Inner Struggle and the Divided Nepeš

Although nepeš is the principal symbol of Ps 42–43’s different theological outlooks, the psalm as a whole gives expression to the speaker’s mixed perspectives about the possibility of an encounter with God at the temple—probably the Jerusalem temple but possibly a different one.Footnote ¹⁷ On the one hand, the speaker longs for such encounter, and the psalm itself builds toward deeper relationship with God, but on the other hand, the water imagery and spatial organization of the psalm call attention to the formidable obstacles that stand in the way of that encounter. These obstacles are the source of the speaker’s doubt; she does not question God or her relationship with God but rather her ability to overcome the barriers that keep her away from the divine encounter she desires. This mix of desire and doubt throughout Ps 42–43 provides the backdrop for its depiction of the speaker’s divided nepeš.

We can first note that Ps 42–43 includes many characteristic expressions of trust in and yearning for God. For example, the phrase “to thirst for God” (42:2) has a parallel in Ps 63:2 (cf. 143:6),Footnote ¹⁸ and the speaker’s desire to “see the face of God” (42:3) may be compared to Psalms 27:4, 13 and 63:3, which likewise express longing to behold God in the temple.Footnote ¹⁹ Indeed, all of these psalms (27; 42–43; 63) are connected by their speakers’ orientation toward the temple as the locus of their longed-for encounter with God.Footnote ²⁰ In 43:1–4 this encounter takes the form of legal vindication, as the speaker petitions God with imperatives containing juridical language familiar from other psalms: “Vindicate me, O God! Come to my defense!” (43:1; see also 7:9; 26:1; 35:1, 24; 74:22). This language establishes a legal bond between God and the speaker by casting them in the roles of judge and plaintiff, respectively.Footnote ²¹ Indeed, within Ps 42–43, the imperatives mark a turning point, as for the first time the speaker makes a direct request of God and moves toward solidarity with God.Footnote ²²

This movement toward deeper engagement with God can also be seen in more subtle aspects of Ps 42–43, such as the expanding length of addresses to God as the psalm proceeds and the increasing use of possessive pronouns. As for the former, the psalm shows a clear pattern of alternating addresses:

This simple table shows the speaker’s alternation between speaking to God and speaking to her nepeš, but whereas the addresses to the nepeš are a single-verse refrain, the addresses to God double in length with each turn. The first is a single verse; the second, two verses; and the third, four verses. The expansion shows increasing engagement with God over the course of the prayer.

Similarly, the distribution of possessive pronouns attached to God indicates a strengthening connection between the speaker and God:

Breaking Ps 42–43 into three stanzas delineated by the refrain, we see that in the first stanza there are no possessive pronouns attached to God, at least not from the speaker; the only one comes from the mockers who sarcastically ask, “Where is your God?” The second stanza follows a similar pattern of divine names, but here the speaker uses multiple first-person possessive pronouns. Especially noteworthy are those attached to words repeated from the first stanza: “O God” (42:2) becomes “O my God” (42:7); “God of life” (42:3) becomes “God of my life” (42:9); and no mention of God at the end of 42:6 becomes “my God” at the end of 42:12. These pronouns indicate a shift from the first stanza to the second, as the speaker declares a personal connection to the God she is addressing. The last stanza does not repeat the pattern of the first two but instead concludes the prayer with three forthright references to “God. . . my God.” Altogether this distribution of possessive pronouns, combined with the expanding addresses to God, speaks to a deepening bond between the speaker and God over the course of Ps 42–43.

In other ways, however, Ps 42–43 expresses doubt about the possibility of (liturgical) connection with God. This doubt is especially apparent in the psalm’s water imagery and spatial organization. The first images of water occur in its opening verses, in which the speaker compares herself to a deer longing for streams (’ăpîqê-māyim); likewise, her nepeš thirsts (ṣāmĕ’â) for God. Thus, from the beginning of the psalm (lack of) water serves as a metaphor for the speaker’s desolation (vv. 2–3; cf. Ps 63:2; 143:6), which only worsens with her abundance of tears (dim‘â) and outpouring (špk) of nepeš in verses 4–5. Together these images depict what Terence Collins called the “weeping nepeš,” which involves the flow of tears out of the intestines, through the throat (nepeš), and out the eyes (cf. Jer 13:17; Lam 2:11–12; Ps 31:10) and results in the desiccation of the weeper (cf. Ps 69:4).Footnote ²⁵ These comparative examples of the “weeping nepeš” indicate that the outpouring of tears and nepeš in verses 4–5 is a continuation of the thirst described in verses 2–3, and the verses altogether depict the speaker’s parched condition as a physical reality and metaphor for spiritual desolation.

