5 Why are you crushed down, O my soul? and why are you troubled in me? put your hope in God; for I will again give him praise who is my help and my God.
But I will go on ever hoping, and increasing in all your praise.
For they did not make the land theirs by their swords, and it was not their arms which kept them safe; but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your face, because you had pleasure in them.
Why are you crushed down, O my soul? and why are you troubled in me? put your hope in God; for I will again give him praise who is my help and my God.
Take your rest in the Lord, waiting quietly for him; do not be angry because of the man who does well in his evil ways, and gives effect to his bad designs.
Who without reason for hope, in faith went on hoping, so that he became the father of a number of nations, as it had been said, So will your seed be. And not being feeble in faith though his body seemed to him little better than dead (he being about a hundred years old) and Sarah was no longer able to have children: Still, he did not give up faith in the undertaking of God, but was made strong by faith, giving glory to God,
I said to myself, The Lord is my heritage; and because of this I will have hope in him. The Lord is good to those who are waiting for him, to the soul which is looking for him. It is good to go on hoping and quietly waiting for the salvation of the Lord.
I will keep God in memory, with sounds of grief; my thoughts are troubled, and my spirit is overcome. (Selah.)
From the end of the earth will I send up my cry to you, when my heart is overcome: take me to the rock which is over-high for me.
My heart is deeply wounded, and the fear of death has come on me. Fear and shaking have come over me, with deep fear I am covered.
And David was greatly troubled; for the people were talking of stoning him, because their hearts were bitter, every man sorrowing for his sons and his daughters: but David made himself strong in the Lord his God.
May the Lord's approval be resting on you and may he give you peace.
And he took with him Peter and James and John, and grief and great trouble came on him. And he said to them, My soul is very sad, even to death: be here a little time, and keep watch.
Teaching them to keep all the rules which I have given you: and see, I am ever with you, even to the end of the world.
See, the virgin will be with child, and will give birth to a son, and they will give him the name Immanuel, that is, God with us.
The evil man has gone after my soul; my life is crushed down to the earth: he has put me in the dark, like those who have long been dead. Because of this my spirit is overcome; and my heart is full of fear.
When his cry comes up to me, I will give him an answer: I will be with him in trouble; I will make him free from danger and give him honour. With long life will he be rewarded; and I will let him see my salvation.
I am troubled, I am made low; I go weeping all the day.
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.