2 My soul is dry for need of God, the living God; when may I come and see the face of God?
<A Psalm. Of David. When he was in the waste land of Judah.> O God, you are my God; early will I make my search for you: my soul is dry for need of you, my flesh is wasted with desire for you, as a dry and burning land where no water is;
The passion of my soul's desire is for the house of the Lord; my heart and my flesh are crying out for the living God.
On the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus got up and said in a loud voice, If any man is in need of drink let him come to me and I will give it to him.
For a day in your house is better than a thousand. It is better to be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to be living in the tents of sin.
The delights of your house will be showered on them; you will give them drink from the river of your pleasures. For with you is the fountain of life: in your light we will see light.
One prayer have I made to the Lord, and this is my heart's desire; that I may have a place in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, looking on his glory, and getting wisdom in his Temple.
But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and an eternal king: when he is angry, the earth is shaking with fear, and the nations give way before his wrath.
Happy are they whose resting-place is in your house: they will still be praising you. (Selah.)
Three times in the year let all your males come before the Lord God.
For even as the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have life in himself.
They go from strength to strength; every one of them comes before God in Zion.
If only I had knowledge of where he might be seen, so that I might come even to his seat!
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 42
Commentary on Psalms 42 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 42
If the book of Psalms be, as some have styled it, a mirror or looking-glass of pious and devout affections, this psalm in particular deserves, as much as any one psalm, to be so entitled, and is as proper as any to kindle and excite such in us: gracious desires are here strong and fervent; gracious hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, are here struggling, but the pleasing passion comes off a conqueror. Or we may take it for a conflict between sense and faith, sense objecting and faith answering.
The title does not tell us who was the penman of this psalm, but most probably it was David, and we may conjecture that it was penned by him at a time when, either by Saul's persecution or Absalom's rebellion, he was driven from the sanctuary and cut off from the privilege of waiting upon God in public ordinances. The strain of it is much the same with 63, and therefore we may presume it was penned by the same hand and upon the same or a similar occasion. In singing it, if we be either in outward affliction or in inward distress, we may accommodate to ourselves the melancholy expressions we find here; if not, we must, in singing them, sympathize with those whose case they speak too plainly, and thank God it is not our own case; but those passages in it which express and excite holy desires towards God, and dependence on him, we must earnestly endeavour to bring our minds up to.
To the chief musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah.
Psa 42:1-5
Holy love to God as the chief good and our felicity is the power of godliness, the very life and soul of religion, without which all external professions and performances are but a shell and carcase: now here we have some of the expressions of that love. Here is,
Psa 42:6-11
Complaints and comforts here, as before, take their turn, like day and night in the course of nature.