"To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah.
O God, we have heard with our ears,
our fathers have told us,
what deeds you performed in their days,
in the days of old:
2 you with your own hand drove out the nations,
but them you planted;
you afflicted the peoples,
but them you set free;
3 for not by their own sword did they win the land,
nor did their own arm save them,
but your right hand and your arm,
and the light of your face,
for you delighted in them.
4 You are my King, O God;
ordain salvation for Jacob!
5 Through you we push down our foes;
through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.
6 For not in my bow do I trust,
nor can my sword save me.
7 But you have saved us from our foes
and have put to shame those who hate us.
8 In God we have boasted continually,
and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah
9 But you have rejected us and disgraced us
and have not gone out with our armies.
10 You have made us turn back from the foe,
and those who hate us have gotten spoil.
11 You have made us like sheep for slaughter
and have scattered us among the nations.
12 You have sold your people for a trifle,
demanding no high price for them.
13 You have made us the taunt of our neighbors,
the derision and scorn of those around us.
14 You have made us a byword among the nations,
a laughingstock among the peoples.
15 All day long my disgrace is before me,
and shame has covered my face
16 at the sound of the taunter and reviler,
at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.
17 All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten you,
and we have not been false to your covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way;
19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals
and covered us with the shadow of death.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God
or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
21 would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.
22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!
24 Why do you hide your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?
25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our belly clings to the ground.
26 Rise up; come to our help!
Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!"
Psalm 44
The Psalm may be analysed as follows:
1 - 3 Remembering God from of old
4 - 8 Affirmation that God is the same today
9 -16 The 'darkness' of the present
17-22 The assertion of faithfulness
23-26 The renewed cry to God
We see the Psalmist doing what Psalms 42 and 43 did, remembering God. And here, it is remembering to some purpose indeed, for he thinks back to what he has been told of God's mighty work in days of old. We can well imagine the thrill of holy joy - and desire and yearning - this would bring to his heart as he remembered the days of the right hand of the Most High (cf Psalm 77:10), as he brought His people out of Egypt into the Promised Land. It was the thing that most of all thrilled the people of God in their history, and it was the remembrance of this that awakened the faith and confidence expressed in 4-8. This is something we can, and ought to, do also. In times of spiritual deadness and apathy men tend to forget that God is real and that He acts in history; and it would do us all a power of good to recall former days that our fathers have told us about, when the Spirit of God was abroad in the land in power and glory. The resources of faith that such remembrance can kindle and activate in the hearts of God's people are very considerable; it liberates faith from the shackles of discouragement that have bound it. But it is important that this exercise is undertaken before considering 9-16, and the undoubted problem of the experience of defeat and being forsaken by God, for it enables us to view this in a very different light, as we shall see in the next Note.