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?

In the text

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?”
Psalm 42:2 · World English Bible
“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.”
Psalm 42:4 · World English Bible
“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.”
Psalm 42:6 · World English Bible
“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.”
Deuteronomy 3:8 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Psalm 42

Psalm 42: As the deer pants

Psalm 42's pants is a word the Hebrew Bible has only here and in Joel 1:20, where the animals pant at water brooks that have dried up. And its refrain, "Hope in God!" (42:5), comes three times across Psalms 42 and 43: in Hebrew 42:11 and 43:5 are the same, letter for letter, though the WEB words their endings differently.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions