Early will I seek thee

The heading of this psalm places David in the wilderness of Judah — a real desert, with real thirst. Fugitive again, stripped of comfort again. And the desert taught him something about his own soul: the thirst he felt for water was a picture of a deeper thirst, and he knew its true object. My soul thirsteth for thee.

“Early will I seek thee” is the desert traveller’s logic. In dry country you go to water first, before the heat, before the day drains you — not as an afterthought once everything else is arranged. David sought God at the day’s start not from discipline but from realism about what he could not do without.

Notice too the anchor the verse begins with: O God, thou art my God. The circumstances said abandoned; the covenant said mine. Some mornings your dry season will tell you God has withdrawn. Answer it the way David did — with the possessive, said early, on the way to the water.