Psalm 42 reads as follows from the New Oxford Annotated Bible:
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
My soul thirsts for God,
For the living God,
When shall I come and behold,
The face of God?
My tears have been my food,
Day and night,
These things I remember,
As I pour over my soul,
How I went to the throng,
And led them in procession to the house of God,
With glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
A multitude keeping festival,
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
My help and my God,
My soul is cast down within me,
Therefore I remember you,
From the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
From Mount Mizar ,
Deep calls to deep,
At the thunder of your cataracts,
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
And at night his song is with me,
A prayer to the God of my life,
I say to God, my rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
Because the enemy oppresses me?"
As with a deadly wound in my body,
My adversaries taunt me,
While they say to me continually,
“where is your God?"
Why are you cast down of my soul,
And why are you disquieted within me,
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him,
My help and my God.
The psalmist here is longing for the presence of the Lord, and he compares his own personal longing to the deer thirsting for flowing streams. The vibrancy of the Lord’s presence seems to have faded from view as he is immersed in problems and he feels that he has been kept out. The streams for the deer represent something very defined, and for him, the Lord’s presence is also something much defined as he seeks the very face of God.
This psalm in particular is showing prayer as a two way street. The Lord is with him in his prayers, as in verse 8 where he says at night where the Lord imparts to him the very song that he uses as a prayer. Deep calls to deep in verse 7. The Lord has imparted depth to his being, and calls to those depths and he also calls from those depths. It is the Lord’s commanding love that imparts to depths within him, the ability to call to the Lord is itself a gift that runs into great depths of the soul that resides in him. Therefore deep does call to deep. It is interesting that this psalm speaks of “commanding love". This is a type of love that is sovereign, it reigns supreme. There is a sovereign part to God’s love.
He personal vision is from the land of Jordan and Hermon and to the heights of Mount Mizar . His own vision of the Lord has been far reaching and extensive. The Lord hadn’t been just a narrow strip of land in his life. Although now he can’t find the Lord in his distress, he is still cognizant of his previously far ranging abilities to seek the Lord and find him and he remembers numerous points and places in past times where he has encountered the presence of the Lord. The metaphor here is also of his personal gifts, where his reach to the Lord has been extended over times and places, where he has had the gift of being able to find the Lord maybe at several levels.
Despite his distress the psalmist is able to disquiet and to calm himself and again remember just how overwhelming the presence of the Lord is, a presence which he compares to as a matter of description to giant waves running over him.
It is interesting that the arrival point for him that can be found, is not exactly slight. The deer longing for the flowing streams, does find them. He as longing for the face of God, finds an overwhelming presence of the Lord that goes over him and is comparable to waves of the sea.
Some people have found this to happen say sitting alone in a church and meditating and then finding the presence of the Lord overwhelming them in a physical way as a warmth going thru their body.
He is describing billows or a surging sea. He is able to meet the Lord in the depths rather than just symbolically wading in the waters. He has troubles, but what are they really, against this type of encounter with the Lord’s presence to him, as the surge of the Lord’s presence is with him.
He had spent quality time in the past with the Lord’s people, he went with the throng, and within this festival there were songs of thanksgiving and shouts of gladness. He is longing to get back.
The psalmist here, seems to be in a situation of limited choices as to what he can actually do from his now tenuous circumstances. The circumstances both without and within are rather overwhelming for him. He fears that the he is on the edge of forgetfulness in the Lord’s remembrances of him, and wonders if the Lord even remembers him at all. He believes that the Lord had been mindful of him in the past, but now he is feeling alone and lost.
He pours out his soul, and this is part of the chaos coming forth. But this is where he believes the Lord can meet him, at a level where he is revealing his own inner depths to both himself and the Lord, and he is still hoping with the Lord, even though he cannot approach him from where he is now in a more ordered and neat fashion. He goes to the depths of his soul and pours it out, hoping that the Lord will sustain him.
Even as a swimmer if you’re in the rougher seas, the waves of course will more so have their way and you just do your best to adjust to the situation as you find it, and it’s not like you can know where you are standing and realistically you have submitted to a type of chaos as the tempest of the seas have their own choosing. It is not the same as having a nice calm spot on the sand at the beachfront where you can neatly put down your towel, put on some sunscreen and just enjoy a leisurely afternoon.
One of the things to take from this here in prayer is that prayer could possibly go into a type of chaos, that might be like putting oneself in churning seas. Adjustments within the prayers have to made for the conditions one is now in, conditions that more lend themselves to a degree of chaos. Prayer doesn’t necessarily follow into a nice neat unfolding. I might be better able to do that from my lounge chair on the beach, but if I’m praying in the churning seas while swimming, I have to adjust a bit and I may not be able to neatly process my prayer requests at that point. It’s not like the psalmist lacks the gift of prayer, he had it previously according to what is being said in this psalm and was able to bring it forth under more favorable conditions with the help of others who were also of the same mindset towards prayer. But now he is more on his own, not only does he have deep troubles, he is alone in facing them and his own troubles, both right at home and in his not finding the Lord like he once did, have thrown his prayers into not so calm waters but something more related to a tempest. He might have been used to neat prayers, maybe prayers having a less distressing tone, but that type of prayer isn’t available to him because of his frightful circumstances. It doesn’t look like this is the position he wants to be in, but he realizes his need and want for the Lord even from this uninviting position. He would feel more comfortable in the neat procession to the house of the Lord, but that isn’t available to him now. His hopes now, are just to meet the Lord where he is, in the churning waves of near despair and deeply troubling circumstances.
In thinking about this, someone can pray rather calmly for others in the world that are in deep distress, partly because they aren’t in deep distress. You can pray from the relatively peaceful place you are at, for places and people who are not in the midst of peace. Something to think about is to brush aside relatively minor annoyances, and realize that the ability to pray neatly from the position you are in for others that are in deep distress, is something to take advantage of while the opportunity is there. There might be people in Africa that in abject poverty, but if I live in a villa in California, I can pray for them in the relative comfort of my own good living situation. I have the advantage of being able to pray from a position of not being in manifold distresses, even though I realize those I am interceding for are indeed in great distress.
A key point here, that even though the conditions of prayer for him are very different than they had been, he still says in verse 9 that the Lord is his rock. The Lord is still very defined for him even from the newly minted position of deep distress. The deer when she longs for the flowing streams, is longing for something very defined for her. A dear searching through the woods for flowing streams is looking for just that.
In the New Testament, when Jesus talks about prayer, he says you will not get a stone if you ask for bread. In Luke 12 verse 30 it says," For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things" . This longing for the Lord’s presence is not just local or just for one individual, but for the all of the nations of the world. The psalmist does speak of others in this psalm, those whom he was in fellowship with and of the distant lands he had traveled. Although he feels alone in his distress, he knows and remembers that there are others out there, others who can and must be the subject of intercession for him. Despite lack, the answer will come properly defined to the need. The deer longing for flowing streams, will get the flowing streams. The soul thirsting for the living God, will get the presence of the living God.
Author Resource:-
I am currently writing in various areas including the Christian faith.
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