Psalm 43 Bible study: Send out your light and your truth

Psalm 43 has no title, and it doesn't say who prays it. It opens with a request spoken to God in a judge's words: "Vindicate me, God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation" (43:1) (tap Vindicate, plead). Vindicate me is one Hebrew word, shafteni, from shafat, which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives as "judge, govern", and among its senses "decide controversy". Strong's adds "by implication, to vindicate or punish". Plead my cause is the verb riv with its own noun, riv: Brown-Driver-Briggs gives the verb as "strive, contend" and the noun as "strife, dispute", and Strong's gives the noun as "a contest (personal or legal)". So in one line the psalmist asks God to judge his case and to plead it. David used the same two verbs to Saul: "May the LORD therefore be judge, and give sentence between me and you, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of your hand" (1 Samuel 24:15), where give sentence and deliver me are shafat, and plead my cause is riv with riv. The same word shafteni opens Psalm 26, after its title: "Judge me, LORD, for I have walked in my integrity" (Psalm 26:1); and it begins "Vindicate me, LORD my God, according to your righteousness" (Psalm 35:24).

Psalms 43:3→leads toJohn 17:24

Praying to the Father for his disciples, Jesus said, "Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, that they may see my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). The psalm prays, "Let them bring me to your holy hill, to your tents. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my exceeding joy" (Psalm 43:3-4). John doesn't name Psalm 43, so setting the two together is a reading. It rests on a shared subject, being brought to where God is, not on a shared word, and it doesn't say what the psalm's light and truth are. One reading holds them side by side: read together, the psalm's prayer to be brought to God and Jesus's prayer that his own be with him where he is speak of the same hope. Another keeps each to its own setting: the psalmist asks to be brought, himself, to the holy hill and the altar (Psalm 43:3-4), and Jesus prays for those the Father gave him (John 17:24) without naming this psalm. These notes don't choose between them, and this line doesn't make the psalmist Jesus.

אוֹרorsay OR

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "light". Strong's: "illumination or (concrete) luminary". "Oh, send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me" (43:3). It is the Bible's first light: "God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). The Psalms have it 19 times in Hebrew, among them "The LORD is my light and my salvation" (Psalm 27:1), "In your light we will see light" (Psalm 36:9) and "all night with a light of fire" (Psalm 78:14), where the light goes with the verb of 43:3's lead.