Psalms 42 and 43 · Passage · Despair and Depression
Why Are You Downcast, O My Soul?
Psalms 42 and 43 repeat one refrain three times in sixteen verses of lament.
The Hebrew verb behind “downcast” in the refrain stands again in Psalm 42:6, where the Berean Standard Bible renders it “my soul despairs”.
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after You, O God.
- The passage
- Psalm 42:1 to 11, Psalm 43:1 to 5
- Book
- Psalms
- Hold in memory
- Psalm 43:3
Summary
Psalms 42 and 43 are the prayer of a man who once led worshippers to the house of God and can no longer go there. His enemies mock him, and his tears do not stop. Through all of it he holds to the LORD as his own God, and he expects to praise Him again.
- Psalm 43 has no title of its own, and Franz Delitzsch and A. F. Kirkpatrick held that the two psalms were first one poem.
- In the refrain the singer turns from his grief to question his own soul and tell it to hope in God.
- The first two stanzas lament what the singer suffers, and the third, Psalm 43, asks God to act for him.
A Soul That Thirsts for God
The first stanza moves from thirst to tears to the memory of festival days.
Why Are You Downcast, O My Soul? studies Psalms 42 and 43, whose refrain is the key text of the trial of despair and depression. Its question is how a believer who feels forgotten by God can move toward hope while his grief is still on him.
It reads the two psalms as one poem of three stanzas and follows its images of thirst, deep water and light. It gives the evidence on whether the two psalms were one from the start. It also sets out where commentators have placed the singer, with the objection raised to each.
In Psalm 42:2 the singer asks, “When shall I come and appear in God’s presence?”
My tears have been my food both day and night, while men ask me all day long, “Where is your God?”The verse stands here because it sets the singer's weeping beside the mocking question of his enemies, the two griefs of the first stanza.
He remembers how he walked with the crowd, “leading the procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and praise” (Psalm 42:4). The memory sharpens his grief.
Three Stanzas and One Refrain
The refrain divides the poem into stanzas of five, six and five verses.
The lament changes from stanza to stanza while the refrain stays nearly the same.
| Stanza | The lament | The refrain in the Berean words |
|---|---|---|
| Psalm 42:1 to 5 | Thirst for God, tears day and night, the taunt of the enemies and the memory of the festival procession | “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.” |
| Psalm 42:6 to 11 | The soul in despair far off by the Jordan and Hermon, the waves rolling over him and the question why God has forgotten him | “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.” |
| Psalm 43:1 to 5 | The plea against an ungodly nation and the prayer for God's light and truth | The second stanza's refrain again, word for word, closing the poem |
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832 to 1869), called the differences between the refrains “slight and immaterial variations”. Franz Delitzsch found “unmistakeable progress” from one part to the next.
Deep Calls to Deep
The second stanza speaks from a far country where the waters roar.
The singer remembers God “from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon” and from Mount Mizar (Psalm 42:6). A. F. Kirkpatrick wrote that Mizar “cannot now be identified”.
Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and waves have rolled over me.The verse stands here because its waterfalls and waves turn the country around the singer into a picture of the trouble that covers him.
Between the waves and the taunts stands one line of trust: “The LORD decrees His loving devotion by day, and at night His song is with me” (Psalm 42:8).
I say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?”The verse stands here because the singer calls God his Rock in the very sentence that asks why God has forgotten him.
The mocking question of the first stanza comes back in Psalm 42:10, and the singer likens it to the crushing of his bones.
The Sons of Korah and the Missing Title
Old manuscripts and commentators differ on whether Psalm 43 stands as a psalm of its own.
The title of Psalm 42 calls it a maskil for the choirmaster, of the sons of Korah.
Two psalms or one poem2 paragraphs
Franz Delitzsch, in his Biblical Commentary on the Psalms (English edition 1871), noted that “an old Midrash reckons 147 Psalms”, counting these two as one. He judged that the likeness of situation, structure and refrain “is decisive in favour of these Psalms, which are commonly reckoned as two, being one.”
A. F. Kirkpatrick held the same in the Cambridge Bible (1906), and he granted that the division “appears in the majority of Hebrew MSS., and in all Ancient Versions”. He wrote that some manuscripts appear to unite the two, which may be due to the absence of a title at the head of Psalm 43.
Send Out Your Light and Your Truth
Psalm 43 pleads in court and then asks for guides home.
Psalm 43 opens with a plea in court: “Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation” (Psalm 43:1).
