Psalm 42 · a question people ask
"Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from the hill Mizar" (42:6). Where was the psalmist?
The psalm names the places and says no more about them. Hermon is named in other books too, as in "from the valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon" (Deuteronomy 3:8). The heights of Hermon is one Hebrew word, a plural, which Strong's gives as "Hermons, i.e. its peaks". Mizar is named nowhere else in the Bible, and the psalm doesn't say where it is. What the psalm does say is that the psalmist remembers God from there (Psalm 42:6), asks, "When shall I come and appear before God?" (Psalm 42:2), and remembers how they once "led them to God’s house" (Psalm 42:4). It doesn't say why the psalmist was there, or when, and these notes don't guess.
The verses
“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”
“These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me, how I used to go with the crowd, and led them to God’s house, with the voice of joy and praise, a multitude keeping a holy day.”
“My God, my soul is in despair within me. Therefore I remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon, from the hill Mizar.”
“We took the land at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon.”