Why art thou cast down, my soul, and art disquieted in me? hope in God; for I shall yet praise him, [for] the health of his countenance.
Far from the house of God and taunted by enemies, the psalmist stops talking to his circumstances and turns to question his own soul. Why does a believer sink, and what should he say to himself when he does?
The question is a rebuke, and the psalmist aims it at himself. One note on wording: where the ESV ends the verse with "my salvation," older translations read "the help" or "the health of his countenance," and the writers quoted here follow that older wording.
However, the memory of past blessings enjoyed leads the soul to rebuke its present despondency. It encourages the soul to hope in God for the future. What God is in Himself, not what we may happen to feel Him in this or that moment to be — that is our hope. Looking beyond the present gloom, the godly man can say, "I shall yet praise Him for the health of His countenance." The enemy is against him, but the face of God is toward him. If God is for him, who can be against him?
Loss lies behind the question. One writer also traces how the wording shifts between this verse and the psalm's closing verse.
The godly man had been going with the multitude to the house of God, but that is all over. He is driven away… The nations, as Joel says, had come in with power. They taunted those who had trusted in Jehovah's faithfulness with the cry, "Where is your God?" (Joel 2:17). It was a dreadful trial — so with Christ on the cross, and with Him even more, for He declared He was forsaken… The heart of the godly longs for God. It was not merely for His blessings; they were gone. The preciousness of what He Himself was came out all the more clearly… Notice that in verse 5 it is the help of God's countenance. In verse 11 He becomes the health of the countenance of the one who trusts in Him.
The cure he prescribes himself is very small and very large at the same time: a look at God's face.
Surely he felt that since his trust was in God, he had no proper reason to be cast down. So he encourages himself to hope in God, with the confidence that he would yet praise Him for the help of His countenance. Just to look into the Lord's face would mean wonderful help to him. That face looks with genuine compassion on His own people. It also looks with approval on every response made for His sake — that is, every action moved by faith in the living God.
The command to hope is not for a man with answers. It is for a man in the dark, with no promise left to lay hold of.
The soul rebukes its own despondency: "Hope in God." Here is what is permanent, what is eternal. Hope in God, even though you cannot find Him. Hope, though His ways are in deepest mystery, and though you could not find a single promise to claim beyond doubt. He Himself is promise! In His own all-pitying love — in the goodness of His nature, beyond all that we can tell or think — in Himself you can find refuge.
Self-rebuke here is not a hard face put on grief. The psalmist feels the sorrow and tells it out.
Pride and stoic resistance to sorrow will not do. That does not draw the soul to God. In fact it does the opposite and keeps the soul from Him. It teaches the soul, or pretends to teach it, to do without Him… Here the soul had felt the sorrow and stayed dependent. Now it can be open with God, because of His goodness and faithfulness. Sorrow, when it is complete and helpless, gives intimacy with the One who is willing and able to help.
Being low is not, by itself, a fault. The line falls elsewhere.
When the soul is distressed or cast down, that is not sin in itself. But sin comes in when there is distrust of God.
Any burdened believer can borrow the psalm's question.
Meanwhile, these Psalms hold plenty of comfort for the Christian who suffers and takes blow after blow. "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" Such words suit the spirit of reviving faith in the stress and heavy sadness of a day of conflict. One believing look at Christ wins back for the crushed and downcast believer the firm, settled place of acceptance and peace. For His presence is the full salvation of the soul. And He is present always.
- Loss — Enemies drive him from the house of God and mock him: "Where is your God?" The blessings go; God Himself stands out all the more.
- Question — Faith does not argue with the enemy first. It turns on the soul's own despondency and asks it for a reason.
- Hope — The ground is God's own nature, not a feeling or even a promise you can claim: "He Himself is promise."
- Countenance — The help is a look into a face full of compassion. By verse 11 that same face becomes the health of the believer's own.
- Honesty — Distress is not sin, and stoic hardness is no cure. Sorrow told out to God draws the soul close to Him.
My God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore do I remember thee from the land of the Jordan, and the Hermons, from mount Mizar.
Here the psalmist stops arguing with his own soul and turns to God, speaking from the far north of the land, nowhere near the sanctuary he longs for. Why is a crushed soul the reason he remembers God, and why name these three obscure places?
The sorrow itself is what drives him to God. One writer contrasts two ways of meeting grief.
Pride and stoical resistance to sorrow will not do. That does not draw the soul to God, but effectively and especially keeps it from Him. Here the soul had felt the sorrow and was dependent. Now it can be open with God, because God is good and faithful. Sorrow, when it is complete and helpless, gives intimacy with the one who is willing and able to help. Now that intimacy is with God. He tells his sorrow to God.
