical family in the tribe of Levi, one of the 12 tribes that made up the original nation of Israel. Levite families worked as priests and worship leaders and assistants for the Jewish nation.
The song reads like one of the blues the Jewish people sang after Babylonians from what is now Iraq erased the Jewish nation from the world map, leveled Jerusalem, and exiled many of the surviving Jews to what is now Iraq. There, without the Jerusalem Temple or without the ability to offer sacrifices, the only way they knew to worship was to pray.
Location of Mizar is unknown. It may have been one of the mountain peaks beside Mount Hermon, one of the highest mountains in the region.
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