UNIFYING LINE - What pulls Psalm 42 and 43 together as a single
unit is the refrain that closes each of the three strophes: 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 (42:5, 42:11, 43:5).
ON REMEMBERING - Notice the prominence that the memory plays in this psalm-I
remember (42:4); therefore I remember you (42:5); and its opposite,
forget-why have you forgotten me? (42:9). Unable to visit the Temple, all the
psalmist can do is to remember. Such remembering becomes the catalyst to move the
suppliant back to confident trust in God on one hand, but also despair; happy memories
exacerbate the present sad state of exile.
POWERFUL HOPE - For Christians who live in a world that constantly raises the
question, Where is your God? these psalms are indispensable liturgy and
Scripture. They disclose the real nature of our souls disquiet as thirst for God.
They turn us toward the worship of praise, sacraments, and preaching in and through which
our Lord wills to be present for the congregation. [1]
One
way to recover a bit of the rhetorical impact of Psalms 42 and 43 might be to recall
similarities of experience and emotion from your own life: What do you find best quenches
you r thirst? When have you been homesick? What would correspondence from that time reveal
about your inner most yearnings and fears? What causes God to seem far away at times? Of
the adjectives and titles which this person ascribed to God, which ones best describe your
relationship with God? [2]
This psalm has the ring of truth to it
because it is so authentic and vulnerable in the sharing of emotion and inner feeling and
conversation. One current concern that could relate well to the psalms is depression. Such
is a wide spread phenomenon and one that people rarely talk about. This psalm honestly
names a depressive state of the prayer-why are you cast down, O my soul . . .
Do some work to get the basic idea of depression down and then re-enter the text to
forge a view that holds fairly what the medical profession is doing to help persons who
struggle with depression with what our faith says to the human condition.
You might also parallel-track Psalm 42 and 43 with the story about Elijah for this
week. The prophet seems to be in his own quagmire of depression.
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[1] James L. Mays as cited in New Interpreters Bible IV (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1996), page 854.
[2] Serendipity Bible (Zondervan, 1998), pp. 779-780.
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