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.
1 tn Heb “send.”
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.
3 tn Or “may they lead me.” The prefixed verbal forms here and in the next line may be taken as jussives.
4 tn Heb “bring.”
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.
6 tn Or “to your dwelling place[s].” The plural form of the noun may indicate degree or quality; this is the
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.”
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.
9 tn The cohortative with vav (ו) conjunctive probably indicates purpose (“so that”) or intention.