These are the places of a man shut out of worship — and the loss uncovers what he really wanted.
The godly man had been going with the multitude to the house of God, but that is all over. He is driven away, and his cry is from Jordan — the land of the Hermonites, and the hill Mizar. All God's waves are gone over him… The heart of the godly pants after God. It was not merely for His blessings; they were gone. The preciousness of what He Himself was, was only so much the more vividly brought out.
Older translations read "the Hermonites," which sounds like the name of a people.
This name appears only in Psalm 42:6. Some translate the line, "I remember you from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermons, from the hill Mizar." It does not refer to any people called Hermonites. It refers to the peaks of Mount Hermon.
Both names carry meaning beyond the map.
"The land of Jordan (the river of death) and of the Hermons" is here very significant… The name seems clearly related to "Hormah" and herem, the "ban" — dedication to God in the judgment of what was evil… If that is the meaning, see how clear the connection is. Hermon speaks of the ban upon evil, and Jordan is the river of death — a river whose highest source is in fact Hermon!
Commentators differ over what Hermon means — the same writer notes that others read it as "prominent, high". The third name, Mizar, points to what God's dealing does to the soul.
"The hill Mizar," named with these, may speak of the condition God's dealing brings the soul into. The name means "hill of littleness," which need not be the same as "little hill." The hill may dwarf instead of being dwarfed… God brings down, that He may exalt.
Read as personal experience, the rough country is not an accident. It is the method.
Deuteronomy 8:2 tells us the object of all the trial and testing of the wilderness: "that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not." God leads us by a trying and rugged path (Hermon means "rugged") so that He may uncover the naughtiness and pride of our hearts. God loves us too well to let us stay deceived about our true character in the flesh. He puts us in the very circumstances that bring it out.
Others read the psalm as words that fit Christ before they fit us. He too kept to the edges of a land that was His by royal title.
Jesus was an outcast. He went to the hill Mizar and the land of Jordan, not to the city of the great feasts, even though the anointing of royal title was upon Him as the true Seed of David. "He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill Him."
Remembering God from a place like this is not nostalgia. It carries the soul forward.
Still, present circumstances are such that the soul is cast down. Yet it does not stop remembering God from the dreary mountain places beyond Jordan, the land of its banishment. There his troubles are like floods and waves that God allows to overwhelm his soul. Still, the godly man looks on to the coming day when the LORD will command His steadfast love. Meanwhile praise and prayer relieve his night.
- Cast down — admitted sorrow opens the soul to God; pride shuts Him out. Helpless grief brings us close to the One who can help.
- Driven out — with the sanctuary and its joys gone, the heart finds that it wanted God Himself, not His gifts.
- Jordan — the river of death rises out of Hermon, the ban on evil. Together the names mark the ground God puts the soul on.
- Mizar — "hill of littleness"; the rugged path exposes the pride of the heart, and God brings us low to raise us up.
- Therefore — from that low place the remembering begins. Night fills with praise and prayer, and a day is coming when God commands His steadfast love.
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy cataracts; all thy breakers and thy billows are gone over me.
A soul in exile hears trouble answering trouble, wave upon wave. And it traces every wave back to God's own hand. Is that despair, or the start of confidence? And whose voice can say these words in full?
The psalm does not climb steadily upward. Its second half is darker than its first. One commentator finds in this a pattern every tested believer knows.
Would you not say that the trouble should be over by now? And how often we think it is, when a wave has only lifted us to its crest, and then sinks deeper than before. So the second part of the psalm reveals worse perplexity than the first. The distance between the soul and God is plainer. The break seems more definite. Yet the eye still turns toward Him and pleads as much as ever.
The picture is of one depth calling to another. Something more than nature stands behind the noise.
It is as though the depths of suffering go deeper and deeper. Yet it is recognised as the work of God behind the scenes — the sound, as it were, of a waterfall, or of waterfalls joining to alarm their victims.
Notice what the sufferer does not say. He does not blame his enemies. He says your waterfalls, your waves.
The troubles themselves come from God. Inward self-judgment and looking to God bring Him, and Him alone, into everything. Enemies have dropped out of sight, and so have blessings. "Your breakers and your waves have gone over me." God began the matter with Job. He told neither Satan nor Job what He was doing. He used Satan's blind malice to break Job's unsubdued nature — a nature Job himself never suspected — and to bring about blessing. Deep called to deep, but it was at the voice of God's waterfalls.