Later in the psalm, it is God who is associated with water imagery, though not the kind that will bring relief to the speaker. Rather, we find images of water as an overwhelming force of mythic proportions. In a direct address to God in 42:7–8, the speaker describes a scene of “Deep (tĕhôm) calling out to Deep (tĕhôm),” roaring channels (ṣinnôreykā) of water, and breaking waves (mišbāreykā wĕgalleykā) that sweep over her. Such imagery evokes God’s overwhelming power and suggests the impossibility of renewed encounter between God and the speaker. The references to tĕhôm, in particular, speak to a profound disproportionality in scale. Whereas the images of water associated with the speaker are mundane (streams, tears), the tĕhôm refers to the cosmic waters of pre-creation (Gen 1:2; 49:25; Deut 33:13; Ps 104:6; Job 28:14; 38:16) and is cognate with the name of a Mesopotamian deity (Akk. Tiamat).

Thus, the water imagery of Ps 42–43 symbolizes the speaker’s mixed outlook about her encounter with God.Footnote ²⁶ On the one hand, the imagery speaks to her personal and embodied desire to be with God. Divine absence is felt as thirst, and her body produces tears in hopes of renewing that bond. On the other hand, the disparity in scale between the various images of water indicates the speaker’s perceived distance from God and her doubts that the gap can be bridged. Her internal thirst for an encounter with God must contend with external obstacles that stand in the way of that encounter.

Significantly, both sets of water images are given from the speaker’s perspective; the tension between them is one that she herself embodies. It would be different if the imagery of longing were from the speaker, and the images of overwhelming power came from a different voice, such as God or the enemies. In that case, we might say that the speaker’s desire for relationship must overcome the doubts of others who only see the obstacles to it. In Ps 42–43, however, it is the speaker’s own awareness of those obstacles that makes the psalm a poignant expression of both desire and separation. Part of her is desperate for relationship, but another part knows all too well the challenges that stand in the way.

This tension finds further expression in the psalm’s spatial organization, in which the speaker locates herself far from God’s dwelling in Jerusalem. First of all, she is low, while God is high. Her abasement is clear from the word tištôḥăḥî, which occurs in the three refrains (42:6, 12; 43:5) and once more in a slightly different form (tištôḥāḥ) in 42:7. Whether we take the verb from the root šḥḥ (“to be bowed down”) or from the root šwḥ (“to be downcast, depressed”),Footnote ²⁷ the word situates the speaker’s nepeš in a low position, as the typical translation “downcast” indicates.Footnote ²⁸ By contrast, God’s place in Ps 42–43 is high on the “holy mountain” of Zion, which the speaker hopes to visit (43:3). Such a visit is complicated by a second spatial marker in the psalm, namely, the speaker’s location “in the land of Jordan and Hermon” (42:7). This phrase likely refers to the karstic springs at the base of Mount Hermon, which feed the headwaters of the Jordan River.Footnote ²⁹ These references locate the speaker in the extreme north of Israel, the farthest possible place from the Jerusalem temple. Thus, the spatial arrangement of Ps 42–43 reiterates the central tension of the poem. The speaker wants God’s light and truth to lead her to Zion, but throughout the psalm she calls attention to her own remoteness from God’s presence.Footnote ³⁰

Against the backdrop of these images signifying both movement toward and perceived distance from God, we can now look more closely at the ways that nepeš epitomizes this same tension. The word sometimes represents the speaker’s desire for encounter with God (42:2–3); at other times, it symbolizes her depleted condition without God’s presence (42:5); and, finally, in the refrains, the speaker refers to it as a distinct entity, one whose lowliness implies a remote distance from the heights where God dwells (42:6, 12; 43:5). This mixed representation of the nepeš mirrors the speaker’s inner conflict, which is further highlighted by the use of apostrophe in the refrain. The poet could easily have simply stated, “My nepeš is downcast and disquieted” (cf. 42:7), but instead has the speaker address it as something separated from God and even from herself.

This separation is underlined by the prepositional phrase ‘ālay after the verb hmh, which denotes all sorts of noise-making (e.g., thunder, sea-roar, growl, bleat, murmur, groan, etc.). I will argue below that the verb is best rendered in Ps 42–43 as “intone,” but whatever the translation, it is striking that the speaker’s nepeš makes a sound ‘ālay “upon/over me.” Contrary to the “within me” found in many modern translations (NJPS, NABRE, NIV, NRSVue),Footnote ³¹ the prepositional phrase indicates a distinction between psalm’s speaker (“me”) and her nepeš, such that the latter makes a noise upon or over the former. The same distinction is found in another combination of nepeš and ‘ālay, this time in 42:5 where the speaker says, “I pour out my nepeš upon me (‘ālay).” Although this ‘ālay is often omitted from modern translations (NJPS, NABRE, NIV, NRSVue), the phrase offers further evidence that Ps 42–43 presents the speaker’s nepeš as somehow separate from her.

