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Psalm 44

National Lament and Prayer for Help

To the leader. Of the Korahites. A Maskil.

We have heard with our ears, O God,

our ancestors have told us,

what deeds you performed in their days,

in the days of old:

you with your own hand drove out the nations,

but them you planted;

you afflicted the peoples,

but them you set free;

for not by their own sword did they win the land,

nor did their own arm give them victory;

but your right hand, and your arm,

and the light of your countenance,

for you delighted in them.

You are my King and my God;

you command victories for Jacob.

Through you we push down our foes;

through your name we tread down our assailants.

For not in my bow do I trust,

nor can my sword save me.

But you have saved us from our foes,

and have put to confusion those who hate us.

In God we have boasted continually,

and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah

Yet you have rejected us and abased us,

and have not gone out with our armies.

You made us turn back from the foe,

and our enemies have gotten spoil.

You have made us like sheep for slaughter,

and have scattered us among the nations.

You have sold your people for a trifle,

demanding no high price for them.

You have made us the taunt of our neighbors,

the derision and scorn of those around us.

You have made us a byword among the nations,

a laughingstock among the peoples.

All day long my disgrace is before me,

and shame has covered my face

at the words of the taunters and revilers,

at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

All this has come upon us,

yet we have not forgotten you,

or been false to your covenant.

Our heart has not turned back,

nor have our steps departed from your way,

yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals,

and covered us with deep darkness.

If we had forgotten the name of our God,

or spread out our hands to a strange god,

would not God discover this?

For he knows the secrets of the heart.

Because of you we are being killed all day long,

and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?

Awake, do not cast us off forever!

Why do you hide your face?

Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?

For we sink down to the dust;

our bodies cling to the ground.

Rise up, come to our help.

Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

23 Arise, O Lord! why sleepest thou? Here the saints desire that God, having pity upon them, would at length send them help and deliverance. Although God allows the saints to plead with him in this babbling manner, when in their prayers they desire him to rise up or awake; yet it is necessary that they should be fully persuaded that he keeps watch for their safety and defense. We must guard against the notion of Epicurus, who framed to himself a god who, having his abode in heaven, ¹⁵⁴¹⁵⁴ “Lequel estant au ciel.” — Fr. delighted only in idleness and pleasure. But as the insensibility of our nature is so great, that we do not at once comprehend the care which God has of us, the godly here request that he would be pleased to give some evidence that he was neither forgetful of them nor slow to help them. We must, indeed, firmly believe that God ceases not to regard us, although he appears not to do so; yet as such an assurance is of faith, and not of the flesh, that is to say, is not natural to us, ¹⁵⁵¹⁵⁵ “C’est dire, en nostre sens naturel.” — Fr. the faithful familiarly give utterance before God to this contrary sentiment, which they conceive from the state of things as it is presented to their view; and in doing so, they discharge from their breasts those morbid affections which belong to the corruption of our nature, in consequence of which faith then shines forth in its pure and native character. If it is objected, that prayer, than which nothing is more holy, is defiled, when some froward imagination of the flesh is mingled with it, I confess that this is true; but in using this freedom, which the Lord vouchsafes to us, let us consider that, in his goodness and mercy, by which he sustains us, he wipes away this fault, that our prayers may not be defiled by it.

25 For our soul is humbled to the dust The people of God again deplore the greatness of their calamities, and in order that God may be the more disposed to help them, they declare to him that they are afflicted in no ordinary manner. By the metaphors which they here employ, they mean not only that they are cast down, but also that they are crushed and laid upon the earth, so that they are not able to rise again. Some take the word soul for the body, so that there would be in this verse a repetition of the same sentiment; but I would rather take it for the part in which the life of man consists; as if they had said, We are cast down to the earth, and lie prostrate upon our belly, without any hope of getting up again. After this complaint they subjoin a prayer, (verse 26,) that God would arise for their help By the word redeem they mean not ordinary kind of help, for there was no other means of securing their preservation but by redeeming them. And yet there can be no doubt, that they were diligently employed in meditating upon the great redemption from which all the deliverances which God is daily effecting in our behalf, when he defends us from dangers by various means, flow as streams from their source. In a previous part of the psalm, they had boasted of the steadfastness of their faith; but to show us that, in using this language, they boasted not in their own merits, they do not claim here some recompense for what they had done and suffered for God. They are contented to ascribe their salvation to the unmerited goodness of God as the alone cause of it.

¹⁵⁴ “Lequel estant au ciel.” — Fr.

¹⁵⁵ “C’est dire, en nostre sens naturel.” — Fr.