Affliction is a stormy deep

"Affliction is a stormy deep" is an eighteenth-century metrical psalm adaptation on divine comfort during trial, written by the English physician and poet Nathaniel Cotton.

The text originated as a section of Cotton's twelve-stanza paraphrase of Psalm 42, which opened with the line "With fierce desire the hunted hart." It was first published in William Dodd's Christian's Magazine (April 1761) under the initial "N." The full poem was later collected in Cotton's posthumous collection, Various Pieces in Verse and Prose (1791).

The hymn entered congregational use through division and adaptation in nineteenth-century collections:

1. Collyer's Selection: William Bengo Collyer divided Cotton's original paraphrase into two distinct hymns in his Collection (1812, Nos. 59–60). The second portion, comprising five stanzas, began with the line "Affliction is a stormy deep."

2. Stowell's Selection: Hugh Stowell reprinted Collyer's five-stanza selection with two minor textual changes in his Selection of Psalms and Hymns (1831). This version served as the source text for William Windle's Metrical Psalter (Psalm 42).

3. Wider Hymnal Adoption: The text was adopted into numerous other hymnals, frequently featuring textual alterations. Notable English collections including it were Edward Bickersteth's Christian Psalmody (1833) and Charlotte Elliott's Psalms and Hymns (1835).

While the text saw steady inclusion across nineteenth-century British collections, its modern usage became significantly more extensive in American hymnals than in Great Britain.