Psalms 42:6

_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._ O my God, my soul is cast down within me. David here follows out his own call to his soul to 'hope in God' (Psalms 42:5). Jonah evidently based his prayer (Jonah 2:7) on the prayer of David: "When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple." The great Antitype, Messiah, in Matthew 26:38 ("My soul is exceeding sorrowful" - literally, surrounded with sorrow; and John 12:27, "Now is my soul troubled"), used the very words wherewith t

6._O my God! my soul is cast down within me. _If we suppose that this verse requires no supplement, then it will consist of two distinct and separate sentences. Literally it may be read thus: _O my God! my soul is cast down within me, therefore will I remember thee, etc. _But the greater number of expositors render the word על-כן _, al-ken, _by _forasmuch as, _or _because, _so that it is employed to express the reason of what is contained in the preceding clause. And certainly it would be very appropriate in this sense, That as often as David, from the land of Jordan, in which he now lay hid as an exile, set himself to think of the sanctuary, his sorrow was so much the more increased. If, however, any would rather, as I have already observed, distinguish this verse into two parts, it must be understood as meaning that David thought of God in his exile, not to nourish his grief, but to as...

6-11 The way to forget our miseries, is to remember the God of our mercies. David saw troubles coming from God's wrath, and that discouraged him. But if one trouble follow hard after another, if all seem to combine for our ruin, let us remember they are all appointed and overruled by the Lord. David regards the Divine favour as the fountain of all the good he looked for. In the Saviour's name let us hope and pray. One word from him will calm every storm, and turn midnight darkness into the light of noon, the bitterest complaints into joyful praises. Our believing expectation of mercy must quicken our prayers for it. At length, is faith came off conqueror, by encouraging him to trust in the name of the Lord, and to stay himself upon his God. He adds, And my God; this thought enabled him to triumph over all his griefs and fears. Let us never think that the God of our life, and the Rock of...

Verse Psalms 42:6. _O MY GOD, MY SOUL IS CAST DOWN_] It is impossible for me to lighten this load; I am full of discouragements, notwithstanding I labour to hope in thee. _THEREFORE WILL I REMEMBER THEE FROM THE LAND OF JORDAN_] That is, from Judea, this being the chief river of that country. _AND OF THE HERMONITES_] הרמונים the _Hermons_, used in the _plural_ because Hermon has a _double_ ridge joining in an angle, and rising in many summits. The river _Jordan_, and the mountains of _Hermon_, were the most striking features of the holy land. _FROM THE HILL MIZAR._] מהר מצער _mehar mitsar, from the little_ _hill_, as in the _margin_. _The little hill_ probably means _Sion_, which was little in comparison of the Hermons. - Bishop _Horsley_. No such h

O MY GOD, MY SOUL IS CAST DOWN WITHIN ME - This is the utterance of a soul in anguish, notwithstanding the purpose not to be cast down, and the conviction that hope ought to be cherished. The psalmist cannot but say that, despite all this, he is sad. His troubles come rushing over his soul; they all return at once; his heart is oppressed, and he is constrained to confess that, notwithstanding his solemn purpose not to be sad, and the conviction that he ought to be cheerful, and his wish to be and to appear so, yet his sorrows get the mastery over all this, and his heart is filled with grief. What sufferer has not felt thus? When he really wished to trust in God; when he hoped that things would be better; when he saw that he ought to be calm and cheerful, his sorrows have returned like a flood, sweeping all these feelings away for the time, filling his soul with anguish, compelling him to...

EXPOSITION THIS psalm, committed (like so many others) to the precentor, or. chief musician, for its musical setting, is entitled "Maschil of the sous of Korah"—_i.e._ an "instruction," or didactic psalm, composed by the Korahite Levites—a Levitical family of singers (1 Chronicles 26:1, 1 Chronicles 26:2; 2 Chronicles 20:19). To the same family are assigned Psalm 45-49; in the present book, and Psalms 84:1; Psalms 85:1;...

O MY GOD, MY SOUL IS CAST DOWN WITHIN ME,.... Which the psalmist repeats, partly to show the greatness of his dejection, though he had not lost his view of interest in God as his covenant God; and partly to observe another method he made use of to remove his dejection and refresh his spirits; and that was by calling to mind past experiences of divine goodness; THEREFORE WILL I REMEMBER THEE FROM THE LAND OF JORDAN; the country round about it, or rather beyond it; which was at the farthest parts of the land of Canaan, where David was obliged to flee, and where he had often met with God; AND OF THE HERMONITES; who inhabited the mountain of Hermon; or the Hermonian mountains, as the Targum; see Psalms 133:3; a mountain upon the border of the land of Israel eastward, and which was very high; Cocceius thinks the Geshurites are meant; see...

We often read this Psalm, because we are very often in the same state that the psalmist was in when he wrote it, and the language seems to suit us at many periods of our life. Psalms 42:1. _As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God._ It is the «hart» that panteth; and, in the Hebrew, the word is in the feminine. The old naturalists say that the female has greater thirst than the male, and that it shows it more, having more feebleness of body, and less power of endurance. The hart is said to be, naturally, a thirsty creature, and when it has been long hunted, its thirst seems to be insatiable. The psalmist does not say, «thy soul hungereth,» but, «My soul thirsteth.» As man can bear hunger much longer than he can bear thirst; he may continue without food for days, but not without drink; so the psalmist mentions the most thirsty creat

II. THE EXODUS SECTION: BOOK TWO:PSALM 42-72 The second division of the book of Psalms corresponds to the book of Exodus, the second book of the Pentateuch. That book begins with the groans and moans of a suffering people in Egypt and after redemption by blood and by power, ends with the glory of the Lord filling the tabernacle when the work was finished. Ruin, oppression, suffering and sorrow, ending in deliverance and redemption, is the order in which the Psalms in this section are arranged. It is a most interesting study and we regret that we cannot enter into all the details, to explore these mines of prophecy. The oppressed, persecuted people, who suffer surrounded by the ungodly, is that same godly remnant of Israelites. Their deliverance comes by the visible manifestation of the Lord, the second coming of our Lord. The Psalm which concludes this Exodus of the Psalms is 72, the gre...

PSALMS 42, 43. Originally these two Pss. were one. This is proved by the long refrain common to each, Why art thou cast down, O my soul, etc. It recurs in Psalms 42:5; Psalms 42:11 and Psalms 43:5, and thus divides the Ps. into fairly equal portions. The theme, moreover, is the same in both, and Psalms 43 is an orphan Ps. (p. 366), _i.e._ it has no title, because it did not originally rank as an independent poem. PSALMS 42:1. The misery of exile from the Temple and the memory of happy worship there. PSALMS 42:1. For hart read with many sc