1 O God, my God art Thou, I seek Thee earnestly, My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh pines for Thee, In a dry and weary land, without water. 2 So in the sanctuary have I gazed on Thee, To see Thy power and Thy glory. 3 For Thy loving-kindness is better than life, [Therefore] my lips shall praise Thee. 4 So will I bless Thee while I live, In Thy name will I lift my hands. 5 As [with] fat and marrow shall my soul be satisfied, And with lips that joyfully shout shall my mouth praise Thee, 6 When I remember Thee on my bed, Through the watches [of the night] do I meditate on Thee. 7 For Thou hast been a help for me, And in the shadow of Thy wings will I shout for joy. 8 My soul cleaves [to and presses] after Thee, Me does Thy right hand uphold. 9 But these--for its destruction they seek my soul; They shall go into the undermost parts of the earth. 10 They shall be given over to the power of the sword, The portion of jackals shall they be. 11 But the king shall rejoice in God, Every one that swears by Him shall glory, For the mouth of them that speak a lie shall be stopped. If the psalmist is allowed to speak, he gives many details of his circumstances in his song. He is in a waterless and weary land, excluded from the sanctuary, followed by enemies seeking his life. He expects a fight, in which they are to fall by the sword, and apparently their defeat is to lead to his restoration to his kingdom. These characteristics converge on David. Cheyne has endeavoured to show that they fit the faithful Jews in the Maccabean period, and that the "king" in ver. 2 is "Jonathan or [better] Simon" ("Orig. of Psalt.," 99, and "Aids to Dev. Study of Crit.," 308 _seqq._). But unless we are prepared to accept the dictum that "Pre-Jeremian such highly spiritual hymns obviously cannot be" (_u.s._), the balance of probability will be heavily in favour of the Davidic origin. The recurrence of the expression "My soul" in vv. 1, 5, 8, suggests the divisions into which the psalm falls. Following that clue, we recognise three parts, in each of which a separate phase of the experience of the soul in its communion with God is presented as realised in sequence by the psalmist. The soul longs and thirsts for God (vv. 1-4). The longing soul is satisfied in God (vv. 5-7). The satisfied soul cleaves to and presses after God (vv. 8-11). These stages melt into each other in the psalm as in experience, but are still discernible.