Psalms 44:24
Why do You hide Your face and forget our affliction and oppression?
BSB
ASV
Wherefore hidest thou thy face, And forgettest our affliction and our oppression?
KJV
Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression?
We cannot see God's face. But there is a place where, by faith, God shows himself to us. The place is with God; and if we were to stand on the rock—that is, in awareness of this flesh and in firmness of faith—we will see as much as can be allowed to us to see. We cannot see the fullness, but we can, in a certain sense, drink in some remnant of his light. Moses did not see the full and entire divinity that dwells in Christ corporeally. But he saw the back of Christ.
Wherefore hidest thou thy face?.... See Psa 10:1; and forgettest our affliction and our oppression. Not that the Lord does really forget either the persons of his people, which he cannot, since they are engraven on the palms of his hands, and a book of remembrance is written for them: nor the afflictions of his people; he knows their souls in adversity; he chooses them in the furnace of affliction; he makes all afflictions work together for good, and delivers out of them.
Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression? Not petulantly, but piteously and inquiringly, we may question the Lord when his dealings are mysterious. We are permitted to order our case with arguments, and plead the right before the face of the august Majesty. Why, Lord, dost thou become oblivious of thy children's woes? This question is far more easily asked than answered; it is hard, indeed, in the midst of persecution to see the reason why we are left to suffer so severely.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Job 13:24Why do You hide Your face and consider me as Your enemy?
leads to
His anger burns against me, and He counts me among His enemies.
The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah.
How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?
I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob. I will put my trust in Him.
Through
Psalms 42:9I say to God my Rock, “Why have You forgotten me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?”
leads to
I am bent and brought low; all day long I go about mourning.
The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
For You are the God of my refuge. Why have You rejected me? Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?
Through
Deuteronomy 32:20He said: “I will hide My face from them; I will see what will be their end. For they are a perverse generation—children of unfaithfulness.
leads to
On that day My anger will burn against them, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them, so that they will be consumed, and many troubles and afflictions will befall them.…