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The Hebrew term is apheek; and in the original the clause reads, al apheekaiyrnayim, which may be translated, "over the aqueducts of water." "Aqueducts are, and always must have been, very common in Palestine, not only for bringing water to waterless towns, but also for the purpose of irrigating gardens. Ruined remains of these structures are to be found everywhere throughout the country. It seems certain that there must have been a familiar technical term for them in Hebrew, and that the writers of the Bible, who draw their imagery so largely from the features of garden culture, must have referred to these precious water-channels. One word in Hebrew, the sense of which seems to have been entirely overlooked, must plainly have borne this meaning, the word "apheek," which occurs eighteen times in the Old Testament, and also in some names of places, as Aphaik, near Beth-boron. The translators of our Authorized Version have been able to make but little of it, rendering it by seven different words, most frequently by "river," which it cannot possibly mean. The word comes from "Aphak, restrained," or "forced," and this is the main idea of an aqueduct, which is a structure formed for the purpose of constraining or forcing a stream of water to flow in a desired direction. So strongly were the Palestine aqueducts made, that their ruins, probably in some places two thousand years old, remain to this day. In rare instances (there is one at Jerusalem) they are fashioned of bored stones. Sometimes for a short distance they are cut as open grooves in the hard limestone of the hills, or as small channels bored through their sides. When the level required it, they are built up stone structures above ground. But the aqueducts of Palestine mostly consist of earthenware pipes, laid on or underground in a casing of strong cement. "Apheek," I contend, in its technical sense stands for an ordinary covered Palestine aqueduct, but it is also poetically applied to the natural underground channels, which supply springs and to the gorge-like, rocky beds of some mountain streams which appear like huge, open aqueducts .... The psalmist thirsts for God, and longs to taste again the joy of His house, like the parched and weary hind who comes to a covered channel conveying the living waters of some far-off spring across the intervening desert. She scents the precious current in its bed of adamantine cement, or hears its rippling flow close beneath her feet, or, perchance, sees it deep down through one of the narrow air holes; and as she agonises for the inaccessible draught, she "pants over the aqueducts of water."

(James Nell, M. A.)

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KJV: {To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah.} As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

WEB: As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God.