Psalms 42–72

Richard D. Phillips

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781629954561
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

The psalmists lay bare the full range of human emotions before the heart of God—but pastor-theologian Richard D. Phillips also shows how they are guides pointing us to Christ.

1

HOPE FOR THE DOWNCAST SOUL

Psalms 42–43

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. (Ps. 42:5–6)

T he book of Psalms is precious to Christians as our companion in the spiritual walk of faith. The Psalms take believers by the hand and guide us in our communion with God through all the varied scenes of life. These are songs of the heart that God himself teaches us to sing: songs of joy, songs of pain, songs of fear, and songs of faith. In these inspired poems we find the full range of human emotions laid bare before the heart of God in settings familiar to our experience. John Calvin commented: “What various and resplendent riches are contained in this treasury, it were difficult to find words to describe . . . I have been wont to call this book not inappropriately, an anatomy of all parts of the soul; for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror.”¹

Book 2 of the Psalms, comprising Psalms 42–72, is distinctive for its variety of authors, including the eight psalms written by “the Sons of Korah.” They were a clan of Levites employed in the sacred music of the temple. They also kept the temple gates and were guardians of the ark of the covenant. This seems to explain their frequent expressions of devotion to the temple courts as the place where God’s face could be seen. The Korahite motto is expressed in Psalm 84:10: “For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” The fact that book 2 begins with eight psalms from the Sons of Korah suggests a focus in this collection on communion with God, especially as experienced in the liturgical life of the tabernacle and temple.

A further note about the Sons of Korah is that their namesake was one of the villains of the Old Testament. During the exodus from Egypt, Korah led a rebellion of 250 leaders against Moses and was struck down by God’s judgment (Num. 16). Numbers 26:11 points out, however, that “the sons of Korah did not die,” which suggests that they refused to follow in their father’s rebellion. This fact reminds us that ungodly parents can produce godly children and that no child is disqualified from serving God because of the sins of his or her parents. Moreover, their awareness of God’s grace in employing them in sacred service despite their family’s disgrace may account in part for the intense fervor for God expressed in the psalms of the Sons of Korah.

FAR FROM GOD

Scholars are widely agreed that Psalms 42 and 43 were most likely a single original composition. Psalm 43 is the only one of the psalms ascribed to the Sons of Korah to lack a superscription, which suggests that it was originally the concluding portion of Psalm 42. This perhaps explains why many ancient manuscripts combine the two psalms as one. Moreover, Psalm 43 repeats the refrain of Psalm 42—“Why are you cast down, O my soul”—and seems to fit as the final section of a unified composition. This combined poem is a song of lament from a temple servant whose heart is downcast over his separation from the presence of God.

The psalmist’s chief desire—a longing for fellowship with God—is expressed by a vivid simile: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Ps. 42:1). A thirsty deer will search until it finds a source of water, and then it will cast itself into the stream to drink. The psalmist, distressed by a dry soul that is distant from God, thirsts for the life that he is missing: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (v. 2). God is the source of life, and his salvation is often described in Scripture as living waters. Like a deer that drinks deeply from the refreshing stream, the psalmist knows that through fellowship with God, the vigor will return to his spirit. The divine presence is not a luxury but a necessity to his existence.

As we might expect from the Korahites, who were Levitical singers, communion with God is associated here with the liturgy of the temple. “When shall I come and appear before God?” the writer asks (Ps. 42:2). It seems that the psalmist has been forced to be absent from Jerusalem and the temple courts. “I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar,” he complains (v. 6).

