Psalms 43
Big idea: Almost certainly the last strophe of Psalm 42 — same refrain, same complaint about oppression, no superscription of its own. What it adds is a destination. Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill, to your tents. The two are personified as guides sent ahead, and the road they walk ends at an altar, and the altar is renamed: God, my exceeding joy.
Psalm 43 gets to the altar. Psalm 44 is the community discovering it isn't enough.
43:1–5 — Send out your light and your truth
Five verses with no title of their own, ending in the refrain that closes both halves of Psalm 42 — which is why many manuscripts treat 42 and 43 as one poem. What is new here is the request. Instead of asking to be brought home, he asks for two things to be SENT: light and truth, personified as guides, with the instruction to let THEM do the leading.
1 Vindicate me, God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation. Oh, deliver me from deceitful and wicked men. 2 For you are the God of my strength. Why have you rejected me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? 3 Oh, send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill, to your tents. 4 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy. I will praise you on the harp, God, my God. 5 Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God! For I shall still praise him: my Savior, my helper, and my God.
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).