These words come from exile. The sufferer is far away, beyond the Jordan river.
Present circumstances are such that the soul is cast down. Yet it never stops remembering God from the bleak mountain places beyond the Jordan, the land of its banishment. There his troubles are like floods and waves that God has allowed to overwhelm his soul. Even so, the godly man looks on to the coming day when the Lord will command His loving-kindness. Meanwhile praise and prayer will lighten his night.
What the psalmist feels and what is actually true are two different things. That difference points to Someone else.
The psalmist felt that all God's waves and breakers had gone over him. The faithful remnant of Israel will feel the same in the Great Tribulation. Yet it is only their feeling. In fact, only one Sufferer has been through all God's waves and breakers — the Lord Jesus Christ, who bore this alone at Calvary.
That reading has a direct result for anyone who trusts Him.
All God's waves and breakers passed over the spotless Person of the Lord Jesus when He hung on the cross. And here is the blessed result: not one of them is left to pass over the believer... Christ drank the cup and endured the wrath perfectly. Before God's judgment He took on Himself the whole weight of all His people owed, and He gloriously cleared it all. The belief of this gives settled peace to the soul.
Christ has been in that depth. So the verse does more than describe pain — it comforts.
There is no condition in which I may not have Him for my companion. He has gone into the fullest depths of my sorrow. "Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls," He could say. There is no place where faith cannot find Christ.
Seeing God's hand behind the waves does one more thing.
Notice how, once we see the hand of God in our sorrows, we can look for deliverance — because it is God, and His hand is on us in love.
- Deeper — Relief is often only the crest of a wave. The psalm's second half is darker than its first. Still the eye stays turned toward God.
- His — The waterfalls and waves are God's own. Enemies drop out of sight, and the sufferer deals with God alone. God began the matter with Job the same way.
- Exiled — The words come from banishment beyond the Jordan. Commentators read them as the cry of a faithful remnant of Israel in a day of trouble still to come.
- Alone — What the psalmist felt, Christ actually bore. All the waves went over Him at the cross.
- Settled — Not one wave is left to fall on the believer. Christ has been in the lowest depth, so faith finds Him there and looks for deliverance.
In the day-time will Jehovah command his loving-kindness, and in the night his song shall be with me, a prayer unto the God of my life.
The psalmist has been driven into the hills beyond the Jordan, and in the verse just before this one God's breakers and waves have gone over him. Nothing in his situation has changed — yet now he speaks of love commanded by day and a song at night.
The change begins with a name. Older translations print God's covenant name, "Jehovah," where the ESV has "the LORD," and "loving-kindness" where it has "steadfast love." Here the sufferer uses that name for the first time in the psalm:
But again he rises with firmer confidence. Here for the first time he uses the covenant Name, "Jehovah" — the pledge of unchangeable faithfulness.
One writer traces that confidence back to the waves themselves. Once the sufferer sees whose hand is in the sorrow, he knows who he is dealing with:
But seeing God's hand at work on purpose makes the soul aware of a covenant relationship. For us that is the Father; here it is Jehovah. And He is counted on for the future on that basis… So confidence is gained — boldness with a faithful God… Notice this: once we see the hand of God in our sorrows, we can look for deliverance, because it is God, and His hand is on us in love.
The daytime is not here yet. He is still cast down in the hills across the Jordan, and still remembering God there:
Still, his present circumstances leave the soul cast down. Yet it does not stop remembering God from the bleak hill country beyond the Jordan, where he has been sent away. There he compares his troubles to floods and waves that God has allowed to sweep over his soul. Even so, the godly man looks on to the coming day when Jehovah will command His loving-kindness. In the meantime, praise and prayer will relieve his night (compare Acts 16:25).
One writer places that daytime in the millennium, a future age still ahead. But he finds singing in the night before it comes:
The future daytime of the millennium will indeed prove how real God's loving-kindness is. But even in the night of trial there can be singing, as there was on the night the Lord was betrayed to His enemies (Mark 14:26). That singing was really a prayer too, "to the God of my life," for though death may be close, God's end in view is life.
Notice whose song it is — His song, given and not worked up. Two men in a prison cell show what that gift looks like:
They were thrown into prison, their backs still sore from the beating their persecutors had given them… At midnight they prayed and sang praises to God, and the prisoners heard them… God would be glorified over the enemy, so He filled the mouths of Paul and Silas with praise in the very seat of the enemy's power… Songs had been given to them in the night. They went up like sweet incense before the throne of God, and they carried a testimony with them that bore fruit for eternity.