Send out Your light and Your truth; let them lead me. Let them bring me to Your holy mountain, and to the place where You dwell.The verse stands here because it names the two guides the singer asks for and the place he has longed for since the first verse.
The road ends in worship. The singer says he will go “to the altar of God, to God, my greatest joy” and praise Him with the harp (Psalm 43:4).
How Teachers Have Read the Poem
Two teachers, one of the early church and one of the eighteenth century, each on a line of the poem.
died 430 · Augustine of Hippo
Exposition on Psalm 43
The quotation1 quotation
“And again, in order that he may draw the sound from that sounding-board below, he addresses his soul: he says, ‘Why art thou sorrowful, O my soul, and why dost thou disquiet me?’ I am in tribulations, in weariness, in mourning, ‘Why dost thou disquiet me, O my soul?’ Who is the speaker, to whom is he speaking? That it is the soul to which he is speaking, everybody knows: for it is obvious: the appeal is addressed to it directly: ‘Why art thou sorrowful, O my soul, and why dost thou disquiet me?’ The question is as to the speaker. It is not the flesh addressing the soul, surely, since the flesh cannot speak without the soul. For it is more appropriate for the soul to address the flesh, than for the flesh to address the soul. ...We perceive then that we have a certain part, in which is ‘the image of God;’ viz. the mind and reason. It was that same mind that prayed for ‘God's Light’ and ‘God's Truth.’ It is the same mind by which we apprehend right and wrong: it is by the same that we discern truth from falsehood. It is this same that we call ‘understanding;’ which ‘understanding,’ indeed, is wanting to the brutes. And this ‘understanding’ whoever neglects in himself, and holds it in less account than the other parts of his nature, and casts it off, just as if he had it not, is addressed in the Psalm, ‘Be ye not as the horse and the mule, which have no understanding.’ It is our ‘understanding’ then that is addressing our soul. The latter is withered away from tribulations, worn out in anguish, made ‘sorrowful’ in temptations, fainting in toils. The mind, catching a glimpse of Truth above, would fain rouse her spirits, and she says, ‘Why art thou sorrowful, O my soul?’ ...”
Augustine of Hippo · Exposition on Psalm 43 · on Psalm 43:5Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible
The quotation1 quotation
“Even the royal prophet was a weeping prophet when he wanted the comforts of God's house. His tears were mingled with his meat; nay, they were his meat day and night; he fed, he feasted, upon his own tears, when there was such just cause for them; and it was a satisfaction to him that he found his heart so much affected with a grievance of this nature.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Psalm 42:3Puritan
Who Speaks, and Where He Stands
The readings run from the reign of David to the captivity of the people.
David, driven from the sanctuaryMatthew Henry
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), wrote that the penman was “most probably” David, driven from the sanctuary “either by Saul's persecution or Absalom's rebellion”.
Against it, the title names the sons of Korah, and Kirkpatrick observed that in Absalom's revolt David “was among sympathising friends, not among mocking heathen enemies”.
A Levite in exile with David beyond the JordanFranz Delitzsch
Delitzsch held the psalm to be “the poem of a Korahitic Levite, who found himself in exile beyond the Jordan among the attendants of David, his exiled king”. He read the land of Jordan and Hermon as the country east of the Jordan, where David stayed at Mahanaim.
Against it, Kirkpatrick answered that “Mahanaim was too distant from Hermon to suit the description of the locality” in Psalm 42:6.
A Levite held in the north under the kingsA. F. Kirkpatrick
Kirkpatrick placed the singer where “the Jordan takes its rise from the roots of Hermon”, a Korahite Levite kept from the temple while it still stood. He thought it might have happened in one of the Syrian or Assyrian invasions or after the northern kingdom had fallen.
Against it, Delitzsch argued that this region “is not necessarily the northern mountain range together with the sources of the Jordan”.
Captives in exileAdam Clarke
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832), read the refrain as a promise that God would release the singer and his fellow captives.
Against it, Kirkpatrick held that the temple was standing and its services were carried on, and the singer expects to go up to the altar again (Psalm 43:4).
Hope Spoken to the Soul
The poem ends with the question still asked and the answer still given.
At the close of Psalm 43 the singer is still far from the altar, and he waits for God to answer his prayer.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Psalms (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1871), on Psalm 42.
- A. F. Kirkpatrick, The Book of Psalms, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (1906), introduction to Psalms 42 and 43 and note on Psalm 42:6.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on Psalm 42:11.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Psalm 42.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Psalm 42:11.
- Augustine of Hippo, Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 43 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 8)
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Psalm 42:3.
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