Psalm XLIII
1 Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation!
O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!
2 For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off?
Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
3 O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me;
Let them bring me unto thy holy hill and to thy tabernacles.
4 Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy:
Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, 0 God, my God.
5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted
within me? Hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
Many ancient and modern writers make this Psalm a part of the former. They have failed to see that the strain is now more gladsome and hopeful. The hart is now hounding on to the water brooks. The psalmist is claiming his right to refreshment, and anticipating it as at his very lips. The gloom of “night” (xlii. 8) and of “mourning” (ver. 2) is to be exchanged for favour or “light” (ver. 3), and “truth,” i. e., the fulfilment of the promises made to him (Aben-Ezra) shall
* Tucker has made an interesting suggestion, though it will not bear examination: “I will remember thee concerning the land” (Q). God’s past mercies displayed there, at the miraculous passage of the river Jordan, and the getting possession of the land even to Hermon; and then “The Little Hill” would be Zion itself, only gi-eat because the Tabernacle is there. The construction of the Hebrew refuses to yield this sense.
soon shew that he has not been “forgotten” (xHi. 9); and soon his God shall be his jubilee-song, “joy of his joy,” and the harp shall celebrate the well pleased countenance of “Eloi, Eloi,” my God, who once seemed to stand afar of
To Christ and to his members, the highest gladness (spoken of Christ and i.is verse 4) comes from The altar, with its accepted sacrifice. Christ risen, and Christ ascended, are pointed out therein; and it is in his resurrection and ascension that we see the sacrifice accepted, and our hearts learn true joy. No doubt this same source of joy is to be opened up to us more fully still when He appears the second time “without sin” unto salvation, and all enemies are put under him. He, too, shall rejoice afresh in that day, drinking of the coolest of the longed-for water brooks. Let us, meanwhile, read and sing this Psalm in happy confidence, as The Righteous One’s claiming his right to full refreshment.