Psalms 42

World English Bible 89 include this book

1 As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”

4 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.

5 Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him for the saving help of his presence.

6 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.

7 Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me.

8 The LORD will command his loving kindness in the daytime. In the night his song shall be with me: a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”

10 As with a sword in my bones, my adversaries reproach me, while they continually ask me, “Where is your God?”

11 Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him, the saving help of my countenance, and my God.

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2 places named in this chapter.

Where this was written

Jerusalem traditional Assembled for temple worship over several centuries.

When this was written

The traditions broadly agree on this one.

Broad agreement: 1010 BC–400 BC David and many others
The Psalter is a collection assembled over centuries; individual psalms range widely in date.

Elsewhere in the world

Events overlapping the period this book is dated to (1010 BC–400 BC).

1200 BC–1000 BC Iron working spreads in the Levant Levant
Iron gradually displaced bronze for tools and weapons across the eastern Mediterranean.
1200 BC–400 BC Olmec civilisation Mesoamerica
The earliest major Mesoamerican civilisation, known for colossal stone heads and an early calendar.
1200 BC–600 BC Zoroaster teaches in Persia Persia
Founder of Zoroastrianism, whose dating is disputed by as much as six centuries. His teaching on a cosmic struggle between good and evil later touched Jewish and Christian thought.
1070 BC–350 AD The kingdom of Kush Africa
A Nubian power on the upper Nile that ruled Egypt itself as its twenty-fifth dynasty.
776 BC First recorded Olympiad Greece
The traditional starting point of Greek historical chronology.
753 BC Traditional founding of Rome Rome
The legendary date of Rome's founding, later used as the anchor of the Roman calendar.
745 BC–609 BC Neo-Assyrian empire at its height Mesopotamia
Assyria dominated the Near East, deporting conquered populations as policy, including the northern kingdom of Israel.
620 BC–560 BC Coinage invented in Lydia Anatolia
Stamped electrum coins of guaranteed weight, an idea that spread across the ancient world within a century.

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