8 But the Lord will send his mercy in the daytime, and in the night his song will be with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
When the memory of you comes to me on my bed, and when I give thought to you in the night-time.
Let the saints have joy and glory: let them give cries of joy on their beds.
You are my King and my God; ordering salvation for Jacob.
Like the dew of Hermon, which comes down on the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord gave orders for the blessing, even life for ever.
And the captain in answer said, Lord, I am not good enough for you to come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be made well.
Then I will send my blessing on you in the sixth year, and the land will give fruit enough for three years.
<Of David.> The Lord is my light and my salvation; who is then a cause of fear to me? the Lord is the strength of my life; who is a danger to me?
You are my safe and secret place; you will keep me from trouble; you will put songs of salvation on the lips of those who are round me. (Selah.)
The memory of my song comes back to me in the night; my thoughts are moving in my heart; my spirit is searching with care.
You will have a song, as in the night when a holy feast is kept; and you will be glad in heart, as when they go with music of the pipe to the mountain of the Lord, the Rock of Israel.
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.