The Prayer of a Longing Heart
Last time, in part 1 of our study on Psalm 42, we began to consider how love for God’s house is the essence of true piety.
Having given attention to verses 1 and 2, we noted the poignant question at the end of verse 2: “When shall I come and appear before God?” Woodenly in Hebrew, it reads, “Appear before the face of God.” This is the standard way of describing the believer participating in the three major stated festivals of the old covenant: the Feast of Unleavened Bread (or Passover), the Feast of the Weeks (or Feast of Harvest), and the Feast of Ingathering (or Feast of Booths/Tabernacles) (Exod 23:17; 34:23). This was a believer who yearned to be participating in the regular rhythms of worship and life among the covenant people of Israel. This was not a vague, spiritual yearning, but a longing after the God who had revealed himself in the Scriptures.
But then in verse 3, the psalmist continues to describe his grief:
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
So great is his sorrow that he finds himself weeping day and night, taking in no sustenance save his own tears. Meanwhile, to add insult to (spiritual) injury, there are unnamed parties (“they,” who are identified later in the psalm as the enemies of the speaker) who are asking this taunting question, “Where is your God?” Perhaps this mocking question rattles around in the psalmist’s mind and echoes repeatedly “all the day long.” One commentator suggests that these enemies believe this God whom the psalmist cries out to either cannot come to his aid or simply chooses not to—that is, like the mockers surrounding the Lord Jesus on Golgotha, they suggest that God may very well have the power to send rescue, but he does not opt to because the one crying out does not please God sufficiently.1 This is a cruel and perverse mockery, indeed.
In light of the swelling grief of his soul, the psalmist prepares to pour out his soul (v. 4):
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.
This grief will be comforted; in fact, the psalmist finds resolution within this psalm itself. Nevertheless, verses like this are instructive for the believer that it is not sinful to lay out one’s sorrows before the Lord in this way. In fact, not only is it not sin; it is actually right to do so.
The psalmist recalls the worshipful activities in which he participated at the temple. He was leading a “throng” of people in joyful procession into the courtyards on the temple mount and through the doors of the temple with “glad shouts” and “songs of praise.” The psalmist recalls this, and he misses it. Here, again, is a reminder that the believer’s life is not one to be lived in mystical isolation. Rather, there should be a sincere desire—a craving even—for the company of God’s people and for all the covenant symbols and rituals that accompany the worship of God. The psalmist misses these things and recalls them with fondness.
Do we? If we are separated for a time from God’s people and the worship of God in the assembly of the saints, do we long for it? We all have piles of memories we cherish and experiences we treasure. Is the worship of God in the company of his people among those fond recollections? Christ said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:21). From this, it stands to reason that our minds and hearts will naturally drift to consider and think about and long for those things that are most important to us. Surely then, in our sanctified and redeemed affections and desires, in the catalog of our heart’s treasures, in addition to Christ and his gospel, ought not we also treasure his people and his worship?
May God make it so and, by his grace, cultivate such a longing and cherishing within us.
But before turning to the next section of Psalm 42 in verses 6–11, we encounter at verse 5 and the first part of verse 6 the first instance of this refrain in Psalms 42 and 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 6 and my God.
The psalmist first speaks to his own soul, asking why it is so “cast down,” weighed down, and burdened. Simultaneously, this heavy soul is also restless—it is in a kind of frenetic “turmoil,” never settled or calm. At the same time heavy and listless, but also in a frenzied misery. Grief, spiritual grief in particular, often takes on such a contradictory sensation.
But the second thing the psalmist does in this refrain is to exhort himself—to preach to himself, we might even say. “Hope in God,” he says—hope in his covenant promises, hope in his mercies. Further, he asserts what will assuredly happen in good time: “I shall again praise him,” the one who is not just his God, the one who is his very salvation itself. Salvation for the psalmist is not just a gift or a state of rescue, but (in theological parlance) a Person—the God of Israel. We might reverently suppose Christ himself praying these words, rehearing these truths to himself, and reasoning in his own soul as he grappled in agony on the night of his betrayal or the in days of his earthly ministry.
The Cry of a Troubled (Yet Trusting) Heart
But there is a second broad theme we see in the text, in verses 6–11. The psalmist is determined to set his hope on the sure promises of the Lord, but he is not yet out of his spiritual gloom. We see a man crying in desperation yet resolving in trust and praise in the midst of his anguish. It is the cry of a troubled yet trusting heart.
