Psalm 42:7 says, “Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.”
What in the world does “deep calls to deep” mean?
It means one overwhelming problem after another. The inescapable hopelessness just keeps piling up. It’s not just one hopeless situation; it’s one after another.
It’s the worst feeling in the world.
It’s the feeling of hopelessness. It’s the feeling of isolation. It’s the feeling of being overwhelmed and completely undone.
The psalmist is drawing on the most intense imagery available to him. The “deep” (Heb. tehom) is the same watery abyss we read about in Genesis before God called light into existence. It’s dark. It’s waves of watery chaos. There are no boundaries, no breaks, no relief—just raw turmoil.
No escape.
No chance to catch your breath.
It’s crushing.
The interesting thing about this psalm is that nowhere is it clear that the problems actually go away. The waves keep crashing. But while the problems remain, relief does come, and it comes through the awareness of God’s steadfast love (hesed).
The next verse says,
“By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”
Is it possible that the psalmist has Genesis 1 in mind with his use of the word commands?
“The LORD commands his steadfast love…”
Could he be saying that the Lord commands his steadfast love to go out and be with the one in trouble—just as he commanded the light to shine into the darkness?
If so, then God’s love is the rescuing, ordering principle.
Just as God’s Word brought order to the chaos in Genesis, God’s steadfast love brings order to the chaos of the human soul.
It’s God’s love that rescues us. It’s God’s love that brings order to the chaos. It’s the unwavering, steadfast love of God that delivers us from the chaos that threatens to rule our souls.
This makes sense.
In the Garden of Eden, corruption, death, rebellion—all the things that tear apart God’s perfectly ordered world—enter through a single idea:
God doesn’t really love you.
That’s the serpent’s implied message to Adam and Eve.
“Did God really say…?”
“That’s not true. He’s keeping something from you.”
The implication is that God can’t be trusted.
And if God can’t be trusted, then the deeper implication is this:
God doesn’t really love you.
So they eat.
And when they do, things begin to crumble. Through rebellion, the chaos that God had conquered begins to make its way back into creation.[^1]
The deepest turmoil we can face is not circumstantial—it’s ontological.
In other words, our greatest crisis is not ultimately what is happening around us, but what we believe to be true about God and our relationship to him.
It has nothing to do, ultimately, with money, sickness, or any other external circumstance.
The deepest, most chaotic, relentless torment of the soul—the place from which all other evil arises—is the belief that God has rejected you. That God doesn’t love you. That God won’t meet your needs. That God cannot be trusted.
Karl Marx was once asked to summarize Christian theology. His response was:
“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
The psalmist says the same thing.
After saying that God commands his steadfast love, he calls God his Rock.
God is his rescue.
The love of God is what brings order to the chaos. It is the love of God that drives back the breakers and waterfalls that threaten to drown us in the lie that you have to do it on your own… God cannot be trusted… death will always have the final word.
Hope.
That is the first word of the final sentence of Psalm 42.
We must trust him.
Trust his Word.
He loves you.
[^1]: This theme reaches its climax in the flood narrative, where the world is returned to the primordial deep before God once again brings order out of chaos.
