\\INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 42\\ \\<>\\. Of the word "Maschil", \\see Gill on "Ps 32:1"\\, title. Korah was he who was at the head of a conspiracy against Moses and Aaron, for which sin the earth opened its mouth, and swallowed alive him and his company, and fire devoured two hundred and fifty more; the history of which is recorded in \\#Nu 16:1-50\\; yet all his posterity were not cut off, \\#Nu 26:11\\; some were in David's time porters, or keepers of the gates of the tabernacle, and some were singers; see \\#1Ch 6:33 9:19 2Ch 20:19\\; and to the chief musician was this psalm directed for them to sing, for they were not the authors of it, as some {b} have thought; but most probably David himself composed it; and it seems to have been written by him, not as representing the captives in Babylon, as Theodoret, but on his own account, when he was persecuted by Saul, and driven out by men from abiding in the Lord's inheritance, and was in a strange land among the Heathen, where he was reproached by them; and everything in this psalm agrees with his state and condition; or rather when he fled from his son Absalom, and was in those parts beyond Jordan, mentioned in this psalm; see \\#2Sa 17:24-27\\; so the Syriac inscription, the song which David sung in the time of his persecution, desiring to return to Jerusalem. {b} So R. Moses in Muis, Gussetius, Ebr. Comment. p. 918, & others.