Psalm Chapter 42

Psalm 42: The Thirst That Teaches

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." The image is not decorative — it is desperate. A deer does not pant after water as a matter of preference; it pants because it will die without it. The sons of Korah who wrote this psalm understood that the soul's thirst for God is not a religious hobby but a biological emergency of the spirit. And what makes the thirst worse is memory: "I went with the multitude to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise." The psalmist once knew the joy of worship in company, the festival procession, the glad noise. Now he is exiled — perhaps in the north, near the headwaters of the Jordan and the slopes of Hermon, far from the temple — and the distance is killing him. His enemies taunt with the question every sufferer dreads: "Where is thy God?" And then the most extraordinary image: "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." The abyss of his grief calls out to the abyss of God's sovereignty. And yet, twice in this psalm, the same refrain rises like a man pulling himself to his feet: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him." That "yet" is the whole theology of hope compressed into a single syllable.

00:00 The Panting Soul
01:00 Deep Calleth unto Deep
02:00 Hope Thou in God