Psalm 42:8-9
New English Translation
8 By day the Lord decrees his loyal love,[a]
and by night he gives me a song,[b]
a prayer[c] to the God of my life.
9 I will pray[d] to God, my high ridge:[e]
“Why do you ignore[f] me?
Why must I walk around mourning[g]
because my enemies oppress me?”
Footnotes
- Psalm 42:8 sn The psalmist believes that the Lord has not abandoned him, but continues to extend his loyal love. To this point in the psalm, the author has used the name “God,” but now, as he mentions the divine characteristic of loyal love, he switches to the more personal divine name Yahweh (rendered in the translation as “the Lord”).
- Psalm 42:8 tn Heb “his song [is] with me.”
- Psalm 42:8 tc A few medieval Hebrew mss read תְּהִלָּה (tehillah, “praise”) instead of תְּפִלָּה (tefillah, “prayer”).
- Psalm 42:9 tn The cohortative form indicates the psalmist’s resolve.
- Psalm 42:9 tn This metaphor pictures God as a rocky, relatively inaccessible summit, where one would be able to find protection from enemies. See 1 Sam 23:25, 28; Pss 18:2; 31:3.
- Psalm 42:9 tn Or “forget.”
- Psalm 42:9 sn Walk around mourning. See Ps 38:6 for a similar idea.
Psalm 42:8-9
King James Version
8 Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.
9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
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