Mazmur 43:3-4

43:3 Reveal ¹  your light ²  and your faithfulness!

They will lead me, ³ 

they will escort ⁴  me back to your holy hill, ⁵ 

and to the place where you live. ⁶ 

43:4 Then I will go ⁷  to the altar of God,

to the God who gives me ecstatic joy, ⁸ 

so that I express my thanks to you, ⁹  O God, my God, with a harp.

[43:3]  ¹ tn Heb “send.”

[43:3]  ² sn God’s deliverance is compared here to a light which will lead the psalmist back home to the Lord’s temple. Divine deliverance will in turn demonstrate the Lord’s faithfulness to his people.

[43:3]  ³ tn Or “may they lead me.” The prefixed verbal forms here and in the next line may be taken as jussives.

[43:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “bring.”

[43:3]  ⁵ sn In this context the Lord’s holy hill is Zion/Jerusalem. See Isa 66:20; Joel 2:1; 3:17; Zech 8:3; Pss 2:6; 15:1; 48:1; 87:1; Dan 9:16.

[43:3]  ⁶ tn Or “to your dwelling place[s].” The plural form of the noun may indicate degree or quality; this is the Lord’s special dwelling place (see Pss 46:4; 84:1; 132:5, 7).

[43:4]  ⁷ tn The cohortative expresses the psalmist’s resolve. Prefixed with the vav (ו) conjunctive it also expresses the result or outcome of the preceding verbs “lead” and “escort.”

[43:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “to God, the joy of my happiness.” The phrase “joy of my happiness” employs an appositional genitive. Synonyms are joined in a construct relationship to emphasize the degree of the psalmist’s joy. For a detailed discussion of the grammatical point with numerous examples, see Y. Avishur, “Pairs of Synonymous Words in the Construct State (and in Appositional Hendiadys) in Biblical Hebrew,” Semitics 2 (1971): 17-81.

[43:4]  ⁹ tn The cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive probably indicates purpose (“so that”) or intention.