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Gustave Doré’s engraving of David standing crowned and bowed as he mourns Absalom

Psalm 42

What St Athanasius said to pray when you long for God and your soul is downcast, in a letter from the 300s.

  • 11Verses
  • 2Situations

St Athanasius, Letter to Marcellinus

When to pray it

In the 300s, St Athanasius of Alexandria wrote a letter to his friend Marcellinus about praying the Psalms. In it he matched psalms to what people go through. He named this one more than once.

You long for God with everything in you, and people keep throwing it at you: "Where is your God?"

If you long for God with all your heart and hear your enemies taunting you, don't be troubled. Knowing the undying fruit of that longing, comfort your soul with hope in God, and ease its griefs, with Psalm 42.

Letter to Marcellinus

Something in you is weighed down or uneasy, and it won't settle.

Sing the Psalms: what is troubled in you is smoothed out, and what grieves you is healed, as you say to your own soul, "Why are you downcast, O my soul?"

Letter to Marcellinus

For the same situation he also named Psalm 43.

Psalm 42:5

Where it turns

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.

11 verses, Berean Standard Bible

The whole psalm

Psalm 42

Its own heading For the choirmaster. A Maskil of the sons of Korah.

  1. 1As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after You, O God.
  2. 2My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When shall I come and appear in God’s presence?
  3. 3My tears have been my food both day and night, while men ask me all day long, “Where is your God?”
  4. 4These things come to mind as I pour out my soul: how I walked with the multitude, leading the festive procession to the house of God with shouts of joy and praise.
  5. 5Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.
  6. 6O my God, my soul despairs within me. Therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon— even from Mount Mizar.
  7. 7Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and waves have rolled over me.
  8. 8The LORD decrees His loving devotion by day, and at night His song is with me as a prayer to the God of my life.
  9. 9I say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?”
  10. 10Like the crushing of my bones, my enemies taunt me, while they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
  11. 11Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.

Psalm 42 is 41 in the Greek numbering Athanasius used, which Orthodox Bibles and some older Catholic ones still follow.

When people turn against you

Close to this

All 53 situations, in one guide.

Your turn

Which Psalm are you living right now?

A few honest taps about your life right now, and the psalm an early Church Father gave for exactly that.

  • 3 min
  • 7 questions
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Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Athanasius’s advice is paraphrased from his Greek.