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.