Psalms 42:6

"O My God, my soul is cast down within me:

Therefore do I remember thee from the land of the Jordan,

And the Hermons from the hill Mizar.

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterfalls:

All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

Yet Jehovah will command his lovingkindness in the daytime;

And in the night his song shall be with me

Even a prayer unto the God of my life."

(See the chapter introduction for a discussion of Psalms 42:6.)

"All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me" (Psalms 42:7). The psalmist here remembers the experience of Jonah, making the same determination that God will yet bless him, just as he blessed Jonah. The passage recalled here is:

"All thy waves and thy billows passed over me ... the waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the deep was round about me. Yet I will look again toward thy holy temple" (Jonah 2:3-5).

It is easy to see that the psalmist here was appealing to God, that just as he had blessed Jonah, so might the same blessings come to the psalmist.

"Jehovah will command his lovingkindness in the daytime; and in the night his song shall be with me" (Psalms 42:8). The future tenses here, "will command," and "shall be with me" are changed to the present tense in the RSV which reads, "By day the Lord commands his stedfast love; and at night his song is with me." "Owing to the flexibility of the meaning of Hebrew tenses, it may be legitimately translated either way."[13]

If we translate the passage as present (RSV) it means that the psalmist is at the present time receiving comfort and consolation from his confessed sense of God's overruling; and, if we translate it future as in ASV, then the psalmist is "stating his assurance that God will enable him to triumph in the midst of storms."[14]