What made the song possible in that cell was not relief but company:
May we not say that it was the sense of the Lord's presence in the Philippian dungeon that made Paul and Silas sing "songs in the night"? Even if the Lord was not, in this case, the One they praised to, He was, as He always must be, the One they praised about… The light of the Master's face turns even circumstances of sorrow into occasions of joy.
In the next verse the sufferer puts a question to God. One writer weighs the exact word he uses:
"I say to God, my rock: 'Why have you forgotten me?'" He does not say "forsaken" here. Christ alone was forsaken, and faith knows that it never can be. But because of this confidence in the unfailing love of God, he asks Him who is his rock why He has left him in the power of the enemy.
Commentators differ over who is speaking. Some read the psalm of a godly sufferer among God's people; others hear the voice of Christ:
We see the Father's hand acknowledged in verse 7: "All your breakers and your waves have gone over me." But joy lay before Him: "Jehovah will command His loving-kindness." For that joy He would endure the cross, despising the shame, even though the reproach of His enemies was like a sword in His bones.
- Name. The change comes when he uses the covenant name, not when his circumstances improve. That name is God's pledge of unchangeable faithfulness.
- Hand. Once we see God's hand in our sorrows, we can look for deliverance. His hand is on us in love.
- Day. The commanded loving-kindness looks ahead to a coming day. He says it while still in the bleak hills.
- Night. The song is His song, given and not worked up. In a Philippian prison that gift became a testimony that bore fruit for eternity.
- Life. He asks why he is forgotten. He never says forsaken — that was Christ alone. His prayer rises to the God of his life, whose end in view is life.
I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
Cut off from God's house and surrounded by enemies, the psalmist takes his question straight to God. How can a man call God his rock in the same breath in which he asks why God has forgotten him?
He does not throw the complaint into the air. He brings it to God. One commentator points out the word he avoids:
But seeing God's hand at work in purpose leads to the awareness of covenant relationship — for us it is the Father, here it is Jehovah. On that basis the soul counts on Him for the future... "I say to God, my rock: Why have you forgotten me?" He does not say "forsaken" here. That Christ alone was, and faith knows it never can be. But he has this confidence in the unfailing love of God. So he asks Him who is his rock why He has left him in the power of the enemy. Notice this: once we see the hand of God in our sorrows, we can look for deliverance, because it is God, and His hand is on us in love.
Two things sit side by side in the verse and do not fit: solid rock underfoot, and the feeling of being dropped.
Still the conflict is real; experience is against experience. God is his Rock; and yet God has, as far as experience goes, forsaken him. He lays it before God Himself. He also lays before Him the bitter oppression of the enemy. The enemy taunts him about this forsaking by God, and the taunts cannot be answered — crushing his bones with it, as he says, making his strength collapse at the thought. Yet even while he says it, faith rallies. It turns defeat into victory with its old self-rebuke, "Why are you cast down?" and he reaffirms his former confidence.
The enemy oppresses, yet the sufferer does not stop at the enemy. He looks past the instrument to the One who allowed it.
But this leads to another point. The troubles themselves come from God. Inward self-judgment and looking to God bring Him and Him alone into everything. Enemies have disappeared, along with blessings. "Your waves and your billows have gone over me." God began the matter with Job. He told neither Satan nor Job what He was doing. He uses Satan's blind malice to break Job's unsubdued nature — a nature Job himself had not suspected — and to bring about a blessing.
Job is the man God allowed Satan to strip of family, wealth and health without explanation. Reading the psalm the same way, another commentator notes how completely the sufferer accepts the source of his trouble:
Far away from the divine presence, in the land of the Hermonites, with God's waves and God's billows passing over him, his God seemed against him. He confessed it. He viewed it all, took it all, as from Him.
Commentators hear more than one man's diary here. The psalm speaks for the remnant — the faithful few — driven away from God's house, and it ties their suffering to Christ's.
The remnant looks towards the sanctuary, the house of God. They are cut off from it and driven away. They are panting after God, as the deer pants after the water brooks. Their cry comes from "the land of Jordan" — Jordan, a picture of death. It comes from the Hermons (which means "ban") and from the hill Mizar (which means "littleness"). The enemy taunts, "Where is your God?" ... They suffer with Him and bear His reproach. The waves and billows passed over His blessed head too. "Why have you forgotten me?" they cry to God, and remind Him of the oppression of the enemy. Yet hope and trust fill their soul.
The enemy's work is stripping. What looks like pure loss ends up helping the sufferer, and it opens the way to plain speech with God.
The enemy, though in a painful way — and so it is even in God's discipline — helps the soul forward in this path... But this only casts the soul on Him. There was nothing left but what God was Himself. The enemy had driven them away from everything else — from mercies which, when abused, tended to shut God out. The enemy succeeded in taking these away, and left the soul only God... Pride and stoic resistance to sorrow will not do. That does not draw the soul to God; it keeps it away from Him. Sorrow, when it is complete and helpless, gives intimacy with the One who is willing and able to help, and that intimacy is now with God. He tells his sorrow to God.
The psalm does not end in the question. The ground under him holds, whatever the weather above it.
In the assurance of the coming day, the godly man rests his soul on God as his rock. He may have to face storms of opposition from enemies who oppress and reproach him... but no storm can move or shake the Rock in which he trusts. The circumstances may lead him to cry, "Why have you forgotten me?" Yet God is his rock. So he can again rebuke his natural tendency to sink into despair.
- Rock first. He calls God his rock before he asks his question. He complains from inside the relationship, not outside it.
- Rock, not ruin. He says "forgotten," never "forsaken." Christ alone was forsaken, and faith knows the believer never can be.
- Rock behind the waves. The waves are God's own; seeing His hand in the sorrow is what makes deliverance something to expect.
- Rock left standing. The enemy strips away every other comfort and leaves the soul God alone — and helpless sorrow makes the soul open with Him.
- Rock unmoved. Storms may make him cry out, but nothing shakes what he is standing on — so he turns and rebukes his own downcast heart.
As with a crushing in my bones mine adversaries reproach me, while they say unto me all the day, Where is thy God?
This part of the Psalms opens with a believer far from the house of God. His sharpest pain is not the exile itself. It is the mockery of people who look at his life and conclude that his God has left him. Why does a taunt hurt more than the trouble behind it? And what can you say back when the visible facts are on the mocker's side?
The Hebrew word behind the wound in this verse is unusual. It is translated "sword" in this one verse alone, and that vagueness is part of its force.
The SWORD, for which several Hebrew words are used… retsach, an undefined slaying weapon, translated "sword" only in Psalm 42:10.
Older translations read "as with a sword in my bones." The ESV has "as with a deadly wound in my bones." Either way the blow goes deep, and the bones stand for his strength.
The conflict is real; experience is against experience. God is his Rock; and yet God has, as far as experience goes, forsaken him. He presses it on God Himself, and with it the bitterness of the enemy's oppression. The enemy reproaches him with this forsaking by God, and he has no answer to the taunts. They crush his bones with it, as he says, making his strength collapse at the thought.
The mockery is not random cruelty. It is an argument. Nobody doubted God's power in the past. What they doubted was this exile's right to call Him his God.
Circumstances were against him, and his enemies threw it in his face: where was his God? He affirms that the living God is his God. Everyone knew how God had appeared for His people in the past. His power, then, no one could question. But was this outcast, this exile, entitled to call Him his God? Why had He not stepped in as He once did, letting His voice be heard and His power be seen? The believer complains of taunts like these. They are hard to bear while he waits for God to step in.
The mockers had already stripped him of every public sign of blessing. That loss did something they never intended, and the same taunt was later thrown at Christ.
The enemy, though in a painful way — and it is so even in God's discipline — helps the soul forward on this path. They said, "Where is your God?" They have driven them out from the public enjoyment of blessing that had been given to them… As they had credited it to God and proclaimed His faithfulness and power to keep them, the enemy now taunts them with it and says, What can you say now? Where is your God? This, in fact, is what the unhappy Jews did to Christ. But this only throws the soul on Him. There was nothing left but what God was Himself. The enemy had driven them away from everything else — from mercies which, when misused, tended to shut God out. The enemy succeeded in depriving the soul of these, and left it only God.
Notice who he answers. He does not argue with his enemies. He speaks to God, and the taunt runs all day long while he still calls God his rock.
In the assurance of the coming day, the godly man rests his soul on God as his rock. He may have to face storms of opposition from enemies who oppress and reproach him. They keep saying, "Where is your God?" But no storm can move or shake the Rock in which he trusts. The circumstances may lead him to cry, "Why have You forgotten me?" Still, God is his rock, so he can again rebuke his natural pull toward despair.
There is no clever comeback here. The taunt itself becomes something he brings to God, and only God can answer it. The waiting is not wasted.
