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Book II

(Psalms 42–72)

Psalm 42

Longing for God and His Help in Distress

To the leader. A Maskil of the Korahites.

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
    so my soul longs for you, O God.(A)
My soul thirsts for God,
    for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
    the face of God?(B)
My tears have been my food
    day and night,
while people say to me continually,
    “Where is your God?”(C)

These things I remember,
    as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng[a]
    and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
    a multitude keeping festival.(D)
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him,
my help(E)     and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
    therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
    from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
    at the thunder of your torrents;
all your waves and your billows
    have gone over me.(F)
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
    and at night his song is with me,
    a prayer to the God of my life.(G)

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Footnotes

  1. 42.4 Meaning of Heb uncertain

The Gift of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.(A) If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.(B)

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant(C) or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs;(D) it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.(E) It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.(F)

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.(G) 13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.

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Footnotes

  1. 13.3 Other ancient authorities read body to be burned