As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
Psalm 42:1 (NASB1995)
The image that the psalmist paints in today’s verse is very effective. Being a man of the fields and hills, David was familiar with the countryside and the animals that lived in it – he would have seen deer searching for water and slaking their thirst. It was a way of daily life for the deer of the wilderness he shepherded in. In this psalm, the deer’s need for daily water is offered as an illustration for his daily need for God.
David speaks of the deer’s general need for water, but Adam Clarke (in his commentary) illustrates the deer who is hunted by dogs. His description of the deer as prey is very effective and applicable to the Christian walk of those being persecuted by the hounds of Satan.
Dear Reader, we all need water every day – it is a basic need of life. Yet, as children of God, our need for daily spiritual sustenance is for Heavenly water as described by our Lord Jesus to the woman at the well:
Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
John 4:13-14
May we seek the fresh streams of living water found in the Word and in His presence each day.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Devotional Treasures
