1 Judge me, O God, and plead my cause with an -ungodly nation; from a man of deceit and iniquity do thou deliver me.
2 For thou [art] the God of my refuge: why hast thou cast me off? why do I walk mourning under the oppression of the enemy?
3 Send thou thy light and thy truth: they shall lead me, they shall bring me unto the mountain of thy holiness and unto thy tabernacles.
4 And I will go unto the altar of God, unto God the gladness of my joy, and I will give thanks unto thee with the harp, O God, my God.
5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? Wait thou for God, for I shall yet praise him, the help of my countenance and my God.
Notes on Psalm 43
These are clearly companion psalms, and so under one title. The prophetic aspect is the remnant cast out or fled: compare with Matt. 24:1515When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) (Matthew 24:15) et seqq., Mark 13:14,14But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judea flee to the mountains: (Mark 13:14) &c., Joel 2:1717Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? (Joel 2:17). The historic occasion is when David and his faithful following abandoned Jerusalem under Absalom’s conspiracy. The closing days of our Lord had in the highest degree this character, though modified by other considerations; for what sorrows had not He, the Holy One of God? Yet the former of the twain is more general and looks at Gentile enemies as much as or more than any; whereas the force of the later psalm is the complaint against the Jews as “an ungodly nation.” Professedly holy (in the sense here of piety from being the object of divine mercy), they had none; they were now goi lo-chasid. How true, yet how bitter, that the driven out godly ones should so speak to God of the chosen people! And so in fact it will be. The one psalm without the other could not adequately express the grief of the remnant at this juncture, when the Antichrist sets up the abomination of desolation in the sanctuary, instigated and protected by the Beast (or Emperor of the Western powers).
See Revelation 13. The thirst here is to drink once more of the waters, whence the abominable amalgam of Gentile self-will and Jewish apostasy had driven them out; so they confidently expect from God Who cannot deny Himself, and loves His people.