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This has all the elements of a love song—the unbearable longing, the near despair when the beloved appears to be far away, and the loving memory of the beloved’s attributes. But the beloved is God. The psalmist uses what were even then romantic conventions as the only language strong enough to express the depth of his love for the Lord.
Psalm 42
To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah.
As a hart longs
for flowing streams,
so longs my soul
for thee, O God.
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,
while men say to me continually,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I went with 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 thee
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of thy cataracts;
all thy waves and thy billows
have gone over me.
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 hast thou forgotten me?
Why go I mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
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, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.
Words to Remember
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.
Run to the Brooks
If we can turn our longing away from vice and self-indulgence and toward the word of God, says St. Augustine, we can know the same love the psalmist expresses in this psalm.
We have undertaken the exposition of a psalm corresponding to your own longings, on which we propose to speak to you. For the psalm itself begins with a certain pious longing; and he who sings it says, “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God.”
Who is it then that says this? It is ourselves, if we be but willing! And why ask who it is other than yourself, when you can be the thing you are asking about?
It is not, however, one individual, but it is one Body; but Christ’s Body is the Church (see Colossians 1:24). Such longing indeed is not found in all who enter the Church; but if you have tasted the sweetness of the Lord, and own in Christ that for which you long, do not think that you are the only ones, but know that there are such seeds scattered throughout the field of the Lord, this whole earth. Know that there is a certain Christian unity, whose voice says, “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God.”
And indeed we could understand it as the cry of those who, being as yet catechumens, are hastening to the grace of the holy font. For that reason, this psalm is ordinarily chanted on those occasions, so that they may long for the fountain of remission of sins, even as the hart for the flowing streams. Let this be allowed and this meaning retain its place in the Church, a place both truthful and sanctioned by usage.
Nevertheless, it appears to me, my brethren, that such a longing is not fully satisfied even in the faithful in baptism; but that perhaps, if they know where they are right now and where they have to go from here, their longing blazes up even brighter… .
Let, then, our understanding be roused, and if the psalm be sung to us, let us follow it with our understanding… . Run to the flowing streams; long after the flowing streams.
“With God is the fountain of life”: a fountain that shall never be dried up; in his light is a light that shall never be darkened. Long for this light: for a certain fountain, a certain light, such as your bodily eyes know not; a light to see for which the inward eye must be prepared; a fountain, to drink that of which the inward thirst is to be kindled.
Run to the fountain; long for the fountain… . Do not be satisfied with running like any ordinary animal; run like the hart. What do we mean by “like the hart”? Let there be no sloth in your running; run with all your might: long for the fountain with all your might. For we find in the hart an emblem of swiftness.
But perhaps Scripture meant us to consider in the stag not this point only, but another as well.
Hear what else there is in the hart. It destroys serpents, and after killing serpents, it is inflamed with thirst yet more violent; having destroyed serpents, it runs to the “flowing streams” with a keener thirst than before.
The serpents are your vices. Destroy the serpents of iniquity; then will you long yet more for “the Fountain of Truth.” Perhaps avarice whispers in your ear some dark counsel, hisses against the word of God, hisses against the commandment of God. And if you hear “Disregard this or that, if you prefer working iniquity to despising some temporal good,” you choose to be bitten by a serpent, rather than destroy it.
While you are still indulgent to your vice, your covetousness, or your appetite, when am I to find in you a “longing” such as this, that might make you run to the flowing streams?
—St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms
Questions to Think About
1. What do I really long for most of all?
2. How can I turn that longing toward God?
An Excerpt from Praying the Psalms with the Early Christiansby Mike Aquilina and Christopher Bailey.
Click here to purchase “Praying the Psalms with the Early Christians.”
Wonderful way to breakdown Psalm 42. Thanks for this article
and the questions to think about. Good way to search ourselves.