1As a deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.
2My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before the face of God?
3My tears have been my bread day and night, while they say to me all the day, ‘Where is your God?’
4These things I remember, and I pour out my soul within me: how I used to pass along with the throng, leading them in procession to the house of God, with a voice of ringing cry and thanksgiving, a crowd keeping festival.
5Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why do you moan within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him — the salvation of his face.
6O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan and the Hermons, from Mount Mizar.
7Deep calls to deep at the sound of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have swept over me.
8By day Yahweh commands his loyal love, and in the night his song is with me — a prayer to the God of my life.
9I will say to God my rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning under the oppression of the enemy?’
10With a shattering in my bones my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day, ‘Where is your God?’
11Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why do you moan within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him — the salvation of my face and my God.
Where this passage connects across Scripture — each link typed and reasoned, part of the AIT Bible Nexus Chart.
Longing for the Presence of God
parallelPsalms 42:11— The refrain 'Why are you cast down, O my soul... Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him' is repeated verbatim within the same psalm.
parallelPsalms 43:5— The identical refrain appears in Ps 43, indicating Pss 42–43 were originally a single composition.
parallelPsalms 42:1— The refrain 'Why are you cast down, O my soul... Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him' is repeated verbatim within the same psalm.
parallelPsalms 43:1— Identical refrain 'Why are you cast down, O my soul... Wait for God, for I will yet praise him,' shared with Psalm 42, indicating the two psalms form a single unit.
allusionJonah 2:3— Shared imagery of God's breakers and waves passing over the sufferer describes overwhelming distress.
echoed inJonah 2:1— Shared imagery of God's breakers and waves passing over the sufferer.
echoed inMark 14:32— 'My soul is deeply grieved' echoes the psalmist's downcast soul.
echoed inMatthew 26:36— 'My soul is exceedingly sorrowful' echoes the psalmist's downcast soul.
echoed inMicah 7:8— The taunt 'Where is Yahweh your God?' echoes the enemy's mocking question in the Psalms.
echoed inPsalms 79:5— Shared taunt of the nations, 'Where is their God?'
echoed inPsalms 115:1— The taunt of the nations, 'Where is their God?', is a recurring mocking phrase directed at the faithful.
thematicPsalms 63:1— Both express the soul thirsting for God with water imagery in a state of separation from the sanctuary.
thematicPsalms 79:10— The taunt 'Where is your God?' voiced by enemies is a shared motif of the psalmist's reproach.
thematicPsalms 69:1— Shared imagery of overwhelming deep waters and floods as figure of distress.