Albert Barnes Commentary 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." — Psalms 42:6 (ASV)

O my God, my soul is cast down within me – This is the utterance of a soul in anguish, despite the purpose not to be cast down, and the conviction that hope should be cherished. The psalmist cannot help but say that, despite all this, he is sad. His troubles come rushing over his soul; they all return at once; his heart is oppressed, and he is compelled to confess that, despite his solemn purpose not to be sad, the conviction that he should be cheerful, and his wish to be and to appear so, his sorrows nonetheless gain mastery over all this, and his heart is filled with grief.

What sufferer has not felt this way? When he genuinely wished to trust in God, when he hoped that things would be better, when he saw that he should be calm and cheerful, his sorrows have returned like a flood, sweeping all these feelings away for the time, filling his soul with anguish, compelling him to form these resolutions anew, and driving him afresh to the throne of grace, to beat back the returning tide of grief, and to bring the soul to calmness and peace.

Therefore will I remember thee – I will look to you; I will come to you; I will recall your former merciful visitations. In this lone land, far away from the place of worship, in the midst of these privations, troubles, and sorrows, surrounded as I am by taunting foes, and having no source of consolation here, I will remember my God. Even here, amidst these sorrows, I will lift up my heart in grateful remembrance of him, and will think of him alone. The words that follow are designed merely to give an idea of the desolation and sadness of his condition, and of the fact of his exile.

From the land of Jordan – This probably refers to the fact that he was then in that “land.” The phrase would indicate the region adjacent to the Jordan and through which the Jordan flowed, just as we speak of “the valley of the Mississippi,” meaning the region through which that river flows. The lands adjacent to the Jordan on either side were covered with underbrush and thickets, and were, in former times, the favorite resorts of wild animals (Jeremiah 49:19; Jeremiah 50:44). The psalmist was on the eastern side of the Jordan.

And of the Hermonites – The land of the Hermonites; the region in which Mount Hermon is situated. This was on the northeast of Palestine, beyond the Jordan. Mount Hermon was a ridge or spur of Antilibanus (Joshua 11:3, Joshua 11:17). This spur or ridge lies near the sources of the Jordan. It consists of several summits and is therefore spoken of here in the plural, Hermonim, the Hebrew plural of Hermon. These mountains were called Sirion by the Sidonians. (See the notes at Psalm 29:6). Different names were given to different parts of these summits of the mountain ranges.

The principal summit, or Mount Hermon properly so called, rises to the height of ten or twelve thousand feet and is covered with perpetual snow—or rather, as Dr. Robinson says (Biblical Researches, iii. 344), the snow is perpetual in the ravines, so that the top presents the appearance of radiant stripes around and below the summit. The word is used here with reference to the mountain region to which the general name of Hermon was given on the northeast of Palestine, and on the east of the sources of the Jordan. It is not improbable that after passing the Jordan, the psalmist had gone in that direction in his exile.

From the hill Mizar – Margin, "the little hill." So the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, and Luther. DeWette renders it as a proper name. The word Mizar, or Mitsar (Hebrew), properly means smallness, and so, anything small or little. The word seems here, however, to be used as a proper name and was probably applied to some part of that mountain range, though to what particular portion is now unknown. This seems to have been the place where the psalmist took up his abode in his exile. As no such name is now known to be given to any part of that mountain range, it is impossible to identify the spot. It seems from the following verse, however, that it was not far from the Jordan.