Psalms 43 — LXXSA

(44) For the end, a Psalm for⁺instruction, for the sons of Core.

43O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, the work which you wrought in their days, in the days of old.
^{Verse 2}Your hand utterly destroyed the heathen, and you did plant them: you did afflict the nations, and cast them out.
^{Verse 3}For they inherited not the land by their own sword, and their own arm did not deliver them; but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance, because you were well pleased in them.
^{Verse 4}You are indeed my King and my God, who command deliverances for Jacob.
^{Verse 5}In you will we push down our enemies, and in your name will we bring to nothing them that rise up against us.
^{Verse 6}For I will not trust in my bow, and my sword shall not save me.
^{Verse 7}For you have saved us from them that afflicted us, and have put to shame them that hated us.
^{Verse 8}In God⁺will we make our boast all the day, and to your name will we give thanks for ever. Pause.
^{Verse 9}But now you have cast off, and put us to shame; and you will not go forth with our hosts.
^{Verse 10}You have turned us back before our enemies; and they that hated us spoiled for themselves.
^{Verse 11}You made us as sheep for meat; and you scattered us among the nations.
^{Verse 12}You have sold your people without price, and there was no profit by their exchange.
^{Verse 13}You have made us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision them that are round about us.
^{Verse 14}You have made us a proverb among the Gentiles, a shaking of the head among the nations.
^{Verse 15}All the day my shame is before me, and the confusion of my face has covered me,
^{Verse 16}because of the voice of the slanderer and reviler; because of the enemy and avenger.
^{Verse 17}All these things are come upon us: but we have not forgotten you, neither have we dealt unrighteously in your covenant.
^{Verse 18}And our heart has not gone back; but you have turned aside our paths from your way.
^{Verse 19}For you have laid us low in a place of affliction, and the shadow of death has covered us.
^{Verse 20}If we have forgotten the name of our God, and if we have spread out our hands to a strange god; shall not God search these things out?
^{Verse 21}for he knows the secrets of the heart.
^{Verse 22}For, for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for slaughter.
^{Verse 23}Awake, therefore sleep you, O Lord? arise, and do not cast us off for ever.
^{Verse 24}Therefore turn you your face away, and forget our poverty and our affliction?
^{Verse 25}For our soul has been brought down to the dust; our belly has cleaved to the earth.
^{Verse 26}Arise, O Lord, help us, and redeem us for your name's sake.

Commentary

Introduction

The Elohimic Judica (the introit of the so-called Cross or Passion Sunday which opens the celebritas Passionis), with which the supplicatory and plaintive first strophe of the Psalm begins, calls to mind the Jehovic Judica in Psa 7:9; Psa 26:1; Psa 35:1, Psa 35:24 : judge me, i.e., decide my cause (lxx κρῖνόν με, Symmachus κρῖνόν μοι). ריבה has the tone upon the ultima before the ריבי which begins with the half-guttural ר, as is also the case in Psa 74:22; Psa 119:154. The second prayer runs: vindica me a gente impia; מן standing for contra in consequence of a constr. praegnans. לא־חסיד is here equivalent to one practising no חסד towards men, that is to say, one totally wanting in that חסד, by which God's חסד is to be imitated and repaid by man in his conduct towards his fellow-men. There is some uncertainty whether by אישׁ one chief enemy, the leader of all the rest, is intended to be mentioned side by side with the unloving nation, or whether the special manner of his enemies is thus merely individualised. עולה means roguish, mischievous conduct, utterly devoid of all sense of right. In Psa 43:2 the poet establishes his petition by a twofold Why. He loves God and longs after Him, but in the mirror of his present condition he seems to himself like one cast off by Him. This contradiction between his own consciousness and the inference which he is obliged to draw from his afflicted state cannot remain unsolved. אלהי מעזּי, God of my fortress, is equivalent to who is my fortress. Instead of אלך we here have the form אתהלּך, of the slow deliberate gait of one who is lost in his own thoughts and feelings. The sting of his pain is his distance from the sanctuary of his God. In connection with Psa 43:3 one is reminded of Psa 57:4 and Exo 15:13, quite as much as of Psa 42:9. "Light and truth" is equivalent to mercy and truth. What is intended is the light of mercy or loving-kindness which is coupled with the truth of fidelity to the promises; the light, in which the will or purpose of love, which is God's most especial nature, becomes outwardly manifest. The poet wishes to be guided by these two angels of God; he desires that he may be brought (according tot he Chethb of the Babylonian text יבואוני, "let come upon me;" but the אל which follows does not suit this form) to the place where his God dwells and reveals Himself. "Tabernacles" is, as in Psa 84:2; Psa 46:5, an amplificative designation of the tent, magnificent in itself and raised to special honour by Him who dwells therein.

The poet, in anticipation, revels in the thought of that which he has prayed for, and calls upon his timorous soul to hope confidently for it. The cohortatives in Psa 43:4 are, as in Ps 39:14 and frequently, an apodosis to the petition. The poet knows no joy like that which proceeds from God, and the joy which proceeds from Him he accounts as the very highest; hence he calls God אל שׂמחת גּילי, and therefore he knows no higher aim for his longing than again to be where the fountainhead of this exultant joy is (Hos 9:5), and where it flows forth in streams (Psa 36:9). Removed back thither, he will give thanks to Him with the cithern (Beth instrum.). He calls Him אלהים אלהי, an expression which, in the Elohim-Psalms, is equivalent to יהוה אלהי in the Jahve-Psalms. The hope expressed in Psa 43:4 casts its rays into the prayer in Psa 43:3. In Psa 43:5, the spirit having taken courage in God, holds this picture drawn by hope before the distressed soul, that she may therewith comfort herself. Instead of wthmy, Psa 42:6, the expression here used, as in Ps 42:12, is וּמה־תּהמי. Variations like these are not opposed to a unity of authorship.

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