Psalm 44

Psalms 44:1-3

We have heard with our ears: The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, ascribes the psalm to the sons of Korah as a Maschil, a psalm meant to instruct. The nation recites what it has been told rather than what it has seen, the conquest of Canaan passed down as living memory, and verse 3 states its own theology of that history: not their own sword or arm but God's right hand and the light of his countenance won the land. Delitzsch reads the threefold denial, not the sword, not their own arm, but thy right hand and thine arm, as the psalm's deliberate correction of national pride before the complaint even begins.

Psalms 44:4-8

The recital of what the fathers received turns into the singer's own confession, thou art my King, O God, the same trust claimed in the first person that verse 3 credited to the past. I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me answers verse 3's denial with a personal parallel, and the boast is named directly, in God we boast all the day long. Henry notes that this confession is placed deliberately before the complaint that follows, so that the coming distress cannot be read as a loss of faith.

Psalms 44:9-12

The psalm turns without warning: thou hast cast off, and put us to shame, the same God who gave the land now credited with the defeat, goest not forth with our armies. Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase thy wealth by their price singles out what makes the sale strange, a slave trader profits by the sale and this one gains nothing, which Gill reads as the complaint's sharpest edge, loss with no reason given. The verbs stay in the second person throughout, God named as the actor in the calamity rather than fortune or the enemy alone.

Psalms 44:13-16

The shame widens outward from military defeat to public mockery: a reproach to our neighbours, a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the people, the stock gesture of contempt. My confusion is continually before me brings the disgrace home to the singer's own daily consciousness, the reproach and the blasphemy of the avenger never out of earshot. Clarke reads the list as building deliberately from the nation's humiliation to one man's constant private shame, the corporate lament narrowing to a single face.

Psalms 44:17-19

The psalm's real difficulty stands here: all this is come upon us, yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant, a plain denial that the suffering fits the usual pattern where calamity follows unfaithfulness. Our heart is not turned back presses the same claim in the language of covenant loyalty, even while sore broken us in the place of dragons puts the nation among jackals in a wasted land. Calvin reads this as the hardest kind of affliction Scripture allows for, suffering that comes without the comfort of a known cause, and Wesley notes the psalm never once suggests the singers doubt their own sincerity.

Psalms 44:20-22

The protest of loyalty is put under oath: shall not God search this out, for he knoweth the secrets of the heart, an appeal to the one witness who cannot be deceived about hidden idolatry. Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter names suffering that comes not despite faithfulness but because of it, and Paul quotes this verse exactly at Rom 8:36 to describe what the people of God endure in this present life. Barnes notes that Paul's use does not claim the verse was written about believers under Christ, only that the same pattern of faithful suffering, once true of Israel, is true again.

Psalms 44:23-26

The psalm closes on the boldest address in it, awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord, language that does not accuse God of literal sleep but presses the silence of unanswered prayer into speech. Arise for our help, and redeem us for thy mercies' sake asks nothing of merit, only of the character named at the start of the psalm, and Spurgeon reads the whole closing plea as the fitting end of a psalm that refused every easier explanation along the way. Maclaren notes that the prayer never resolves within the psalm itself, and the unanswered ending is left standing rather than talked away.