The direct address to the nepeš as a distinct entity plays a crucial role in the rhetoric of Ps 42–43. Such apostrophe, which Jonathan Culler defines as “a turning aside from supposedly real listeners to address someone or something that is not an ordinary, empirical listener, such as a nightingale, an urn, or one’s own poem,” is best understood as a formal technique used to accentuate some part of the poetic discourse.Footnote ³² As Culler goes on to explain, apostrophe “is not just one trope among others but a troping on the circuit of communication or situation of address.. . . Apostrophes foreground the act of address, lift it out of ordinary empirical contexts, and thus at some level identify the poetic act as ritualistic, hortatory, a special sort of linguistic event.”Footnote ³³ Attention to this poetic and rhetorical function of apostrophe shows that it is a mistake to enlist the refrains in Ps 42–43 as evidence of a dualistic view of ancient Israelite personhood or to make it the basis of any claims about biblical anthropology. Rather, the apostrophe is a poetic expression of the speaker’s inner tension regarding her relationship with God, a tension that runs so deep, her nepeš may as well be divided from itself. She is, as we might say, “beside herself.”

What is especially significant about this apostrophic expression of inner tension is that it is repeated three times in Ps 42–43, thus serving as its principal structuring device. Earlier in this section we saw that in several ways the psalm builds toward greater connection with God, but three times this trajectory is interrupted by a refrain, whose distinctive poetic style within the psalm calls extra attention to itself. Its depiction of the speaker’s abased nepeš more than punctuates the psalm; it stands in tension with the speaker’s progress toward God. These countervailing movements of deepening relationship with God and persistent separation from God are encapsulated in Ps 42–43’s depiction of the speaker’s divided nepeš. Like other biblical texts that portray some kind of disjunction between a character’s body and self, the divided nepeš in Ps 42–43 serves a rhetorical purpose.Footnote ³⁴ Such a nepeš may be confusing as data for constructing a biblical anthropology, but as a metaphor, it is a poignant symbol of the speaker’s mixture of desire and doubt in her relationship with God.Footnote ³⁵

Psalm 42–43 as an Answer to its Own Dilemma

The above exegesis of Ps 42–43 has focused on the ways it articulates the speaker’s inner tension over her relationship with God, and I noted that the psalm ends without a clear resolution to the tension it expresses. The last verses are a final repetition of the apostrophic refrain, encouraging the reluctant nepeš to share in the hope and praise of God. At the end there is still a part of the speaker that holds back, mindful of the obstacles and distance between her and God, so that we readers are left uncertain if and when the speaker will ever overcome her doubts about encountering God in the temple. But just because modern readers, who encounter Ps 42–43 two-dimensionally as a text to be read, lack resolution does not mean that resolution, or at least mitigation, of the speaker’s inner conflict is altogether absent. Here again the literary form of the psalm is instructive, for if we consider the psalm not just as text but also as a prayer, then we can see how Ps 42–43 represents movement toward renewed integration.Footnote ³⁶

One of the insights of ritual studies of the last few decades is that religious rituals, like all social practices, both express beliefs and values and also play an active role in shaping them.Footnote ³⁷ On the one hand, a ritual is a way of negotiating and responding to a set of circumstances, but on the other hand, “it redefines or generates the circumstances to which it is responding.”Footnote ³⁸ In many instances this process of redefinition is unconscious; the meaning and impact of a ritual exceed the intention and awareness of the worshipers who engage in it.Footnote ³⁹ As an embodied activity, the ritual produces an effect beyond the original purpose behind it. For example, a prayer generates different meanings when spoken from a sitting, standing, or kneeling position; its significance changes when it is sung aloud or whispered sotto voce. Such embodiments are integral to the overall meaning of any text that is embedded in a ritual performance. As Catherine Bell writes, “the molding of the body within a highly structured environment does not simply express inner states. Rather, it primarily acts to restructure bodies in the very doing of the acts themselves.”Footnote ⁴⁰ For Bell, kneeling exemplifies this effect insofar as it does more than convey deference; it also produces a deferential kneeler.

