Daily Psalms

Psalm 43 — Send Out Your Light and Truth

Many Hebrew manuscripts join Psalms 42 and 43 as a single poem. The internal evidence is strong. Psalm 43 has no superscription of its own. The same refrain closes both. The imagery of being far from God's house continues without seam. The early synagogue tradition often read them together. Treating them as two psalms in our Bibles is a Christian numbering convention, not a literary judgment. Reading 43 as the third movement of one song lets the prayer build the way the original singer intended. The cry "vindicate me" uses the Hebrew "shaphat," the same root behind the book of Judges. It is courtroom language. The worshiper is not asking for revenge. He is asking the divine Judge to render a true verdict over against an "ungodly nation" along with a "deceitful and unjust man." In a culture where reputation could mean survival, having God himself testify on your behalf was the deepest possible vindication. The petition presumes that God's word about you is the final word, regardless of what your accusers say. The phrase "your light and your truth" is the heart of the psalm. "Or" together with "emet" evokes the divine attributes that guide pilgrims home. Some rabbinic readers heard a faint echo of the priestly Urim and Thummim, the lot-stones the high priest used to seek God's guidance. Whether or not that echo was intended, the prayer asks for personified guides to lead the worshiper back to "your holy hill," Mount Zion. He is also pleading to return to "your dwelling," the tabernacle or temple. Light and truth become escorts who walk the road with him. The third refrain is identical to the previous two. Yet the meaning has shifted. The grief has not vanished. The geography has not changed. Yet the worshiper has rehearsed God's character long enough that the same words now sound less like a question and more like an answer. The discipline of the threefold refrain is the discipline of any long sorrow: you say the truth out loud until you start to believe it again.