Psalm 42:7

Psalm 42:7, in plain English

You're describing overwhelming suffering—waves of pain crashing over you one after another, as if you're drowning in trouble and can barely keep your head above water.

Why it's here

The image shifts from thirst to drowning, from desert to flood. This is poetic language for being completely overwhelmed by circumstances. Every trouble seems connected to the next, creating an avalanche effect that feels inescapable.

Who's speaking

The psalmist, using vivid metaphor to express the intensity of his suffering.

Where it sits in the story

Many biblical figures describe suffering this way—as water, as depths, as being swallowed. It acknowledges that real pain feels all-consuming, and Scripture never tells you to minimize that.

The scholarly reading

The psalmist employs violent aquatic imagery—waterfalls and breakers—to describe the overwhelming force of God's judgment or the crisis engulfing him.

Language and setting

The Hebrew construction 'Deep calls to deep' (תְהוֹם אֶל־תְהוֹם קוֹרֵא, tehom el-tehom kore) references the primordial waters of Genesis 1, investing the metaphor with cosmological significance. The 'waterfalls' (נִדְרֵי) and 'breakers' (מִשְׁבָּרִים) evoke both the Jordan's rapids and, more broadly, the ancient Near Eastern imagery of chaos waters—suggesting that the psalmist experiences his crisis not as mere circumstance but as cosmic disorder threatening to engulf him. This reflects the apocalyptic sensibility wherein personal suffering mirrors eschatological turmoil.

Voice

The Levite, now articulating the overwhelming, transpersonal magnitude of affliction through creation language.

Significance

This incorporates the Psalter's wisdom tradition about the limits of human comprehension (echoing Job's theophanic speeches) and anticipates New Testament language about trials as deep waters (Matthew 14:24-32), preparing readers to understand suffering not as meaningless but as existential encounter with divine mystery.

5Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.

6O my God, my soul despairs within me. Therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon— even from Mount Mizar.

7Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and waves have rolled over me.

8The LORD decrees His loving devotion by day, and at night His song is with me as a prayer to the God of my life.

9I say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?”

Read all of Psalm 42 — The writer talks to his own soul, preaching hope to himself in the middle of despair. Sometimes that's all you can do.