Although we cannot be certain how Ps 42–43 was performed in ancient Israel, it seems likely that it was performed in some way, and this ritual dimension offers important insight into the psalm’s overall meaning.Footnote ⁴¹ As a prayer, the psalm is addressed to God in the context of worship, perhaps in the temple. By situating the speaker in divine space and orienting her towards God, the ritual performance of Ps 42–43 gestures toward an encounter with God, even as the words of the prayer cast doubt on the possibility of such an encounter.Footnote ⁴² This orientation to God does not erase the inner conflict that the speaker expresses in the psalm, but it does reframe it. Like other genres that convey doubt and despair (e.g., laments, complaints), Ps 42–43 gives voice to estrangement but does so in a ritual and literary form that actually establishes connection with the divine. In this way, the performance of the psalm represents a step toward mitigating the tension named within it.

Support for this reading of Ps 42–43 comes from two recent studies of the psalm. One is by Alexandra Grund-Wittenberg, who analyzes it as one of several examples of soliloquy in the Psalms. Although I disagree with her characterization of the refrain in Ps 42–43 as soliloquy,Footnote ⁴³ I think she is right to highlight the way that the refrain orients the speaker towards a relationship with God: “the speaker must address him or herself repeatedly in order to arrive at a final, assured vow of praise.”Footnote ⁴⁴ The second is Anja Marschall’s recent study of the verb performed by the doe in verse 2—ta‘ărōg—which she reads as “crying out” (cf. Joel 1:20) rather than the more common “longing for” (cf. LXX).Footnote ⁴⁵ For her, this translation is crucial to demonstrating the psalm’s movement from an animalistic cry to a prayer of lament. She writes that in the refrains of Ps 42–43, “the næfæš communicates with God in a nonverbal and instinctive way. It is not passively longing but reacting and doing its best to change the situation: moving in the direction of God and attempting to move God toward itself.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Both Grund-Wittenberg and Marschall recognize how Ps 42–43, as a prayer, moves the speaker toward the divine encounter she desires, and here I build on their insight by showing how the refrain’s imagery of abasement and its use of apostrophe indicate embodied ritual actions that begin to mitigate that tension between doubt and desire.

Both roots proposed for tištôḥăḥî (downcast)—either šḥḥ (to be bowed down), or from the root šwḥ (to be downcast, depressed)—are associated with acts of mourning. For example, the root šḥḥ occurs in Ps 35:13–14 alongside fasting and wearing sackcloth, and the root šwḥ is found in Lamentations 3:20 as part of a lament, in which the speaker describes being “bowed low” whenever he recounted his pain and misery.Footnote ⁴⁷ The latter verse is especially interesting because it features nepeš as the subject of the verb: “My nepeš recounts [my pain and misery] and bows low upon me.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Both verses are instructive for appreciating the ritual aspect of the verb tištôḥăḥî in Ps 42–43. The word does not denote an interior disposition (“depressed”) so much as a physical gesture of lament, perhaps one repeated more than once, if we take the Hithpoel form to indicate an iterative action.Footnote ⁴⁹ According to this reading of tištôḥăḥî, the verb indicates a ritual engagement with God even as the words of the refrain express estrangement from God. The resulting tension is not unlike that found in the psalms of lament, which direct harsh words of complaint at God but at the same time presuppose relationship with God.

A similar case can be made for the verb wattehĕmî in the refrain. As noted above, the root hmh has a broad semantic range of noise-making, but as with the root šḥḥ, I would highlight its use in the context of prayer. In Ps 55:17–18, for example, we find the couplet “I call upon God, and Yahweh will save me/morning, noon, and night I intone (wĕ’ehĕmeh) my complaint, and he hears my voice.” The parallel between “call upon God” and the verb hmh is clear evidence that the latter could refer to prayer. Likewise, in Ps 77:4 the speaker declares: “When I recount God, I intone (wĕ’ehĕmāyâ) my complaint, and my spirit grows faint.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Both of these verses indicate that a complaint addressed to God is one of the noises that hmh could refer to.

Taken together with the bowing down gesture of lament signified by šḥḥ, this interpretation of hmh as a prayer of complaint offers a new perspective on the refrain in Ps 42–43 and its depiction of nepeš. The refrain still stands in tension with the speaker’s desire to meet God in the temple, and the apostrophized nepeš still symbolizes the speaker’s inner conflict over relationship with God. But the verbs signifying lament and prayer suggest an orientation toward God and even a kind of engagement with God in the midst of the estrangement expressed in the psalm. Insofar as rituals play a role in producing reality, not just reflecting it, the depiction of embodied prayer in the refrain of Ps 42–43 represents a first step towards mitigating the inner tension expressed throughout the psalm. According to this interpretation, the refrain that punctuates Ps 42–43 features the speaker addressing that part of her divided nepeš, which is distanced from God but nonetheless is engaged in a religious practice directed at God. It articulates separation but also creates through gestures the possibility of connection with the divine.