We do not know the exact location, but the psalmist places himself generally in the region beyond the Jordan to the north and east, located around the Mount Hermon range of mountains. Mizar means “little hill,” so he may be located atop one of the lesser mounts near Mount Hermon, at the northern end of Israel, 130 miles from Jerusalem. This is one of the last points from which one can glimpse the hills around the holy city while journeying north. Commentators thus suggest that the psalmist might be among the Jews being led into exile in Babylon, taking one last look at his beloved city of Jerusalem. Alternatively, King David crossed the Jordan in this region while fleeing from his rebel son Absalom, so some have wondered whether the psalmist was one of the Levites in David’s company. Whatever the cause of his separation, this psalm may be expressing “his ‘last sigh’ before [the temple] vanished forever from his sight.”²

While enduring this forced absence from the temple courts, the psalmist pines over his memories of the sacred assemblies: “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival” (Ps. 42:4). Many Christians have had the experience of moving to a place where they cannot find a church with reverent, rich, and joyful worship. Their longing for strong biblical preaching becomes almost a physical craving, like a deer panting for streams of water. The memory of earlier times when they reveled in the congregation, like the ancient Israelite festivals in “the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise,” only makes their desire more palpable. So it was for this Korahite, who was forced to be absent from the house of the Lord.

The homesickness that we feel when we are unable to join fellow believers for worship should call to mind the greater alienation from God that is caused by sin. The eighteenth‑century preacher George Horne notes from Psalm 42 that “the Christian pilgrim cannot but bewail his exile from the heavenly Jerusalem, out of which sin hath driven him, and doomed him to wander, for a while, in the vale of misery. Led, by repentance and faith, to look back to the place from whence he is fallen, he sighs after the unspeakable joys of the celestial Zion; longing to keep a festival, and celebrate a jubilee in heaven; to join in the song of angels, and bear a part in the music of hallelujahs.”³

The psalm’s opening stanza makes an important point about worship. The psalmist speaks of missing the liturgy and the spiritual excitement of the temple and its festivals. Yet his heart is truly yearning for God himself. William Plumer comments that “truly pious men were never satisfied with the ordinances of God without the God of the ordinances.”⁴ The psalmist’s longing, though stirred by the memory of worship services, is directed toward God himself.

Psalm 42 reminds us that true spirituality expresses itself in a longing for God. Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God” (John 17:3). Christianity is not a religion that merely consists in knowledge of doctrines, important as doctrines are; it is quite possible to know the Bible well, yet live a worldly life if we are not thirstily pursuing God. C. S. Lewis once complained that the problem with people is not that they demand too much, but that they settle for too little.⁵ So it is for the Christian who does not seek to personally know and enjoy God. Augustine explained our need for God in the famous prayer of his Confessions: “Thou hast created us for thyself, and our heart cannot be quieted till it may find repose in thee.”⁶

This opening exclamation of Psalm 42 challenges us greatly in a time when Christians seem more interested in the benefits of the Christian lifestyle than in the glory of communion with God. Do you have a passion for God? Do you realize that the true purpose of your life is the pleasure and glory of the Lord, and that the highest possession you could ever attain is spiritual communion with God? When we come to church, are we aware that we are coming into God’s presence and that the elements of worship are of value only as they fix our hearts on him?

If we have a heart that seeks after God, we will be increasingly immune to the allure of the world, and our lives will bear the holy marks of his likeness. Our growth as Christians and our enjoyment of the blessings that God gives are ultimately dependent on our thirsting for God as a deer pants for flowing streams. For those of us who know too little of this great spiritual reality, the words of William Cowper’s hymn should enter into our prayers:

O for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heav’nly frame,
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb.⁷

THE DOWNCAST SOUL

The psalmist proves that the most godly believers can go through times of spiritual distress. Martyn Lloyd‑Jones chronicled this reality in his book Spiritual Depression. He wrote: “Christian people too often seem to be perpetually in the doldrums and too often give this appearance of unhappiness and of lack of freedom and absence of joy.” This is one reason, he added, “why large numbers of people have ceased to be interested in Christianity.”⁸ The question raised even by Christians was expressed in the title of Erma Bombeck’s book If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?⁹

The answer of Psalm 42 is that life is not a bowl of cherries. The psalmist details a number of reasons that he is depressed, in addition to his separation from God. One reason is that he suffers the taunts of his enemies: “My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” (Ps. 42:3). The author is deeply grieved in his spirit, hardly able to eat because of his sorrow. Apparently some mocked that God had abandoned him: “As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, ‘Where is your God?’” (v. 10).

