Psalm 107:5

Psalm 107:5, in plain English

When you're lost and wandering, physical desperation follows—hunger and thirst drain your body, and your spirit grows faint and weak.

Why it's here

Desert travel meant real danger. Without food and water, people actually died. But the psalmist is also using hunger and thirst as spiritual metaphors—a picture of deep, aching emptiness that only God can fill.

Who's speaking

The psalmist, describing the depth of human need

Where it sits in the story

Jesus would later say 'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.' The physical desperation described here teaches us what spiritual longing really feels like.

The scholarly reading

The psalmist intensifies the depiction of distress: physical hunger and thirst compound the spiritual paralysis, so that the soul (nephesh) itself faints under the weight of total deprivation.

Language and setting

The language of fainting (ta'ataf nephesh—literally 'their soul/life wrapped/collapsed') suggests physical and existential crisis collapsing into one. In ancient Israelite anthropology, nephesh represents the vital self, the seat of desire and appetite; its fainting indicates near-death condition. The concrete mention of hunger and thirst anchors the spiritual metaphor in embodied suffering—exile was not merely a theological loss but a material ordeal.

Voice

The liturgical narration deepens, inviting the assembly into empathetic identification with the destitute. This rhetorical strategy primes the audience for the reversal that follows.

Significance

Jesus's words 'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness' (Matthew 5:6) reorient this psalm's language toward spiritual hunger; conversely, the Eucharistic feeding recalls this psalm's promise of satisfaction. The psalm holds physical and spiritual need together, resisting the false dualism that later Platonizing theology would introduce.

3and gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.

4Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no path to a city in which to dwell.

5They were hungry and thirsty; their soul fainted within them.

6Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress.

7He led them on a straight path to reach a city where they could live.

Read all of Psalm 107 — Four stories of people in trouble — lost, imprisoned, sick, storm-tossed. Each time they cry out. Each time God delivers. Let the redeemed say so.