Psalms 42:5

42:5 Why are you depressed, ¹  O my soul? ² 

Why are you upset? ³ 

Wait for God!

For I will again give thanks

to my God for his saving intervention. ⁴ 

Psalms 63:1

Psalm 63 ⁵ 

A psalm of David, written when he was in the Judean wilderness. ⁶ 

63:1 O God, you are my God! I long for you! ⁷ 

My soul thirsts ⁸  for you,

my flesh yearns for you,

in a dry and parched ⁹  land where there is no water.

Psalms 143:8

143:8 May I hear about your loyal love in the morning, ¹⁰ 

for I trust in you.

Show me the way I should go, ¹¹ 

because I long for you. ¹² 

[42:5]  ¹ tn Heb “Why do you bow down?”

[42:5]  ² sn For poetic effect the psalmist addresses his soul, or inner self.

[42:5]  ³ tn Heb “and [why] are you in turmoil upon me?” The prefixed verbal form with vav (ו) consecutive here carries on the descriptive present nuance of the preceding imperfect. See GKC 329 §111.t.

[42:5]  ⁴ tc Heb “for again I will give him thanks, the saving acts of his face.” The verse division in the Hebrew text is incorrect. אֱלֹהַי (’elohay, “my God”) at the beginning of v. 7 belongs with the end of v. 6 (see the corresponding refrains in 42:11 and 43:5, both of which end with “my God” after “saving acts of my face”). The Hebrew term פָּנָיו (panayv, “his face”) should be emended to פְּנֵי (pÿney, “face of”). The emended text reads, “[for] the saving acts of the face of my God,” that is, the saving acts associated with God’s presence/intervention.

[63:1]  ⁵ sn Psalm 63. The psalmist expresses his intense desire to be in God’s presence and confidently affirms that God will judge his enemies.

[63:1]  ⁶ sn According to the psalm superscription David wrote the psalm while in the “wilderness of Judah.” Perhaps this refers to the period described in 1 Sam 23-24 or to the incident mentioned in 2 Sam 15:23.

[63:1]  ⁷ tn Or “I will seek you.”

[63:1]  ⁸ tn Or “I thirst.”

[63:1]  ⁹ tn Heb “faint” or “weary.” This may picture the land as “faint” or “weary,” or it may allude to the effect this dry desert has on those who are forced to live in it.

[143:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “cause me to hear in the morning your loyal love.” Here “loyal love” probably stands metonymically for an oracle of assurance promising God’s intervention as an expression of his loyal love.

[143:8]  ¹⁰ sn The way probably refers here to God’s moral and ethical standards and requirements (see v. 10).

[143:8]  ¹¹ tn Heb “for to you I lift up my life.” The Hebrew expression נָאָשׂ נֶפֶשׁ (na’as nefesh, “to lift up [one’s] life”) means “to desire; to long for” (see Deut 24:15; Prov 19:18; Jer 22:27; 44:14; Hos 4:8, as well as H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, 16).