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Psalm 42:7
Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me.
5Why 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.
6My 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.
7Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls. All your waves and your billows have swept over me.
8The 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.
9I will ask God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
Notice
The roar of waterfalls makes despair sound overwhelming, while the repeated word “your” keeps the speaker's distress addressed to the God whose waves sweep over him.
Questions to write on. Each one opens a new entry with this verse already attached.
What, if anything, in your life resembles waves sweeping over you rather than water you can cross?
Write on thisWhat is hard to understand about the speaker calling these overwhelming waters God's waves?
Write on thisWhat would you want to say to God after praying this verse?
Write on thisConnect
Where else Scripture says this
12 passages readers most often link with this verse, and the thread each one shares with it.
This verse's connections, by chapterThe Bible's strongest chapter linksHover or tap a book to trace it
Jonah 2:3For you threw me into the depths, in the heart of the seas. The flood was all around me. All your waves and your billows passed over me.Both speakers address God with the words “All your waves and your billows,” describing waters that have passed over them.
Psalm 130:1A Song of Ascents. Out of the depths I have cried to you, LORD.Both prayers address God from depths of distress, though Psalm 42 develops the image through waterfalls and sweeping waves.
Psalm 69:14–15Deliver me out of the mire, and don’t let me sink. Let me be delivered from those who hate me, and out of the deep waters.Deep waters describe danger in both psalms; Psalm 69 asks for deliverance, while Psalm 42 describes the waters sweeping over the speaker.
Psalm 88:7Your wrath lies heavily on me. You have afflicted me with all your waves. Selah.Both speakers call the overwhelming waves God's own; Psalm 88 also names wrath, which Psalm 42:7 does not.
Jeremiah 12:5“If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses? Though in a land of peace you are secure, yet how will you …The surrounding psalm names the Jordan; Jeremiah names it too, though his question about endurance differs from the psalm's lament.
1 Samuel 30:6David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the souls of all the people were grieved, every man for his sons and for his …Both passages describe distress in relation to God, though David's strength in God contrasts with the psalm's image of being overwhelmed.
Jeremiah 4:20Destruction on destruction is decreed, for the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, and my curtains gone in a moment.Destruction follows destruction in Jeremiah, echoing the psalm's accumulating waters, though Jeremiah describes devastation of land and shelter.
Lamentations 3:53–55They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and have cast a stone on me.Both speakers describe being overcome: one by waves sweeping over him, the other by confinement and a stone cast upon him.
Psalm 32:6For this, let everyone who is godly pray to you in a time when you may be found. Surely when the great waters overflow, they shall not reach to him.Both address God through flood imagery, but Psalm 32 describes protection from waters while Psalm 42 describes being swept over.
Job 1:14–19that a messenger came to Job, and said, “The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them,The supplied line from Job describes farm work; this excerpt alone offers no clear parallel to the psalm's overwhelming waters.
Ezekiel 7:26Mischief will come on mischief, and rumor will be on rumor. They will seek a vision of the prophet; but the law will perish from the priest, and counsel from …The psalm's accumulating waves and Ezekiel's mischief following mischief portray mounting trouble, though Ezekiel also describes the loss of counsel.
Ecclesiastes 12:2Before the sun, the light, the moon, and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain;Both use images from nature, with waves sweeping over the psalm's speaker and clouds returning after rain in Ecclesiastes.
Where this verse fits
Grief. feeling distant from God. anxiety or panic.
One step
Something small to carry out of this verse
Encouragement
Even under the waves, the speaker addresses God. Your prayer can name distress without resolving it; the waters in this lament remain under God's rule.
Now put it in your words.
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Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).