The psalmist is despairing and feels forsaken: “O my God, my soul is in despair within me” (NASB). He mentions the geographical features of Jordan, Hermon, and Mount Mizar, which gives the scholars reason to believe that he was presently located somewhere off in the north country, away from Jerusalem.
And then verse 7: “Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls; All Your breakers and Your waves have rolled over me” (NASB). Notice the shift in the metaphor. Recall in verses 1–4 that the metaphor is thirst. He was in a desert, in desperate need of water. Now, there is a superabundance of water threatening to destroy him. Emotionally and spiritually, the waves are crashing over him. He is drowning in despair.
This is a godly man—that is evident from the first few verses. This is not some renegade, rebel sinner. From this text, we see no evidence that he is being reprimanded or chastised for wrongdoing. God’s Word in Psalm 42 teaches us that even the godly, the righteous, are sometimes filled with anguish and yet at the same time must trust in God. What is striking in this section is that the psalmist fights on through—through all his sufferings, his forced absence from worship, the taunts of unbelievers, and now the overwhelming trials in verse 7:
Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
The Hebrew word translated as “deep” could also be rendered “abyss.” The phrase, “the roar of your waterfalls,” is evocative of the flood of Noah.2 The image is of a man in great peril, in an angry sea agitated by high winds, a chasm of turbulent ocean crying back and forth, one section to another in a kind of dark liturgical cadence,3 a tempest of watery violence. We can imagine a man attempting to swim whose efforts are frustrated by heaping wave upon wave, with waterfalls or even waterspouts, hydro-cyclones of death, rearing up on the raging ocean, swelling upon the sea-faring voyager until he is about to drown. The picture bears a close resemblance to Jonah 2:3.
Yet, as great as were his troubles and temptations, even with God’s delay in answering him, through all of it, he trusts. Notice what he does to anchor his trust and to fuel his prayers: back in verse 4, he notes his memory of the worship of God.
That is remarkable. Dear readers, the truth is that we do not know what we need until we need it. On any given Lord’s Day, when we come for worship and receive truths for God’s Word, we do not know what kind of nourishment for the soul we are going to need until we find ourselves brought to the breaking point.
When I was a boy, I had a Little League baseball coach; whenever we traveled for an away game, he would always make us pack two water bottles, one for each pocket. We would often protest, not wanting our uniforms to be weighed down with these heavy water bottles, saying that we were not thirsty. But the coach would insist, “Boys, you may not be thirsty now; you may not think you need it now. But when the sun is beating down hot, and you’re in the third hour of the game, aren’t you going to be glad that you brought these with you? You may not think you need it now, but trust me, you’ll need it later.”
It is a biblical notion to store up for the lean years. That is one reason we gather together as believers, because as we worship our Savior, God is preparing us and strengthening us for what we will face. We sing, we pray, we hear sermons, and the things we hear and read do not always strike us as immediately applicable. Yet As God trains up our minds and hearts, we are storing up and stockpiling truths in our arsenal—truths we are going to need for the fight.
How many of us have come to worship on a Lord’s Day from a week where we are beat up and beat down from what has gone on, just a frame of ourselves—yet we draw strength in thinking of God’s past faithfulness, of his promises, of the prayers he has answered, of all his past goodness to us. And in recounting that, we draw strength that gives hope even as we are at the point of exhaustion.
Perhaps some of you feel as if you are on the brink of despair and cynicism. Yet as you recall and recount God’s character and his promises, somehow, in his inexplicable mercy, you press on, and your lips give praise to his name because your mind and heart know what is true, despite how your circumstances would otherwise dictate your thinking.
There is more for us to unearth in this beautiful chapter of Scripture, and we will do just that when we return next week to Part 3 of our ongoing Saturday Psalm Series.
Notes
- Christopher Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary, 4 vols. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 2.520.
- Ash, The Psalms, 523.
- Ash, 523.
©Sean Morris. All Rights Reserved.
You can find the whole series here.
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Sean Morris
Sean was educated at Grove City College, Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS), and the University of Glasgow (Scotland). He is an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, and serves as a minister at the Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, TN. He also serves as the Academic Dean of the Blue Ridge Institute for Theological Education. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Historical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Sean lives in Oak Ridge with his wife, Sarah, along with their children and useless beagle.
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