Moreover, the recognition of the ritual aspect of šḥḥ and hmh offers a corrective to the tendency among modern scholars to over-spiritualize and over-psychologize the tension expressed in Ps 42–43. Peter Lombard, for example, described the psalm’s refrain as “reason comfort[ing] the emotional soul through hope in God,”Footnote ⁵¹ and more recently, James Luther Mays wrote that “in this refrain, the ego addresses the soul.”Footnote ⁵² These interpretations are characteristic of the larger tendency in biblical scholarship to interiorize Hebrew terms for the self.Footnote ⁵³ While it is true that nepeš in Ps 42–43 abstracts from the concrete meaning of “throat,” it nonetheless remains an embodied reality lived out in the cultic performances at the temple. This embodied dimension of nepeš is underscored by the ritual connotations of šḥḥ and hmh.

This emphasis on embodiment is not meant to sideline the psychological or emotional dimensions of nepeš in Ps 42–43. Indeed, by attending to its rhetorical, poetic, and ritual aspects, we gain deeper insight into the spiritual dynamics at play in the psalm As an expression of the speaker’s spirituality, the divided nepeš in Ps 42–43 is a powerful and poignant metaphor of the inner tension felt by any pray-er who makes the words of the psalm their own. Although the original Sitz im Leben of Ps 42–43 probably involved someone—perhaps a Korahite or some other cultic functionary—separated from the Jerusalem temple and longing to visit there, it is easy to imagine other contexts in which the psalm’s combination of desire and doubt would be equally compelling. The Judeans exiled in Babylon, for example, would likely have identified with its mix of longing for encounter with God and painful recognition of the obstacles that stand in the way, not least the temple’s recent destruction. Evidence of this exilic reception of Ps 42–43 consists of its inclusion in (and position at the head of) the Elohistic Psalter (Ps 42–83), whose emphasis on reestablishing Zion suggests that the collection reflects post-exilic hopes of rebuilding.Footnote ⁵⁴ It is also noteworthy how often Rashi reads Ps 42–43 through the lens of the Babylonian Exile.Footnote ⁵⁵

Another example of Ps 42–43 serving as an expression of spiritual tension beyond the specific scenario depicted in the psalm comes from its quotation in the New Testament scene of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:33–34; Matt 26:37–38). After becoming grieved and agitated, Jesus says to Peter, James, and John, “My soul is downcast” (Gr. perilypos estin hē psyche mou), which has long been recognized as a (slightly revised) quote of the refrain in Ps 42–43 (LXX perilypos ei psychē).Footnote ⁵⁶ In the next verses, Jesus struggles to accept his fate, praying that the cup will pass from him but also trusting in God’s will. This inner conflict within Jesus is the perfect occasion for Ps 42–43, whose combination of trust and doubt correspond to his own painful predicament.

But as in Ps 42–43 itself, Jesus’ quotation of refrain offers him a way forward even as it articulates his profound inner tension. In her analysis of the scene at Gethsemane, Angela Kim Harkins argues that Jesus’ prayer in the garden, including the quote from Ps 42–43, is a ritual reenactment of Second Temple penitential prayer.Footnote ⁵⁷ Although this reenactment resulted in abandonment rather than the expected divine response or communal support, it nonetheless moved the gospel narrative forward by presenting Jesus’ inner tension as a necessary ritual step toward the fulfillment of his mission. In this way, Mark and Matthew’s quotation of the refrain from Ps 42–43 not only conveys key words from the psalm but also its overall spiritual and ritual significance. By expressing the speaker’s inner tension between longing and doubt, the psalm gives voice to a spiritual struggle familiar to pray-ers across the centuries, and at the same time it creates for them an experience that moves them closer to the divine encounter they desire.

Building on the work of Katrin Müller and Carol Newsom, this article’s analysis of the rhetorical, literary, and ritual dimensions of nepeš in Ps 42–43, in both its biblical setting and its later reception, underlines the need for multiple interpretive approaches to such a concept. Arguments that adduce nepeš as evidence of a monistic or dualistic anthropology provide some insight into the concept but do not tell the whole story, especially for a prayer-poem like Ps 42–43, where nepeš is presented in both monistic and dualistic ways. This mixed presentation corresponds to the larger theme of the tension between desire and doubt and thus advances the psalm’s literary and even spiritual aims. Furthermore, attention to the ritual language associated with nepeš in Ps 42–43 shows how the psalm offers a way forward through the very tension it expresses.