Psalms Chapter 42 verse 6 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 6. - O my God, my soul is cast down within me; or, bowed down, as in the first clause of ver. 5. Therefore will I remember thee. As a remedy for my depression, I will call thee to mind, and cast myself on thee. From the land of Jordan. From the place of my present abode - the Trans-Jordanic region - to which, on the revolt of Absalom, David had fled (2 Samuel 17:24). And of the Hormonites; rather, and of the Hermons. This expression is not elsewhere used, and can only be explained conjecturally. It probably means the mountain ranges which, starting from Hermon in the north, extend in a southerly direction down the entire Trans-Jordanic territory. From the hill Mizar. This name occurs nowhere else; and can be assigned to no special locality.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(6) Cast down.--The poet, though faith condemns his dejection, still feels it, and cannot help expressing it. The heart will not be tranquil all at once, and the utterance of its trouble, so natural, so pathetic, long after served, in the very words of the LXX., to express a deeper grief, and mark a more tremendous crisis (John 12:27; Matthew 26:38).Therefore will I.--Better, therefore do I remember thee. (Comp. Jonah 2:7.)From the land of Jordan--i.e., the uplands of the north-east, where the river rises. The poet has not vet passed quite into the land of exile, the country beyond Jordan, but already he is on its borders, and as his sad eyes turn again and again towards the loved country he is leaving, its sacred summits begin to disappear, while ever nearer and higher rise the snow-clad peaks of Hermon.Hermonites.--Rather, of the Hermons, i.e., either collectively for the whole range (as generally of mountains, the Balkans, etc.) or with reference to the appearance of the mountain as a ridge with a conspicuous peak at either end. (See Thomson, Land and Book, p. 177.) In reality, however, the group known especially as Hermon has three summits, situated, like the angles of a triangle, a quarter of a mile from each other, and of almost equal elevation. (See Smith's Bible Dict., "Hermon." Comp. Our Work in Palestine, p. 246.)The hill Mizar.--Marg., the little hill. So LXX. and Vulg., a monte modico. (Comp. the play on the name Zoar in Genesis 19:20.) Hence some think the poet is contrasting Hermon with Zion. In such a case, however, the custom of Hebrew poetry was to exalt Zion, and not depreciate the higher mountains, and it is very natural to suppose that some lower ridge or pass, over which the exile may be supposed wending his sad way, was actually called "the little," or "the less." . . .