What Does Psalm 42:7 Mean?

Deep calls to deep at the voice of your waterspouts. All your breakers and your rolling waves cross over me.

Psalm 42:7 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

THE KEY

The word translated “billows” means breakers: the waters passing over you are named for the force with which they break.

THE MEANING

One depth calls to another, and the answer is a roar. The waters are not distant: their breakers and waves pass over you, giving language to the moment when you are submerged by what surrounds you.

THE ROOT

מִשְׁבָּרֶיךָ

mishbarekha

GROWS FROM

שבר

sh-b-r

to break, shatter

The word for “billows” is built on the root meaning “break.” The image is more than water covering you: these are breakers, named for their breaking force as they pass over you.

ALSO GROWS

shavar: to break or shatter

שָׁבַר

The verb names the force inside a breaker: it breaks as it surges over you.

shever: breakage, fracture

שֶׁבֶר

This related noun carries breaking as a condition, showing that the image holds impact as well as overwhelming height.

THE PATTERN

Overwhelming distress is pictured as water with force enough to break over the one inside it.

To the chief Musician upon Shoshannim, A Psalm of David. Deliver me, O God, for the waters have come up to my living soul. I sink in the mire of waters, where there is no footing. I come into the depths of waters, and the flood sweeps over me.

Psalm 69:1-2 · SDVDeep water and rising floods give distress the force of something that overtakes and submerges.

For you threw me down into the depths, into the heart of the seas, and the rivers turned around me; all your breakers and your rolling waves crossed over me.

Jonah 2:3 · SDVThe same breakers and waves pass over the speaker, making the psalm’s image recur in Jonah’s words.

And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves were thrown into the boat, so that the boat was already filling.

Mark 4:37 · SDVThe waves become an engulfing force as the vessel fills around those inside it.

THE THREAD

For you threw me down into the depths, into the heart of the seas, and the rivers turned around me; all your breakers and your rolling waves crossed over me.

Jonah 2:3 · SDV

Both verses use the same Hebrew words for “your breakers” and “your waves,” along with the same verb for “passed over.” Jonah makes the link audible: the breaking waters that overtake the speaker here also overtake Jonah.

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