8 By day Jehovah commandeth His kindness, And by night a song `is' with me, A prayer to the God of my life.
If I have remembered Thee on my couch, In the watches -- I meditate on Thee.
Exult do saints in honour, They sing aloud on their beds.
Thou `art' He, my king, O God, Command the deliverances of Jacob.
As dew of Hermon -- That cometh down on hills of Zion, For there Jehovah commanded the blessing -- Life unto the age!
And the centurion answering said, `Sir, I am not worthy that thou mayest enter under my roof, but only say a word, and my servant shall be healed;
then I have commanded My blessing on you in the sixth year, and it hath made the increase for three years;
By David. Jehovah `is' my light and my salvation, Whom do I fear? Jehovah `is' the strength of my life, Of whom am I afraid?
Thou `art' a hiding-place for me, From distress Thou dost keep me, `With' songs of deliverance dost compass me. Selah.
I remember my music in the night, With my heart I meditate, and my spirit doth search diligently:
Singing is to you as in a night sanctified for a festival, And joy of heart as he who is going with a pipe, To go in to the mountain of Jehovah, Unto 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.