Verse of the day · August 24
Why does Psalm 42 ask the same question twice?
Six verses back he had given himself the same advice, and gone on mourning since.
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
Psalm 42:11
Driven to the utmost borders of Canaan, David is sheltering from the rage of his persecutors — out by the Jordan, in the land of the Hermonites, on a hill called Mizar, the little hill. He goes mourning from day to day, and does not break out into indecent passions, though abused as never man was. Every day the men hunting him put the same question to him: where is thy God. They thought of it, then they said it, and said it daily, and kept saying it for a length of time. What he says next is not addressed to God but to his own soul, and it is the second time he has said it.
By the eleventh verse the whole sorrow has been rehearsed and, Spurgeon says in his Treasury of David, no sufficient ground found in it for being disquieted — looked in the face, his fears were not so overwhelming as they had seemed while they lay shrouded in obscurity. What he tells himself to do about them is not to feel better. It is where to put the hope, and the instruction is to let the anchor still keep its hold.
Six verses earlier he had said the whole thing already. It is the same expostulation, John Gill notes, and after it the same counsel: hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him. The Geneva Notes hang the verse on that fact — this repetition declares that David did not overcome at once, and it is there to teach us to be constant, for as much as God will certainly deliver his. Reading the psalm through, Matthew Henry is blunter about how the first attempt had gone. His griefs and fears were clamorous and troublesome, and they were not silenced though they were again and again answered. Complaints and comforts take their turn here, like day and night in the course of nature.
One verse past that first attempt the whole song starts over. It begins again upon the bass, Spurgeon says; perhaps the dejection simply continued and the spasm of despondency returned, and well, then, he will down with his harp again and try its power upon himself, as in his younger days he had seen it work upon Saul. What has improved by then is small: the singer is a little more tranquil, the visible panting gone, the sorrow now all restrained within doors, and the thoughts still looking more within than upward. If self were to furnish comfort we should have but poor provender, and there is no solid foundation for comfort in such fickle frames as our heart is subject to.
The second saying is not quite word for word. Henry has his faith at last coming off a conqueror here, and puts it down to two things. One is only that he said it over again: if we do not gain our point with our good thoughts at first, perhaps we may the second time. The other is one word added. Before, he had hoped to praise God for the salvation that was in his countenance; now he will praise him as the salvation of my countenance from the present cloud that is upon it. And he adds the phrase the psalm closes on — and my God, related to me, in covenant with me, all that he is and all that he has mine according to the true intent and meaning of the promise.
The clause he adds is about a face. As the bodily health of a man is seen in his countenance, Gill says, so is the spiritual health of the saints, and they have it from the Lord. JFB render the word health as help: he who cheers him, driving the clouds of sorrow off his face. And they take the two words after it as aimed outward: my God is the one of whose existence and favour his foes would have him doubt. Spurgeon takes that addition as the mark of a man growing in confidence, replying to the taunt defiantly, not ashamed to own him amid their sneers. William Gurnall, quoted by Spurgeon on the same words, is not surprised by the sadness at all. The health of David's countenance was not in his countenance but in his God. I do not wonder, he writes, that the weak Christian is melancholy and sad, when he sees his sickly face in any other glass than this.
Nothing in the sentence says the cloud has lifted. The praise in it is still ahead of him — I shall yet praise him — and the face he speaks of is one that will be made to shine, not one that is shining. He is down when he says it, and the psalm ends there. What is different since the fifth verse is a possessive, twice over. The men hunting him had spent the psalm asking where his God was, and the last two words of it answer them: here, and mine.
Drawn from Charles Spurgeon, Matthew Henry, John Gill, the Geneva Bible notes and the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary.
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