These are taunts that Christians may hear when we go through troubles in life. Unbelieving neighbors or coworkers may compound our distress when we lose a job, suffer an illness, or experience any number of life’s myriad woes. “What good is your religion, anyway?” they may revile. Job’s wife spat into that godly but afflicted man’s teeth: “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). We can easily imagine how such mocking depressed this psalmist, who was separated from the temple. Charles Spurgeon writes: “The wicked know that our worst misfortune would be to lose God’s favour, hence their diabolical malice leads them to declare that such is the case.”¹⁰ Satan, knowing he cannot destroy God’s children, often uses such taunts to discourage and torment believers; anticipating his strategy, Christians should be alert to the danger of allowing such mockery to depress our spirits. How much more important it is that we not afflict ourselves with such thoughts of abandonment by God. Romans 8:38–39 reminds of the truth to which we must cling in our trials: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Not only was the psalmist faced with taunts, however, but he was oppressed as well with malicious assaults. “Vindicate me, O God,” he cries, “and defend my cause against an ungodly people, from the deceitful and unjust man deliver me!” (Ps. 43:1). He has been unjustly attacked, just as everyone who tries to live a God‑honoring life will sometimes be unjustly maligned or mistreated. Paul informs us that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). The oppression is so great that the writer feels overwhelmed by his trials. He expresses this in Psalm 42:7: “Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.” He is in the region where the headwaters of the Jordan roar in the canyons, and the sound of raging waters from the deep reminds him of the troubles that are pouring over his head.

This leads to a third cause of his distress: his fear that God really has abandoned him: “I say to God, my rock: ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?’” (Ps. 42:9). Here is an example of the honesty that makes the book of Psalms such a help to God’s people. The psalm writers pour out their hearts, admitting their doubts, fears, and complaints against God; realizing this encourages our authenticity in our own prayer lives. God knows how we are feeling, and a step in recovering ourselves spiritually is to express ourselves honestly and openly to God. At the same time, the psalmist calls upon God as “my rock,” reminding us to unburden our hearts in an attitude of faith.

HOPE IN GOD

Psalm 42 is valuable not only in depicting spiritual depression but also in showing the biblical way to deal with a downcast heart. We see this in the refrain that occurs three times: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within m...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Introduction
• Preface
• 1. Hope for the Downcast Soul: Psalms 42–43
• 2. Conquering Lambs: Psalm 44
• 3. The Wedding of Weddings: Psalm 45
• 4. A Mighty Fortress: Psalm 46
• 5. Praise to the Great King: Psalm 47
• 6. Extolling Zion’s City: Psalm 48
• 7. Solving the Problem of Life: Psalm 49
• 8. A Call to True Worship: Psalm 50
• 9. The Psalm of Repentance: Psalm 51
• 10. Boasting in the Lord: Psalm 52
• 11. Man Foolish and Fallen: Psalm 53
• 12. God My Helper: Psalm 54
• 13. A Shelter in the Storm: Psalm 55
• 14. From Fear to Faith: Psalm 56
• 15. Hiding in Thee: Psalm 57
• 16. The “Silent Ones” Rebuked: Psalm 58
• 17. In the Watchtower: Psalm 59
• 18. Under God’s Banner: Psalm 60
• 19. The Rock That Is Higher Than I: Psalm 61
• 20. Trusting in God Alone: Psalm 62
• 21. Thirsting for God: Psalm 63
• 22. God’s Saving Arrow: Psalm 64
• 23. God of Our Salvation: Psalm 65
• 24. Telling What God Has Done: Psalm 66
• 25. Let the Nations Be Glad: Psalm 67
• 26. Rise Up, O Lord! Psalm 68:1–18
• 27. Awesome in His Sanctuary: Psalm 68:19–35
• 28. Cry of the Weary Soul: Psalm 69:1–18
• 29. Your Salvation, O God: Psalm 69:19–36
• 30. Make Haste, O Lord! Psalm 70
• 31. When My Strength Is Spent: Psalm 71
• 32. The Kingdom of Righteousness: Psalm 72
• Bibliography
• Index of Scripture
• Index of Subjects and Names