And now the reproach of the enemies becomes a plea with God; for when they say, Where is your God? the only answer is God showing Himself. Meanwhile the soul has been deepened in its desires after God Himself. All carelessness of heart is removed, so that His showing Himself is worth far more… There may be delay as to full peace of heart and enjoyment, if the Lord sees that purifying and sifting are still needed; but he will lean on Him in trust, and God brings the soul to thirst for Himself.
- Wound. The weapon is undefined, and this is the only verse where the word is translated "sword." It strikes the bones, which means it strikes his strength.
- Argument. The taunt hurts because it sounds reasonable: no visible rescue, so no God — and the sufferer has no evidence to produce in reply.
- Stripping. The enemy takes away every outward comfort, even religious ones. That leaves the soul with nothing but God, and the loss deepens it.
- Rock. He asks "Why have You forgotten me?" and still calls God his rock. He aims the question upward, not outward, and no storm shakes that Rock.
- Answer. The one reply to "Where is your God?" is God showing Himself — and the waiting deepens the thirst until that showing is worth infinitely more.
Why art thou cast down, my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God; for I shall yet praise him, [who is] the health of my countenance, and my God.
Verse 11 is a refrain: the psalmist has already said these same words to himself earlier in the psalm. That repeat matters — this is not a passing mood, but a settled way to handle a soul under pressure.
The verse is a man speaking to himself. He does not deny that he is cast down; he questions it. His own experience contradicts what he believes. Even there, faith recovers its footing:
Still the conflict is real; experience is against experience. God is his Rock; and yet God has, as far as experience goes, forsaken him. He presses it on God Himself, along with the bitterness of the enemy's oppression. The enemy's taunts have no answer. They reproach him with this forsaking by God, crushing his bones with it, as he says, making his strength collapse at the thought. Yet even while he says it, faith rallies. It turns defeat into victory with its old self-rebuke, "Why are you cast down?" And he reaffirms his former confidence.
Job faced great suffering and took the opposite path:
Do we hear him taking counsel with his soul in this time of suffering? — "Why are you cast down, O my soul...? Hope in God" (Ps. 42:11). No; instead of encouraging himself like this, he accuses his Maker.
His answer to himself is not an explanation. It is God:
Here is what is permanent, what is eternal: hope in God. Hope, even though you cannot find Him. Though clouds are all around Him, and you cannot come to His seat. Though His ways are in deepest mystery. Though you could not even find a promise you could claim without doubt. He Himself is promise! In His own all-pitying love — in the goodness of His nature, beyond all we can tell or think — in Himself you can find refuge.
Losing the blessings can be the very thing that shows the worth of the Giver:
The heart of the godly pants after God. It was not merely for His blessings; they were gone. The preciousness of what He Himself was only stood out that much more vividly.
The psalm's earlier refrain ended on a different word:
In verse 5 it is the help of God's countenance. In verse 11 He becomes the health of the countenance of the one who trusts in Him.
(Older translations read "the health of my countenance" where the ESV has "my salvation.")
Here is what that health looks like:
Here he now says, "who is the health of my countenance" and "my God." His face reflects in joy the shining out of God's face in love. Distress and the loss of everything given, even religious blessings, had thrown his heart on God. It drew him to look to Him as the only source of joy.
The praise he promises is still future. His face is not:
From this point the soul gathers itself for a flight, and a song. It says: "For I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God." You can see that the face has already brightened.
What begins as total loss ends as possession:
Faith then thirsts after Him and looks to Him. It pleads with the soul, and the soul says to itself: "Well, you have lost everything, but hope in God. The health of His countenance will be there, and yours will be lightened up." It ends with "the health of my countenance and my God." It comes by being weaned from circumstances, thrown on God directly, and on God as his portion too.
Writers put these words straight into the hands of any troubled believer:
There is plenty of comfort in these Psalms for the afflicted and hard-pressed Christian. "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" Such words suit reviving faith well, in the strain and heavy sadness of the day of conflict. For the fallen and despondent saint, one believing look at Christ wins back the firm and assured place of acceptance and peace.
- Question it. Faith does not scold the cast-down soul away. It asks it why, then rallies with its old self-rebuke and reaffirms its former confidence.
- Hope in Him. The one answer offered is God Himself: when no promise seems claimable, He Himself is promise.
- Losing sharpens. The blessings were gone, and their loss only made the preciousness of what God is stand out more vividly.
- His face, then yours. In verse 5 it is the help of His face. In verse 11 He becomes the health of yours, reflecting His in joy.
- Yet praise. The song starts before the rescue does. The face brightens while the trouble is still there.